RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - Richard Spencer Extended Vice Interview (12/12/2016)
Aired: 2016-12-12
Duration: 10:05


=== Alt-Right Internet Movement (08:43) ===

[00:00:00]  I mean, if someone told me two years ago that we would be here, that we'd have these new words, I mean, I think alt-right was beat out as the word of the year by...
[00:00:11]  Post-truthiness.
[00:00:12]  Post-truthiness.
[00:00:14]  But it just...
[00:00:15]  Oh, thanks.
[00:00:22]  Do you think the alt-right is, uh, real?
[00:00:26]  What does that mean?
[00:00:28]  Well...
[00:00:28]  It's mostly an internet movement.
[00:00:31]  I looked at the 990s of your non-profit operating budget of less than $100,000.
[00:00:37]  Is it mostly a mirage out of a lot of Twitter bots?
[00:00:43]  A characteristic thing about the alt-right is that it is coming from the internet.
[00:00:48]  And there are a lot of reasons for that.
[00:00:49]  A, I think just any new movement is going to probably emerge from the internet in 2016 now anyway.
[00:00:55]  But we're going after big taboos.
[00:00:57]  People have something to lose.
[00:00:59]  So the anonymity has allowed many more people to write and interact than we would have otherwise if a similar movement were going on in the 1980s or 50s or whatever.
[00:01:12]  What we've been able to do is leverage ourselves because of the power of our ideas.
[00:01:18]  So everything you just said, I could flip around and say, yes, you're right.
[00:01:23]  We don't have a George Soros throwing money at us.
[00:01:28]  Yet we're the ones making a splash.
[00:01:30]  We're the ones people want to talk to.
[00:01:32]  We're the ones people fear.
[00:01:34]  And that shows our power.
[00:01:36]  It's like you're right in a way.
[00:01:38]  There's no single institution that has a building like the Heritage Foundation or that receives eight-figure donations from these big patrons.
[00:01:50]  We will get there.
[00:01:52]  But the fact that we make a huge splash, the fact that everyone wants to talk to us and learn about us, just shows our power.
[00:02:00]  Well, but maybe everyone wants to talk to you because you're flashy and you, like, tweet pictures of ovens at people and figured out how to manipulate journalists' fixation on Twitter.
[00:02:13]  That just seems to be...
[00:02:15]  Saying what I said, just, you're using your, like, little kind of snarky words, like tweet pictures with ovens or whatever.
[00:02:22]  Yeah.
[00:02:22]  But it's like, yeah, they want to see us because we're flashy.
[00:02:25]  That means, that's like, we understand PR.
[00:02:28]  We understand how to talk and manipulate journalists.
[00:02:31]  I guess I'm doing that to you right now, and you're, like, yes.
[00:02:35]  I mean, we have bold ideas that are out of the mainstream.
[00:02:40]  And they're just inherently exciting.
[00:02:43]  And this is going to keep going.
[00:02:45]  Even if Donald Trump lost, I think this interest would have kept going.
[00:02:49]  But now that he's won, I mean, it's going to be huge.
[00:02:51]  We're never going back.
[00:02:53]  If I were a liberal, maybe what would make me so disappointed is that my ideology is so just stale and lame that it's become a joke.
[00:03:03]  If you want to talk about something, you know, like, oh, you know, I think we're just all individuals and, like, everyone's great.
[00:03:12]  And we should have, like, more rights?
[00:03:15]  And, like, whatever?
[00:03:16]  That is the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life.
[00:03:20]  That offends no one.
[00:03:21]  Effectively, you could say that to the President of the United States.
[00:03:25]  You could say that to anyone else.
[00:03:26]  You're not challenging anything.
[00:03:28]  You could say that to a financial bank.
[00:03:31]  You could say that to the federal government.
[00:03:33]  You could say that to the U.S. military.
[00:03:35]  And they are not going to disagree with you.
[00:03:37]  And that shows how utterly fucking lame it is.
[00:03:40]  Why?
[00:03:41]  It is a...
[00:03:41]  Because.
[00:03:42]  It is old.
[00:03:43]  At one point, that actually challenged the system.
[00:03:46]  At this point, that liberalism and just goofball rights while individuals talk, that is the system's ideology.
[00:03:54]  You're not speaking truth to power, right?
[00:03:58]  That is power speaking.
[00:04:00]  Do you ever feel like 10,000 neckbeards are living vicariously through you?
[00:04:08]  I've never thought about it that way.
[00:04:11]  Uh-huh.
[00:04:12]  Uh...
[00:04:13]  Uh, look.
[00:04:16]  Look, because this is a radical movement, not everyone can be open.
[00:04:21]  Not everyone's willing to do that, and I totally understand why.
[00:04:24]  So if they want to see me as a representative, great.
[00:04:28]  I don't see what's wrong with that.
[00:04:31]  You'll often, like, compliment the alt-right, but just use snarky language.
[00:04:35]  So I actually agree with a lot of the things you're saying, just not the tone and the snark.
[00:04:40]  Well, I like to troll the trolls.
[00:04:44]  It's probably not going to work on me.
[00:04:46]  Oh, okay.
[00:04:47]  Try harder.
[00:04:49]  Yeah, come on.
[00:04:51]  Troll.
[00:04:51]  You want more trolling?
[00:04:53]  Yeah.
[00:04:53]  Come on.
[00:04:53]  Start trolling.
[00:04:54]  I think you're a fraud.
[00:04:55]  Spit it out.
[00:04:56]  You think I'm a fraud?
[00:04:57]  You're a fraud.
[00:04:58]  How is that?
[00:04:59]  Let me tell you the moment I was like, "You're definitely a fraud." It was when you...
[00:05:04]  you fancy yourself as an intellectual, right?
[00:05:08]  But during that press conference, you mentioned the Daily Stormer, which has absolutely no pretense of intellectualism.
[00:05:15]  It's pure thuggishness from behind a computer, just swastikas and the most vile depictions of African-Americans possible.
[00:05:24]  I actually didn't mention the Daily Stormer.
[00:05:26]  And the crowd roared.
[00:05:27]  I actually didn't mention the Daily Stormer.
[00:05:29]  The crowd cheered more than one of the journalists did.
[00:05:32]  Okay.
[00:05:32]  And they cheered, right?
[00:05:35]  They're just as happy to hear about Andrea Anglin as they were to hear about Nietzsche or whatever it is you want to name drop.
[00:05:42]  Right?
[00:05:43]  Like, that's the driving force, is cruelty and hate.
[00:05:47]  Not some, like, highfalutin, like, philosophy.
[00:05:51]  Okay, so that makes me a fraud.
[00:05:53]  I don't even understand.
[00:05:55]  I mean, it's just like, people can have different interests.
[00:05:58]  People can also just support.
[00:06:00]  You know, some guys who are in the movement.
[00:06:03]  I don't see how that makes me a fraud in any way.
[00:06:07]  You are exploiting hatred that has always been around and will always be around.
[00:06:13]  And you've repackaged it and you've become the face of it.
[00:06:18]  Okay.
[00:06:19]  Look, I was doing this for a long time.
[00:06:23]  I mean, relatively speaking.
[00:06:25]  I'm under the age of 40. There are a lot of other people who we've been developing these ideas for a long time.
[00:06:32]  The idea that we got in this to exploit people or, I mean, for what?
[00:06:37]  Just for making money or something?
[00:06:39]  I mean, I don't...
[00:06:40]  And fame.
[00:06:40]  And fame?
[00:06:41]  Yeah.
[00:06:42]  See, I think what you're basically describing...
[00:06:47]  Something that I would agree with.
[00:06:50]  Again, you're just describing it in your snarky tone.
[00:06:54]  I would never say that Richard Spencer has, through rational argumentation, convinced millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump or created the alt-right through rational...
[00:07:06]  I've convinced each and every person.
[00:07:09]  I am riding a wave, too.
[00:07:11]  We're all riding a wave, this social change that we're experiencing.
[00:07:16]  And it is collective.
[00:07:18]  And we feel it.
[00:07:20]  I want to get these ideas out in the world.
[00:07:23]  Do I have my own personal career ambitions?
[00:07:26]  Yeah, sure.
[00:07:26]  I bet you do too.
[00:07:28]  But it's about exploiting something.
[00:07:30]  It's about seeing that there's a big change and seeing how you can take advantage of it to further your goals, to further, sure, further your career.
[00:07:39]  Great.
[00:07:39]  But it's always done idealistically.
[00:07:42]  You can criticize me in all sorts of ways.
[00:07:44]  You can totally disagree with everything I think.
[00:07:46]  That's fine.
[00:07:47]  But the idea that I don't do this for idealistic reasons, I just think is totally off base.
[00:07:53]  And I think you know that too.
[00:07:55]  No!
[00:07:58]  You kind of like say vague things like you're a fraud.
[00:08:02]  What?
[00:08:03]  Who am I fraud defrauding?
[00:08:05]  Well, I mean, I think a core concept in the alt-right sort of defines how fake it is, which is the idea of meme magic.
[00:08:12]  Right.
[00:08:13]  You mean things into reality.
[00:08:15]  I don't know.
[00:08:17]  I don't know.
[00:08:18]  Do you really think that it's real?
[00:08:19]  Yes.
[00:08:19]  Do you have Steve Bannon's ear?
[00:08:21]  Can you call him on the phone?
[00:08:23]  No.
[00:08:24]  But in terms of meme magic, yeah, I think there is something about, I would call it like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

