# Richard Spencer A prominent white nationalist and early architect of the "alt-right" movement, Richard Spencer helped rebrand white supremacist ideology for the internet age under the more palatable label of "identitarianism." Spencer served as editor of Taki's Magazine before founding his own explicitly white nationalist institutions, becoming the most visible public face of the alt-right during the 2016 election cycle and its aftermath. ## Taki's Magazine Spencer served as editor of [[Taki's Magazine]], a publication funded by Greek shipping heir Taki Theodoracopulos that occupied a peculiar position — nominally a paleoconservative publication with mainstream contributors, but also a vehicle for more explicitly racist and far-right content. Spencer's tenure there helped connect older paleoconservative networks — including figures like [[Jared Taylor]] of [[American Renaissance]] — with the emerging alt-right online scene. ## National Policy Institute Spencer founded and led the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white nationalist think tank that provided institutional infrastructure for the alt-right. The NPI produced publications, hosted conferences, and gave Spencer a platform to develop and disseminate white nationalist intellectual frameworks dressed in academic language. ## Coining and Popularizing "Alt-Right" Spencer is widely credited with coining or at minimum popularizing the term "alt-right" as a rebranding of white nationalism for a younger, internet-native audience. The label was deliberately chosen to be vague enough to attract people who didn't identify with explicit neo-Nazism while advancing the same core white nationalist project. ## The Heil Trump Moment At an NPI conference in November 2016, following Trump's election, Spencer gave a speech concluding with references to "Heil Trump" and Nazi-style salutes from the audience. The moment, captured on video, became a defining image of the alt-right — simultaneously revealing the movement's actual ideological character and generating significant backlash that accelerated its fragmentation. ## Decline and Fragmentation Following the 2017 Charlottesville "[[Unite the Right]]" rally — which Spencer helped organize alongside [[Gavin McInnes]] and other alt-right organizers, and which resulted in the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer — Spencer faced deplatforming, lawsuits, and the broader collapse of the alt-right as an organized movement. He was subsequently sued in the Charlottesville civil litigation. Spencer's relationship with mainstream Trump-world became increasingly strained as it became politically costly to associate with explicit white nationalism. Figures like [[Steve Bannon]] and [[Breitbart News]], who had provided a gateway between the alt-right and the mainstream MAGA movement, distanced themselves from Spencer's explicit white nationalism. [[Andrew Anglin]] of the [[Daily Stormer]] and [[Mike Cernovich]] represented divergent paths — Anglin deeper into neo-Nazi territory, Cernovich toward MAGA mainstream. Spencer's influence has diminished substantially from the 2015-2017 peak. ## Position in the Ecosystem Spencer represents the explicit white nationalist wing of the right-wing ecosystem — too openly racist for mainstream conservative media to embrace, but influential in setting the ideological agenda that more respectable-sounding figures in the "race realist" or "national conservatism" space drew from. His intellectual lineage connects to the [[Dark Enlightenment]] and neoreactionary currents that also influenced figures like [[Curtis Yarvin]], though Spencer's brand drew more on the street-level [[Identitarian Movement]] than on neoreactionary philosophy. His career arc illustrates how the alt-right provided ideological content that mainstreamed in diluted form throughout the broader right — the journey from Spencer to [[Stephen Miller]]'s immigration policy is a straight ideological line, even if the respectable figures carefully avoided the association.