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A network of podcasts, including one which featured former President Donald Trumps eldest son as a guest in 2016, fueled the rise of one of the core leaders of the modern white nationalist movement.

Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist figurehead during the Trump era, was one of dozens of up-and-coming extremists who leveraged a network of far-right podcasts to mobilize followers and turn his movement into a household name. This movement, known as the so-called alternative right or alt-right for short, encompassed a loose set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals under the mantle of white supremacy. While early coverage of the alt-right emphasized its members and leaders fluency with internet culture specifically forums and social media the role of podcasts as a vehicle for propaganda and leadership development has not yet been examined.

The Southern Poverty Law Center analyzed Spencers breakthrough into the upper echelons ofthe white power movement through the lens of a web of 18 different podcasts popular with the extreme right between 2005 and 2020. The SPLC found that Spencers earliest efforts to market his movement to the broader extreme right were facilitated in large part by The Political Cesspool (TPC), a podcast and radio show hosted by longtime white nationalist propagandist James Edwards. Though the show has featured a variety of far-right extremists from the United States and abroad, Edwards has brushed shoulders with members of the more mainstream right, including Donald Trump Jr.

This is part two of the SPLCs four-part report examining 15 years of podcasting data across 18 different shows produced by far-right extremists. While Spencer is but one of the 882 cast members who appeared on 4,046 different episodes of these shows, he figures prominently in the web of far-right extremist content makers.

Spencer emerged as one of the most prominent white nationalist figureheads during the flurry of extremist activity around the 2016 election, although his involvement in the white power movement extends well beyond the Trump era.

In 2008, Spencer began promoting the term alternative right while an editor at the paleoconservative online publication Takis Magazine. In December of that year, Takis published a speech from far-right political theorist Paul Gottfried outlining his vision for a new independent intellectual Right. Though the speech itself never used the term, it was key to Spencer's nascent movement.

In 2011, Spencer became president of the National Policy Institute, a think tank founded by William H. Regnery II, a mega-donor to various white nationalist outlets. Under Spencers tutelage, the National Policy Institute, dedicated to ensuring the biological and cultural continuity of white Americans, rebranded age-old racial bigotries for a younger generation of extremists. It did so through a variety of media, including blogs, journal articles and podcasts. NPI also held dozens of conferences with other white nationalist figureheads. In the run-up to and aftermath of the 2016 election, these gatherings drew scores of younger attendees, in part because the institute offered discounted admission for those under 30.

Likewise, Spencer was one of a core cadre of white nationalist organizers behind the flurry of far-right rallies in the first half of the Trump era. This included the August 2017 Unite the Right rally, which brought hundreds of white supremacists and other far-right extremists to Charlottesville, Virginia. The event devolved into violent skirmishes, culminating in the murder of antiracist activist Heather Heyer by James Alex Fields Jr. A few months later, at Spencers Oct. 19 appearance at the University of Florida as part of his brief college tour, three of his supporters were arrested on charges of attempted homicide for allegedly firing at protesters.

Today, he is one of over a dozen defendants named as organizers of Unite the Right in the Sines v. Kessler civil lawsuit. NPI has remained largely dormant in the years following the fracturing of the alt-right in 2018. Spencer made at least two attempts to launch new podcasts, including The McSpencer Group and Radix Live, named after one of NPIs publications, Radix Journal.

On Oct. 24, 2009, less than a year after beginning to promote the term alternative right, Spencer made his first appearance on The Political Cesspool (TPC), a podcast and radio show hosted by James Edwards. Over the course of Spencers next two dozen or so appearances on TPC, Edwards used his prominent platform within the broader far-right movement to promote Spencer as a core member of the white nationalist intelligentsia.

Edwards, a board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens and a principal member of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, started TPC in 2004 as a terrestrial radio show, though it has since branched out to internet broadcasting. TPCs mission statement includes white nationalist rhetoric, claiming that it stands for the Dispossessed Majority and is pro-White.

As part of TPCs five-year anniversary special, Spencer appeared alongside Paul Gottfried to discuss the failure of the conservative movement. Edwards introduced Spencer as the Managing Editor of TakiMag.com and an intellectual heavyweight. Within the first ten minutes of the interview, Spencer began promoting his vision for a new far-right movement.

Weve got to find a new tactic that isnt just about kicking the neoconservatives out of the [conservative] movement. I dont think thats possible or desirable. Weve got to find a new right wing, he said during the interview. Spencer added that he had begun to refer to this movement as the alternative right, a collection of different groups or individuals who are basically not falling into that lesser-of-two-evils logic that he claimed was used by some far-right extremists to justify voting for Republican candidates such as the late John McCain.

The discussion was notable in two regards. First, Spencers efforts to introduce the alternative right as a concept to TPC listeners came long before the term had begun to take root among far-right extremists. Spencers TPC appearance came less than a year after Gottfried presented his vision for a nationalist, populist right-wing in a speech at the H.L. Mencken Club. Spencer published Gottfrieds speech on Takis Magazines website, under the title The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right, in December 2009. The term stuck, and over the course of the next year, Takis Magazine, under Spencers editorship, would publish several articles laying the groundwork for this alternative right.

