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CAMP PENDLETON

Almost 300 Marines and sailors returned to Camp Pendleton Sunday after a six-month deployment to the Middle East where many of the troops found themselves among an emergency response force sent to Kabul, Afghanistan, to assist in the massive August evacuation.

Ten service members assigned to the unit were among the 13 killed in a suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport Aug. 26.

The unit, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, deployed as part of a rapid-reaction force in the Middle East. As the Taliban seized the Afghan capital of Kabul, the unit mobilized to secure the citys airport alongside other Marine, Army and Air Force units.

During the ensuing 18-day airlift, almost 124,000 people were evacuated from the country. After an initial, chaotic surge of desperate Afghans flooded the airports tarmac, U.S. troops were able to secure the airport and began the painstaking process of screening people for evacuation.

On Aug. 26, at the airports Abbey Gate where Afghans had been congregating en masse trying to escape troops were conducting searches of evacuees when a lone ISIS-K suicide bomber approached. The bomber detonated his or her vest in the midst of the crowd. At least 170 Afghans were killed alongside 13 U.S. service members.

The 282 Marines and sailors who returned from deployment Sunday were not the first from the battalion to come home, said Maj. Roger Hollenbeck, a spokesperson for the 1st Marine Division.

Of the roughly 1,000 Marines and sailors that deployed, just over half have returned, including Golf ompany, whose Marines and sailors were killed in the explosion.

Marines and sailors marched onto the large asphalt parade deck at the Camp Horno area of Camp Pendleton around noon where hundreds of friends and family members waited under the sweltering October sun. Temperatures at the base topped out just above 90 degrees. Marines in civilian attire brought ice chests full of beer and handed them out to the just-returned Marines and sailors.

No Marines from the unit were made available for interviews although some did talk to reporters. Marine public affairs personnel would not allow reporters present to leave a cordoned-off area to talk to Marines and their families although some did.

Lance Cpl. Robert Kunz, 23, a mortarman from 2/1, said he was among those sent to Kabul but declined to go into detail about what he saw. He said he was proud of the work they did, however.

It was just another day, Kunz said. We did what we could do.

Selina Sweet, whose husband, Nathan, is a corporal in 2/1, waited for her husband with their two kids, 6-year-old Damian and 8-month-old Sabrina. She said it was a difficult deployment because so many of the units troops were placed in harms way, although, she said, her husband was not among those sent to Kabul.

It hit close to home, you know? she said. You just didnt want to hear bad news. Luckily, we were able to hear from him.

The rest of the Marines and sailors from 2/1 are expected to return over the coming days and weeks.

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Camp Pendleton battalion returns from deployment that included Afghanistan evacuation mission - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Turkish President Recep Erdogans pride in his countrys recent interest rate cut calls to mind the apocryphal story of the mothers pride in her son at a military parade. The source of her pride was that her son was the only one in the parade who, in her mind at least, was marching in step.

Erdogan similarly takes pride in his countrys central bank cutting interest rates at a time of rising domestic inflation. He does so evenwhen most of the worlds central banks, including those in the emerging markets, are in the process of tightening their monetary policies in response to signs of rising inflation.

Over the past year, Erdogan has fired three central bank governors for not complying with his eccentric view that high interest rates are the cause of inflation, rather than a cure. Last week, Sahap Kavcioglu, Turkeys most recent central bank governor, seemed to yield to Erdogans demands by cutting interest rates by 100 basis points from 18 percent to 17 percent. He did so even at a time that inflation had accelerated to 19 percent. He also did so at a time that the Turkish lira was the worlds worst performing currency, as underlined by a 16 percent drop in the currency since the start of the year.

Even more surprising about Turkeys sharp reduction in interest rates was that it flew in the face of the International Monetary Funds (IMF) explicit warning about the dangers of such a move.

In a recent report, the IMF observed that even before COVID-19 the Turkish economy suffered from external vulnerabilities in the form of uncomfortably low international reserves, a large amount of banking system dollar deposits and a high amount of dollar-denominated corporate debt. Those vulnerabilities have increased as a result of the verystrong monetary policy response to the COVID-19 crisis. This was underlined by a re-emergence of a significant external current account deficit and a rise in dollar denominated deposits to as much as 60 percent of the banking systems overall deposits.

Despite the countrys shaky banking system, its low level of international reserves and its uncomfortably high amount of dollar-denominated corporate debt, it has managed to avoid a full-fledged currency crisis. It has done so as its banks have continued to have easy access to a global capital market that was awash with liquidity and that had international investors desperate for yield in a low world interest rate environment.

