How I Got ‘Alt-Right’ White Nationalist Leader Richard Spencer … – AlterNet
I got the notoriouswhite nationalistRichard Spencer kicked off of his podcast platform.
Spencer, the leader of the white nationalist so-called "alt-right who has made it clear he believes people of color are inferior to whites, is a lightning rod for controversy. He advocate what he calls peaceful ethnic cleansing and claims thatLatinos and AfricanAmericans havelower average IQs than whites. Auburn University initially canceled a speech he was set to give in April, but a court ruled that he must be allowed to speak. Hundreds of peopleprotestedoutside the event. In January, he took aflying punchin the neck from a masked person in the middle of an interview, immediately falling out of the view of the camera.
Recently, the Virginia gym Spencer belonged torevoked his membershipafter a university professor confronted him in the weight room and outed him as a vocal white nationalist. This is our December 1932. We have a choice,wrotethe Georgetown professor, Christine Fair, in a column for the Washington Post explaining her actions. We can refuse to treat this hateful, dangerous ideology as just another way of being, and fight it in every space we occupy."
Last Monday, Inoticed that the podcast Spencerproduces with his alt-right website had a paid account at SoundCloud, the popular streaming website. TheAltRightRadio accountdidnt have many followers, but some of the podcasts themselves, which one can embed on most websites, had been listened to roughly 12,000 times.
I wondered whether Spencers hate-filled podcasts were violatingSoundCloudsterms of service. Sure enough,SoundCloudscommunity guidelineswere clear:The companyforbids content that promotes or encourages hatred, discrimination or violence against others based on things like race, cultural identity or ethnic background, religious beliefs, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Heres just one exchange on oneAltRightRadioepisode called You Say You Want a Revolution,in which Paul Kersey, founder of the racistStuff Black People Dont Like website, makes it clear that hes a racist white supremacist. And Spencer agrees withhis bigoted assertions.
KERSEY: Make America Great AgainThats a synonym for Make America White Again.
SPENCER: Mm-hmm.
KERSEY: Because wherever America isn't white, it's not great. Wherever America is great, it's white.
SPENCER: Yeah.
KERSEY: And wherever Americais not safe, its not white. Wherever America is safe, its white.
There are morechoice quotesfrom white nationalist Jared Taylor, whose Beyond Conservatism speech was uploaded toSoundCloudbyAltRightRadio,and anti-Semite Kevin MacDonald, aguest onapodcast episode.
Per its terms ofuse,SoundCloudcan suspend or terminate an account if it violates its community guidelines. I did atweetstormabout theAltRightRadio account and the racist, anti-Semitic ideologies of its creator, urgingSoundCloudtoterminatethe account. The next morning, the company did just that.
All weve heard from Spencer on the matter was this tweet from last Tuesday
An associated account, Radix Radio, from the journal published by Spencers racist National Policy Institute appears to be terminated as well, although it's unclearwhen itwas taken down.Several podcasts thatAltRightRadio promotes,includingThis is Europa,KulturkampfandRed Ice Radioare still online.
Embedded links to podcast episodes from the AltRightRadio and Radix Radioaccountsno longer work, and as of Friday, the white nationalist sites hadnt replaced them with an alternative.The latest Alt-Right Politics episode hosted by Spencer was uploaded directly to the Alt-Right website.
I got plenty of support for what I did,although as expected, the neo-Nazi trolls came out infull force. Overwhelmingly, themostfrequentresponses from these almost unanimously anonymous users came in three categories: 1) assumptions that I was Jewish, with mentions of yellow stars, gas chambers and the size of my nose; 2) assertions that Im gay or a faggot; and 3) revelations that Im a cuck and a very skinny, slight andgenerallyweak person.
But many of the replies alsoprotestedthat no-platformingSpencer was a free speech issuean allegation that is false.
The First Amendmentprotects againstgovernment-imposed restrictions on speech.(There areexceptionsincluding advocacy of illegal action and fighting words.) ButSoundCloudis not the government; its a private companythat has every right to a terms-of-use document that its users, including Spencer,agree towhen creating aSoundCloudaccount.And the terms of use does not discriminate against any group of people; in fact, it prohibits such discrimination.
For some people, freedom of speech has come to mean freedom to discriminate.The campus free speech movement is ledprimarilyby far-right conservatives whofeel that their voices are underrepresented on college campuses, when the more likely scenario is that their ideas just arent very popular, andmanyof those ideas are both hateful andextremely poor scholarship. Charles Murrays failed argument that black people are inherently less intelligentthat whites has been panned in the academic community, yet he continues to make college tours, funded by the far-right, Koch-backed American Enterprise Institute. I have written extensively aboutright-wing fundingfor hate speechon campus, much of the money coming from the Koch andDeVosfamilies and distributedbyAEI and the Young Americas Foundation.
Many of the same wealthy figures arealso bankrolling an assaulton dissent, with a Goldwater Institute-written bill making its way through state legislatures around the country, imposing harsh penalties, including expulsion,on students who disrupt campus speakers. For some, freedom of speech applies only to guest speakers, nottothe hundreds of others in the audience.
Actualhate speech, which Richard Spencer actively engages in and promotes as both a career andapersonal ideology, has no place inmainstream society, nor does it deserve the servicesofany company that rejectsracism, sexism, homophobia,transphobia,Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of hatein its terms of use or community guidelines.Revived Nazi terms, blatant racism against black and Latinopeople and calls for ethnic cleansing should not be tolerated.This type of speech is not an argument or an opinion; it is hate, plain and simple.
Fighting against hate isnt discrimination, as the alt-right will feebly argue; its social justice.Good people should, any chance theyget, no-platform cowardly alt-right provocateurs, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederatesand other detestable groups of insecure, angrypeople.
Someone who cries, Hail Trump! ata white nationalist conference or organizes atiki-torch-lit nighttime rally defending Confederate monuments reminiscent of KKK rallies,deserves no platform. Let white nationalists build their own servers, their own infrastructure, so they can yell white genocide from the rooftops.But no honorable company should acceptwhite nationalistscause, ortheir money.
Alex Kotch is an independent investigative journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. Follow him on Twitter at @alexkotch.
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How I Got 'Alt-Right' White Nationalist Leader Richard Spencer ... - AlterNet