=== Meme Magic and Truth Quality (01:37) ===

[00:08:31]  We memed alt-right into existence, and it's now almost a household name.
[00:08:37]  We didn't meme Donald Trump into existence, but I think we have inflected...
[00:08:43]  Donald Trump's trajectory, and at the very least, we've inflected how he's perceived.
[00:08:48]  So that is meme magic.
[00:08:51]  So it's like, you can think of it as like, oh, this is crazy Keck and Pepe the Frog and whatever, and that's fine.
[00:08:58]  Or you can kind of look at what's happening and understand it on a little bit of a more rational level.
[00:09:02]  But you didn't create Pepe.
[00:09:04]  I didn't create Pepe, no.
[00:09:06]  No.
[00:09:07]  I didn't create everything, I'm sorry.
[00:09:10]  No, but the people who created, like, the...
[00:09:13]  The texts of the alt-right are teenagers on 4chan who've trolled themselves into believing anti-Semitic stuff.
[00:09:20]  I have actually met some kids from 4chan who started reading some identitarian or some of Kevin MacDonald's work or anything critical of race relations, immigration, Jewish influence, so on.
[00:09:38]  And they actually read this stuff so that they could troll people.
[00:09:41]  So they read it almost like...
[00:09:43]  It's like, oh, I want to get these arguments so that I can really piss people off.
[00:09:47]  That was their entrance to it, but after reading it, they were actually convinced by it.
[00:09:52]  That demonstrates, in a way, the truth quality to it.
[00:09:55]  Doesn't it just mean they're too committed to a joke?
[00:09:59]  It's not a joke at some point.
[00:10:00]  That's an expression of that it is true.
[00:10:02]  It started out as a joke, and then it became real.