Making Erdogans gamble all the more reckless is the strong likelihood that we are moving towards a less benign international liquidity environment. In response to incipient signs of inflation across many countries, many central banks have already started tightening policy. Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is giving increased signs that the Federal Reserve is about to start tapering its aggressive bond buying program, which he has suggested is likely to end by mid-2022. This runs the risk of putting Turkey once again in the front line of thoseemerging market economies that will be severely impacted by a shift to tightening world monetary policy conditions, as occurred during the 2013 Bernanke Taper Tantrum.

None of this bodes well for the Turkish economy in the run-up to its presidential elections in 2023. Domestic and foreign investors will likely head for the door as they see interest rates lagging behind inflation and as interest rates abroad become more attractive. That in turn is likely to send the currency to yet lower levels, which will feed the upward march in domestic inflation for which Erdogan could pay a heavy price in the 2023 election.

A silver lining is that Turkeys economic troubles may serve as a cautionary tale for other emerging market economies about the dangers of pursuing unorthodox monetary policies at a time of tightening global liquidity conditions. It might also serve as an early warning to policymakers in the advanced industrial countries of potential trouble ahead in the emerging market economies.

DesmondLachmanis a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was formerly a deputy director in the International Monetary Funds Policy Development and Review Department and the chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney.

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The economic folly of Turkey's Recep Erdogan | TheHill - The Hill

The Daily Stormer website advocates for the purity of the white race, posts hate-filled, conspiratorial screeds against Blacks, Jews and women and has helped inspire at least three racially motivated killings.

It also made founder Andrew Anglin a millionaire.

Anglin has tapped a worldwide network of supporters to take in at least 112 Bitcoin since January 2017 today worth $4.8 million according to data shared with The Associated Press. Hes likely raised even more.

Anglin is one very public example of how radical right provocateurs are raising big money through cryptocurrencies. Banned by traditional financial institutions, theyve turned to digital currencies, which theyre using in ever more secretive ways to avoid the oversight of banks, regulators and courts, an AP investigation has found, based on legal documents, Telegram channels and blockchain data from Chainalysis, a cryptocurrency analytics firm.

Anglin owes more than $18 million in legal judgments in the United States to people he and his followers harassed and threatened.

Among them, he owes Muslim comedian Dean Obeidallah $4 million. And hes supposed to pay Taylor Dumpson, the first Black student body president of American University, $725,000 all the results of litigation over libel, invasion of privacy, inflicting emotional distress and intimidation via the Daily Stormer.

His victims have tried and failed to find him to collect. He has no obvious bank accounts or U.S. real estate holdings.

Online, hes highly visible most days, dozens of stories on the Daily Stormer homepage carry his name. In the real world, though, Anglins a ghost.

We were able to sue the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization, in essence out of existence, said Beth Littrell, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center whos helping represent one of Anglins victims.

But its harder, Littrell says, to use the legal system to stamp out hate groups today because theyre operating via online networks and virtual money.

In August 2017, a week after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Anglin received 14.88 Bitcoins, an amount chosen for its oblique references to a 14-word white supremacist slogan and the phrase Heil Hitler. Worth about $60,000 then, it was his biggest Bitcoin donation ever and is worth over $641,000 at todays exchange rate.

The source remains a mystery.

Anglin now faces federal charges for conspiring to plan and promote the deadly march.

By the time of Charlottesville, Anglin had been cut off by credit-card processors and banned by PayPal. Bitcoin was his main source of funding.

Ive got money to pay for the site for the foreseeable future, he wrote last December as Bitcoins price surged.

Bitcoin was developed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It doesnt depend on banks. Transactions are validated and recorded on a decentralized digital ledger called the blockchain, which derives its authority from crowdsourcing rather than bankers.

As one white nationalist cryptocurrency guide circulating on Telegram puts it: We all know the Jews and their minions control the global financial system. When you are caught having the wrong opinion, they will take it upon themselves to shut you out of this system making your life very difficult. One alternative to this system is cryptocurrency.

Richard Spencer, a white supremacist, has dubbed Bitcoin the currency of the alt-right.

Its hard to tell how large a role cryptocurrency plays in financing the far right. Merchandise sales, membership fees, donations in fiat currencies, concerts, fight clubs and other events, as well as criminal activity, are also sources of revenue, government and academic research has shown.

Early adopters of Bitcoin, like Anglin, have profited handsomely from its increase in value. Bitcoin prices are notoriously volatile, though. Since April, the currency has shed a third of its value against the dollar, then took a further drubbing recently when China declared cryptocurrency transactions illegal.

