Who Is Richard Spencer? 5 Things To Know About 'Alt-Right' Leader

Richard Bertrand Spencer, the leader of the National Policy Institute who is speaking at a heavily guarded rally at the University of Florida in Gainesville Thursday, is largely credited with rebranding the white supremacy movement with the term “alt-right” and was the chief organizer of last summer’s deadly rally around the planned removal of a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Four universities have refused to let Spencer, 39, speak after the Charlottesville rally, where one counter-protester was killed. They include Pennsylvania State University, Michigan State University, Louisiana State University and Texas A&M.

The University of Florida had also denied Spencer’s request and courts blocked him from speaking in September due to “specific threats and a date that fell soon after the Charlottesville event.” Some of the refusals are under appeal. (For more news like this, subscribe to Across America Patch for real-time breaking news alerts and free morning newsletters, or find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Also See: Richard Spencer Spoke (And Shouted) At The University Of Florida

Here are five things to know about Richard Spencer:

Born to an affluent family in Boston, he grew up in Dallas, graduated from the University of Virginia in 2001 and received his master’s degree in humanities from the University of Chicago. He’s a dropout from a Duke University doctoral program. According to his Twitter profile, he lives in Alexandria, Virginia. He is married to Nina Kouprianova and has a young daughter.

When President Trump began interspersing alt-right themes in his campaign message, Spencer became an enthusiastic supporter, which caused his national profile to soar, according to a piece in The Atlantic by a childhood classmate, Graeme Wood.

Spencer, his mother and his sister are absentee landlords of a 5,200-acre cotton farm in Louisiana that received $2 million in U.S. farm subsidy payments in 2015, Mother Jones reported. He once famously said that the American South’s rise was “not through black people” and “has nothing to do with slavery,” and also that “white people could have figured out another way to pick cotton; we do it now.”

Spencer is unapologetic in his advocacy for an Aryan homeland separate from people of color. “This country does belong to white people, culturally, politically, socially, everything,” he said in a PBS interview. “We define what America is.”

In back-to-back columns in January and February 2014, Spencer called civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. “a fraud and degenerate” and that that immigration is “kind of a proxy war — and maybe a last stand — for white Americans.”

White nationalist Richard Spencer and his supporters clash with Virginia State Police in Emancipation Park after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared an unlawful gathering Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” clashed with anti-fascist protesters and police as they attempted to hold a rally in Emancipation Park, where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was slated to be removed. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)