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Who is Richard Spencer, the White supremacist who dumped Trump and is now backing Biden for 2020 election?

Spencer had backed the GOP leader in the 2016 poll but later said that his moment was over

He is a white supremacist but Richard Spencer has announced that he is betting on Joe Biden this presidential election. However, the Democratic nominee’s campaign was not ready to accept it saying the neo-Nazi’s “absolutely repugnant” views were “10,000 percent unwelcome”. On Monday, 24 August, the 42-year-old Spencer tweeted saying he was abandoning President Donald Trump, calling the latter “an obvious disaster”.

Spencer opined that the MAGA/Alt-Right moment was over and even regretted having supported Trump. “I made mistakes; Trump is an obvious disaster; but mainly the paradigm contained flaws that we now are able to perceive. And it needs to end, he said this in a responding tweet to some of the users. Spencer also asked his 81k followers to be patient. “We'll have another day in the sun. We need to recover and return in a new form,” he said.

In another reply given to a Twitter user on how he intended to cast his ballot, Spencer said: “I plan to vote for Biden and a straight democratic ticket. It’s not based on 'accelerationism' or anything like that; the liberals are clearly more competent people.”

In another tweet, Spencer displayed his support for Biden by posting a picture of himself with the caption “I’m on Team Joe!”

Biden campaign refuses Spencer's support

Biden’s team was not convinced. “When Joe Biden says we are in a battle for the soul of our nation against vile forces of hate who have come crawling out from under rocks, you are the epitome of what he means,” Andrew Bates, the director of rapid response for the Biden campaign, responded to Spencer’s assertion that the liberals are more competent people. “What you stand for is absolutely repugnant. Your support is 10,000% percent unwelcome here,” he said.

Spencer changed from pro-Trump to anti-Trump

Born in Boston in 1978 to an ophthalmologist Rand Spencer and his wife Sherry, Spencer popularized the term “alt right” to define politics that combined racist White nationalism with isolationism and criticism of mainstream conservatism. Spencer grew up in Texas, Virginia and North Carolina and met President Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller at the Duke Conservative Union.

In 2007, Spencer served as the assistant editor at ‘The American Conservative’ magazine and from 2011, he was based in Montana’s Whitefish from where he edited and published an online magazine called ‘Alternative Right’. In January 2011, Spencer became the owner and executive director of Washington Summit Publishers. He is currently the president of the National Policy Institute — a White supremacist think-tank based in Virginia. The man is invited to speak on various platforms though was once deported from Budapest, Hungary, and was banned for three years from 26 European nations under the Schengen Agreement after trying to organize the National Policy Institute Conference, a conference for White nationalists.

Spencer supported Trump before the 2016 presidential election and hailed the latter’s decision to appoint Steve Bannon as the chief White House strategist, saying Bannon would be the “best possible position” to influence policy. Bannon did not last in his post even seven months. Praising Trump, Spencer also said then: “No matter what happens, I will be profoundly grateful to Donald Trump for the rest of my life.” he shot to national fame in 2016 after shouting “Hail Trump!” and being greeted with typical Nazi salutes at an event in Washington shortly after Trump’s re-election.

In November 2018, Spencer said the Trump moment was over and it was time to move on. It was around the same time that White nationalist movement was dissatisfied with the Trump presidency, the Southern Poverty Law Center said. In July last year, Spencer did not support Trump’s tweet targeting the ‘Squad’ members asking them to go home as “racist”. He alleged the president was practicing a “con game” and not clearly developing a White nationalist agenda and called his tweets “meaningless and cheap”.

After American forces killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad earlier this year, Spencer said that he regretted voting for Trump. “To the people of Iran, there are millions of Americans who do not want war, who do not hate you, and who respect your nation and its history,” he said. 

I will be grateful to Trump, Spencer said

Before the 2016 election, Spencer wrote: “We have a candidate for President who’s demystifying ‘racism’ and the financial power structure. No matter what happens, I will be profoundly grateful to Donald Trump for the rest of my life.”

Avoiding crude slurs, something that Trump hardly cares about, was another reason why Spencer attracted national attention at the time. Last November, however, Spencer was apparently caught using racist slurs on tape against African-American and Jewish people. The audio was released by former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos on YouTube.

For many, Spencer’s endorsement of Biden was comparable with that of former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, for Trump. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump was asked time and again about Duke’s support but he kept on insisting that he had no idea about Duke. He even said on one occasion that he first needed to do research on such groups and would disavow if he found there was something wrong. He eventually disavowed Duke’s support for him but the latter remained loyal and even wanted Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson as Trump’s deputy instead of Mike Pence.