478. The gentle (X)
The man most associated with the now-defunct alt-right is Richard Spencer, a beefy former PhD student with a characteristically “fashy” haircut—not the illiterate skinhead look, but rather as if a barber in hipsterdom had taken inspiration from a Hitler-Jugend recruitment poster. Spencer still surfaces from time to time, although he seems to be a rather lost figure—recently he has expressed sympathy for France’s regime-approved technocrat, Macron; and he endorsed Biden in the last presidential election.
The way to understand Spencer is simply this: he is a pan-European racialist. He is not really a politician, he is a single-issue campaigner: all he cares about is Mosley’s old vision “Europe a nation”—a single political unit that would, for Spencer, include Europe, North America, and Russia. While race is real as a biological fact, there are still innumerable spins on it for political and cultural purposes that make more, or less, sense: Spencer’s prospective “white race” spans everyone from a Chilean to a Russian; and this is intentionally so, for, despite his professed elitism, Spencer is a democrat. For Spencer, more is better—in this case, more “white people”; he is like an Edwardian general worried that he will not be able to raise another army if the birthrate falls too low—yet that world is long gone.
Despite his tough-guy image, Spencer is still, above all, a PhD student. This fact is lost on many people. Spencer still takes The Economist seriously; maybe he worries the Jews secretly run it, yet he accepts The Economist worldview. Hence he supports conventional wisdom: “Competing against China, we need the EU; we need a large political unit or we’re toast.”
The reason Spencer supports Macron is because he imagines that eurocrats like Macron will build Europe into a single political unit; then men like Spencer will come along and influence it—through political parties or think tanks—to become racial. The EU flag will get a rune, only whites will be allowed to live in the EU—Ode to Joy will probably still be the anthem. Generous welfare will mean the underclass will be made up from single mothers who have 12 white children, not Pakistanis who have 14 children—everything else will be the same. Spencer’s narcissism—his existential fear that he will be extinguished—will be temporarily allayed (it will return) as more “white children” are produced.
Spencer is a narcissist; he does not really think: if you listen to him, you can tell he monitors what the other person says and then tries to say something that will impress them; he has little integral engagement. Spencer buys all the bullshit from The Economist because in his mind he is still one of the “educated people”, with a PhD in politics, just like Macron. Educated people know the EU is a good thing—and so is single-payer healthcare. Spencer just happens to be so narcissistic he cannot stomach multiracialism, so he is a progressive racialist. Now, it happens that race equality is a very tender issue for progressives—so Spencer has been cast into outer dark; yet in his “educated” mind, smug and self-satisfied, he knows best really.
This is why his political strategies are cargo-cult politics; for a while he ran a think tank in DC, all he had to do was act as he was trained—as an educated wonk, except for racial policies—and it would work out; except the system does not work that way—nor does it accept non-regime-compliant marches, such as Spencer’s disastrous “Unite the Right” rally; just copying what high-status politicos do is not sufficient—you have to think for yourself. Spencer, still convinced as to his own “educated” superiority, has led many people into disaster. He has contempt for Trump—a man who has achieved real-world things—because Spencer is at heart parasitic; he wants Macron or Trump or someone to build something up, so sterile Spencer can take it over and “educate” it—except about “whites”, not “POCs”.