Chainalysis collected data for a sample of 12 far-right entities in the United States and Europe that publicly called for Bitcoin donations and showed significant activity. Together, they took in 213 Bitcoin worth more than $9 million at todays value between January 2017 and April 2021.

These groups embrace a range of ideologies and include white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and self-described free-speech advocates, united by a shared desire to fight the perceived progressive takeover of culture and government.

These people have real assets. People with access to hundreds of thousands of dollars can start doing real damage, said John Bambenek, a cybersecurity expert who has been tracking the use of cryptocurrency by far-right players since 2017.

Andrew Weev Auernheimer, Anglins webmaster for the Daily Stormer, has taken in Bitcoin worth $2.2 million at todays values. The Nordic Resistance Movement, a Scandinavian neo-Nazi movement thats banned in Finland, Counter-Currents, a U.S. white nationalist publishing house and the recently banned French group Gnration Identitaire have each received Bitcoin now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, Chainalysis data show.

Two social media platforms that have been embraced by the far right Gab and Bitchute saw Bitcoin funding surge ahead of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection.

Since 2017, Bitchute has gotten Bitcoin worth nearly $500,000 today. About a fifth of that rolled in last December.

Gab has gotten more than $173,000. Nearly 40% came in during December 2020 and January 2021, Chainalysis data show.

On Aug. 1, Gab announced it was stepping up its fight against financial censorship and creating its own alternative to PayPal to fight against the tyranny of the global elites.

While cryptocurrencies have a reputation for secrecy, Bitcoin was built for transparency. Every transaction is indelibly and publicly recorded on the blockchain, which enables companies like Chainalysis to monitor activity.

Individuals can obscure their identities by not publicly linking them to their cryptocurrency accounts, but, with Bitcoin, they cannot hide the transactions themselves.

Because of that, Anglin abandoned Bitcoin n November 2020 just as Donald Trump lost the presidential election and asked supporters to send him money only in Monero, a privacy coin designed to enhance anonymity by hiding data about users and transactions. He published a new guide in February on how to use Monero, with instructions for non-U.S. donors.

Every Bitcoin transfer is visible publicly. Generally, your name is not attached to the address in a direct way, but spies from the various woke anti-freedom organizations have unlimited resources to try to link these transactions to real names. With Monero, the transactions are all hidden. Anglin wrote.

Monero, Anglin wrote, is really easy. Most importantly, it is safe.

Others have reached the same conclusion.

Thomas Sewell, an Australian neo-Nazi facing criminal charges, is soliciting donations in Monero for his legal defense.

Jaz Searby, a martial arts instructor who headed an Australian chapter of the Proud Boys, is seeking donations Monero only to help spread our message to a generation of young Aryan men that may feel alone or fail to understand the forces that are working against us.

The Nordic Resistance Movement and Counter-Currents also solicit donations in cryptocurrencies including Monero, and NRM has experimented with letting supporters mine Monero directly on their behalf.

Do you really think how we operate our economy is any of your business? Martin Saxlind, the editor of NRMs magazine Nordfront, said in an email to AP reporters. Swedish banks have abused their control of the economy to deny us and others regular banking accounts for political reasons. Thats why we use cryptocurrency ... You should investigate the corrupt banks . . .

The Global Minority Initiative, which calls itself a prison relief charity for American white nationalists, also takes donations only in Monero or by postal money order.

And Frances Democratie Participative, a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ website banned by French courts in 2018, solicits donations in Monero only.

Money is the sinew of war, the site says. Thanks to your support we can continue to prevent Jews and their allies from sleeping soundly.

The AP sought out each of the groups and individuals named in this story. Most didnt reply to requests for comment. A few were unreachable. Others replied anonymously, sending anti-Semitic and pornographic content.

Shortly before his suicide, in December 2020, a French computer programmer named Laurent Bachelier sent 28.15 Bitcoins then worth over $520,000 to 22 far-right entities.

The bulk went to Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist influencer who graduated from Lyons Township High School and was banned from YouTube for hate speech. Fuentes would spend the coming weeks encouraging his tens of thousands of followers to lay siege to the Capitol. One bitcoin went to a Daily Stormer account.

I care about what happens after my death, Bachelier wrote in his suicide note. Thats why I decided to leave my modest wealth to certain causes and people. I think and hope that they will make a better use of it.

Since getting Bacheliers money, Fuentes ramped up recruiting for his America First livestream and expanded the reach of his America First Foundation, which says in corporate registration documents it advocates for conservative values based on principles of American Nationalism, Christianity, and Traditionalism.