Second, Spencers appearance on TPC allowed him to reach a broader constituency within the far right. Edwards, a Tennessee resident, had long tailored the show for a Southern white nationalist and neo-Confederate audience two audiences that would become crucial partners for Spencer and other organizers during the 2017 Unite the Right rally. Throughout the episode, both Edwards and Spencer urged far-right activists to come together, with Edwards emphasizing that their survival depended on it. Likewise, throughout the segment, Spencer and, later, Gottfried sought to draw listeners to their causes. Spencer, Gottfried and Edwards encouraged listeners to attend the H.L. Mencken Clubs second annual meetup.

Between 2009 and 2020, Spencer appeared another 29 times on TPC broadcasts. The bibliographical details of each appearance provide a timeline for his development as a white nationalist leader, as well as for the alt-rights rise.

Most of Spencers 30 appearances on The Political Cesspool pre-date his notoriety in the popular press by several years. Through The Political Cesspool, he was able to use the airtime to establish himself as an intellectual leader within the broader extreme right, while also drawing listeners deeper into the world of far-right activism through attendance at in-person events. Spencer continued to organize, promote and attend white nationalist meetups and conferences, including infamously in 2016 when he catapulted into the public eye after yelling Hail Trump! and Hail victory! an English translation of the Nazi chant Sieg Heil during an event in Washington, D.C.

During this time, too, Spencers appearances on the show coincided with a range of notable guests. Representatives from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist group with roots in the efforts to oppose school desegregation in the 1950s, were frequent guests, joining Edwards show some 58 times between 2005 and 2020. It also featured a variety of racist thinkers who figured into the alt-rights growth during the 2016 election. These included Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, who appeared on the show 52 times during this period; Sam Dickson, a former lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan who appeared 36 times; and Kevin MacDonald, a retired university professor and author of several antisemitic tomes. MacDonald appeared 35 times. Many of these figures had, like Spencer, nurtured a deliberately more mainstream image to hide their extremist views.

But Edwards also hosted politicians, from the United States and abroad. In 2012, Rep. Walter B. Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, went on the show to discuss troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. (He later claimed he was unaware of the shows political leanings.) Rep. Nick Griffin, of the far-right British National Party, made multiple appearances on the show, joining Edwards program five times. Finally, Edwards interviewed Donald Trump Jr. in March 2016 on a sister program, Liberty Roundtable. There, the two disparaged immigrants, particularly undocumented ones. Trump Jr. later claimed Edwards was brought into the interview without my knowledge.

While Spencer continued to appear on The Political Cesspool throughout the 2010s, an array of newer white nationalist podcasts provided him a variety of different platforms from which to promote and grow the alt-right. These shows, many of which were produced by and for a younger generation of white supremacists, tended to appeal to a younger, more digitally savvy, audience.

Spencer became a regular fixture on The Right Stuff podcasting circuit in fall of 2015. On Oct. 13, 2015, Spencer joined The Daily Shoah for the first time. The show was recorded in the runup to NPIs annual conference, held around Halloween of that year. It included a brief promotional segment, dubbed the NPI Conference Haircut Contest, where Spencer judged TRS listeners undercuts a type of hairstyle where the sides of the head are shaved or buzzed, and the top is left at a longer length. NPI awarded the winner a free ticket to its annual conference, held that year in Philadelphia.

After this initial appearance on The Daily Shoah, Spencers involvement with other shows in the podcast network grew. While Spencer appeared on 95 episodes of nine different podcasts from 200920, his appearances on five of these nine shows coincided with an upswing in street mobilization between 2016 and 2018 by far-right extremists throughout the country. Spencer used many of these appearances to either promote future events or shape the narrative after a high-profile event, such as Unite the Right or press conferences.

Richard Spencers podcast appearances, over time. Each blue dot in the timeline represents one episode in which he appeared.

Some of these discussions brought together other prominent organizers as well. The diagram below shows Spencer's diverse set of co-appearances with dozens of cast members from multiple podcasts over an 11-year period, from 2009 to 2020.

Richard Spencer (green circle at center) co-appeared with dozens of guests on nine different podcast series between 2009-20

In 2016, Spencer appeared with Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer on an episode of Between Two Lampshades a spin-off of The Daily Shoah, named after the Zach Galifianakis talk show Between Two Ferns to promote a speaking engagement at Texas A&M University. Following the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017, Spencer joined two TRS podcasts to break down what happened in Charlottesville. In an episode posted Aug. 13, 2017, Spencer joined Matthew Gebert, then a State Department official and TRS organizer known in white supremacist circles as Coach Finstock; fellow Unite the Right organizer Elliott Kline, who used pseudonym Eli Mosley; and the rest of usual cast of The Daily Shoah to unpack what happened at Unite the Right. A few weeks later, on Aug. 21, 2017, Spencer joined the Fash the Nation podcast, along with Third Rail host Norman Asa Garrison III. In the first 10 minutes of the two-hour episode, Spencer and Garrison sought to shift the blame for the violence at Unite the Right from the far right to antiracist protesters.

Spencers extensive cooperation with other prominent alt-right podcasts declined in the aftermath of Unite the Right. In 2019, he launched The McSpencer Group, a podcast and talk show. While the show has managed to attract a small number of rotating cast members, Spencer himself has appeared on just two other podcasts in the SPLCs data set between 2019 and 2020, signifying a retrenchment back into his own work and away from other figures in the movement.

Link:
Inside the Far-right Podcast Ecosystem, Part 2: Richard Spencer's Origins in the Podcast Network - Southern Poverty Law Center