The transactions became public only because of a tip to Yahoo News and the fact that Bachelier left digital traces that linked his Bitcoin address with his email. The money trail offered clear evidence that domestic extremism isnt purely domestic and showed how wealthy donors can use cryptocurrency to fund extremists around the world with little scrutiny.

Bacheliers money slipped into the United States without triggering alerts it might have had it landed via traditional banking. Thats because much of it notably the Bitcoin donation to Fuentes, then worth $250,000 passed through accounts that werent hosted by regulated cryptocurrency exchanges, according to Chainalysis.

Those exchanges, which can convert Bitcoin into dollars and other currencies, generally are regulated like banks, allowing authorities to get access to information or funds.

But cryptocurrency wallets can be unhosted, which means users control access. Unhosted wallets like Fuentes are akin to cash. They dont have to go through banks or exchanges that could flag suspicious transactions, verify a users identity or hand over money to satisfy a court judgment.

he Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based organization that sets global guidelines to protect against money laundering and terrorism financing, in June released its first report on far-right fundraising. It highlighted the groups use of cryptocurrencies and warned that transnational links among such actors are growing.

Similar to their jihadist counterparts, many of these groups have used the internet and social media to share propaganda and recruit ideologically-aligned supporters from around the world, the report said.

As the COVID-19 pandemic sealed borders, white nationalists continued to gather in virtual communities that allowed them to connect with people from around the world.

On Telegram, posts tagged with different flags stream together. Theres a burly White Boys Club in Kyiv, nationalists in Minnesota and men with pixelated faces in Greece, each posing around White Lives Matter banners. Images of people stomping on or burning colorful LGBTQ buttons and flags roll in from Poland, Slovakia, Russia, Croatia. Men with skull masks and rifles pose after tactical training in the woods in Poland. A person with a fascist flag stands in the rain in France. A man draped with a swastika banner looks out from a hill somewhere in the woods of America.

The transnational links make people feel they are part of a much larger community, said Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism. They can inspire each other and network.

Blockchain data show Anglins donors are part of a global community of believers who sent money to entities in multiple countries. Since 2017, donors to Anglin also have given Bitcoin to 32 other far-right groups and people in at least five countries, according to Chainalysis data.

The data also show money flowed into the sample of 12 far-right groups from cryptocurrency exchanges that serve customers all over the world, with Western and Eastern European-focused exchanges playing a growing role. Chainalysis uses web traffic data and economic activity patterns to estimate where the customers who use a given exchange are located.

European groups like the Nordic Resistance Movement and Gnration Identitaire also received donations from North America-focused exchanges. Similarly, U.S. entities like American Renaissance, Daily Stormer and WeAreChange got money via exchanges that serve customers in Western and Eastern Europe.

Kimberly Grauer, director of research for Chainalysis, said the shift to global exchanges certainly could be in order to obfuscate detection, but it could also be a sign that increasingly donations are coming in from all over the world.

While Anglin remains hidden, his money virtually untouchable, his debt grows. Each day that ticks by, he owes Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in Montana, another $760.88 interest on a $14 million judgment he has failed to pay.

After Gersh got in a dispute with the mother of white supremacist Spencer in 2016, Anglin published her contact information and used his website to whip up trolls against her.

She got death threats, threats against her as a Jew and threats against her child. Shed sometimes pick up the phone and hear a gunshot. Gershs hair started falling out. She had panic attacks, sought counseling and considered fleeing.

The balm for all that came in 2019, when a federal court made clear that targeted anti-Semitic hate speech isnt protected by the First Amendment. But since that fleeting moment of victory, nothing has happened. Gersh has yet to see a penny of her $14 million.

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Cryptocurrency has become currency of the alt-right, white supremacists, hate groups - Chicago Sun-Times

BENNINGTON University of Michigan professor Alexandra Stern was not all that surprised by the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, since armed white nationalists had earlier entered the capitol in her state during protests over Gov. Gretchen Whitmers COVID-19 regulations.

Stern was the guest speaker Thursday during the fourth in a series of six forums on the events of Jan. 6 sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College.

She spoke on The Alt-Right and White Nationalism on the American Landscape.

Stern, the author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination, said she sees the events in Lansing, Mich., in 2020 as a dry run, both in terms of ideology and in networking for the groups involved.

At one point, armed protesters entered the state capitol in Lansing while lawmakers were speaking on the floor. Later, multiple arrests were made, including over a subsequent failed plot to kidnap the governor.

While Stern said she understands the threats posed by the proliferation of white nationalist and supremacist groups around the country, she is possibly more concerned about the spread of their ideologies throughout mainstream society.

Unlike in the 20th century, she said, the expansion of the internet and social media provided these groups with myriad new channels to spread their messages and not only to group members.

The messages usually are spread one image at a time, one idea at a time, one meme at a time, she said.

As the internet grew, for the alt-right, It was very much about changing culture, Stern said.

Former President Donald Trumps slogan, Make America Great Again, is an example of an effective political message that is benign on the surface, she said, but also connotes a familiar call for a return to an earlier, supposedly better era.

For these groups, that means before the post-World War II civil rights movement, the Voting Right Act of 1965; a relaxation of immigration quotas around the same time; the rise of feminism, gay rights, transsexual rights; and a focus on and recent celebration of diversity in American culture.

Often, Stern said, internet messages aimed at the general public contrast a supremacist nostalgia image of America that is akin to a Norman Rockwell painting or a Leave it to Beaver episode from the 1950s, with divisive social issues today.

Stern said her principal concern about the future is the effect these messages have on many young people and how that might be countered.

In combating the current rise of white nationalists, supremacist and similar ideologies around the world, Stern said new forms of social media regulation is absolutely essential.

She pointed to social media platform bans imposed on Trump and talk radio host Alex Jones as examples of effective measures that had to be considered.

Other media also are being used to spread the white supremacist ideologies, she said, including video games, which have been used to reinforce similar messages.

A 2019 survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center listed 940 hate groups the organization was tracking around the U.S., Stern said, showing that the number is on the rise.

Beyond the United States, she said, most European nations now have groups with supremacist and/or ethnocentric views that are reflected in the significant minority support for far right political parties registered in the polls.

During her research, Stern said she found white supremacist or nationalist ideology in the post-war era tends to have theoretical roots dating to the mid- to late-1960s.

The year 1965 marked passage of the federal Voting Rights Act that barred states from enacting discriminatory laws to keep minority groups from voting. That is a milestone year for many of the white nationalist groups, she said, in that they see the beginning of a decline in white-dominated government and culture.

In addition, that period also saw a loosening of immigration quotas on people coming from non-European nations that had been imposed in the 1920s.

Another crisis year noted as critical by the alt-right, she said, was 1968, when sometimes violent protests over the Vietnam War and favor of broad societal change erupted here and in Europe.

In France, a New Right movement stressing traditional values emerged, she said, and many of the writers involved in that movement or their themes proved influential to later nationalist or supremacist groups.

Living in France just two decades after the four-year German occupation, the French movement tried to express their views so as not to evoke those of the hated Nazis, she said, providing a blueprint for many others since then.

Among the common themes, Stern said, are that these groups hold anti-egalitarian beliefs that run counter to democratic values and traditions.

And at the heart of white supremacist beliefs, Stern said, are anti-Semitism and racism, even though other groups also are targeted, including women, gays, other minorities, other ethnic groups and transsexuals.

Today, there also is a rightward trending populism, she said, which is focused on anti-elite grievances, such as being violently in opposition to pandemic lockdown requirements like masking or vaccine orders, or in Europe, in opposition to the European Union.

Conspiracy theories like QAnon are in turn one of the fuels of the rise of the far right, Stern said.

In addition to the internet and social media since the early 2000s, the election of an African American, Barack Obama, as president in 2008, coupled with a major economic recession just before he took office, spurred the growth of far-right groups, she said, as did disruption from crises like climate change and the pandemic.

Prior to 2016, when Trump was unexpectedly elected, the alt-right was primarily focused on local political issues, power on the local level, such as on school boards, and with promoting their views as culturally dominant, Stern said.

By the end of Trumps presidency, she said, during which he frequently resorted to white identity politics, an already growing white nationalist/supremacist movement in the U.S. had been building for decades, making something like the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable. Today, she said, people holding similar views can likewise be found in many local and state governments and in Congress.

A central question for Americans going forward, she said, is how to we tackle as a society the fact that these ideologies have become so mainstream, are circulating daily, minute by minute, second by second, on social media?

The far right, which increasingly is also involved with paramilitary organizations, conspiracy theories, deliberate misinformation and hate group ideologies, has become a multiheaded hydra for the country to confront, Stern said.

One approach, she said, is to remain vigilant in tracking and maintaining awareness of these ideologies, and understanding how they can influence people and in seeking options to counter those messages.

Stern, a professor of history, American culture and womens and gender studies at the University of Michigan, also is the author of Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America.

Her book Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate applies the lenses of historical analysis, feminist studies, and critical race studies to deconstructing the core ideas of the alt-right and white nationalism.

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Forum speaker describes the rise of alt-right nationalism - Bennington Banner

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