WHITE SUPREMACY’S TRUE COLORS

What does hate sound like?

At this point in human history we are confident we know what it looks like: imposing flags, goose-stepping soldiers, piles of murdered corpses.

But what kind of voice can be attached to venomous ideology?

Perhaps one thinks of the barking of Adolf Hitler’s addresses, or a lynch mob’s shrieks of condemnation. Things so easily able to be brushed aside and considered “all in the past.”

A recent audio leak only proves otherwise.

Richard Spencer is an outspoken man, to be sure. An outspoken man with incredibly loud opinions, to put it as lightly as possible. He has been known to stand in opposition to women’s rights and racial equality movements, and has frequently advocated for his idea of the need to preserve the “white race.” His deep admiration for Hitler and his horrendous legacy is no secret as well, and he stands by all of these opinions without flinching. He proudly champions his idea of a “white ethnostate,” a hypothetical nation composed solely of those people he considers “racially pure,” and he greatly believes in “purging” to achieve this. Just like his long-dead hero.

Needless to say, some would call Spencer an “alt-right” leader, a term he claims he invented, in fact.

Others, myself included, do not think it is safe to beat around the bush in situations like this.

Spencer is a fascist: a modern gasp of a dangerous perspective that eats everything around it, including itself, eventually. He represents a modern wave of Nazi sympathizing among its target demographic, heterosexual white males – those, of course, the only individuals that benefit from Nazism and its recognition. 

If only Spencer were nothing to be concerned about.

He infamously led the racist 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia “Unite The Right” rally, which resulted in the murder of a young woman, counter-protester Heather Heyer.

It was this event that led to a rant by Spencer shortly after, which not only showed absolutely zero remorse for the life he indirectly took, but in fact expressed regret regarding the homicide’s effect on his movement’s public image.

Released by his contemporary Milo Yiannopoulos, another prominent far-right speaker, the audio in question features Spencer’s violent cadence continuously spewing his thoughts on the matter as well as numerous insights into his worldview. He screams such profanities as: “Little f*cking k*kes! They get ruled by people like me!” as well as “My ancestors f*cking enslaved those little pieces of f*cking sh*t!”

He also does not hesitate to use even what are now considered rather archaic and offensive labels, yelling: “Little f*cking octoroons… (“octoroon” meaning an individual that is one-eighth black).

Spencer, who has been previously described as being well-composed by various media outlets, has this illusion shattered in a matter of seconds. The leak, released on Nov. 4 by Yiannopoulos, spread like wildfire. Spencer, known to quickly defend himself after any sort of controversy befalls him, interestingly has yet to do so legitimately: He simply stated a lack of recollection regarding the recording, and in fact did not deny the voice on tape was his, at all.

Let us be completely clear here: There is nothing professional or calm about Spencer’s views, and this is unchanged by whether or not he decides to shout them between racial epithets and slurs. There is no possible way to dress up hate in a way that makes it “presentable.” It is not. It can never be. This leak is definitive evidence of this fact: No matter how much he tries to clothe his rhetoric in “academic” garb, it is nothing that is not solely made of burning prejudice. And prejudice cannot be logically defended.

Revelations like these may be obvious to many of us, but it is important to remember they are not for many others. For a considerable amount of the population, Spencer really sounds like he makes sense. Like his views hold water. That is what makes people like him truly dangerous; not to be feared, but dangerous, all the same.

 It is the duty of those who oppose fascism to make sure that no one falls victim to its grasp, and one method of ensuring this is to be sure that its consequences and symptoms are witnessed and understood as widely as possible.

We owe it to all those who suffered (and still suffer) from its plague to examine and criticize events and individuals like this as much as possible. We owe it to them, and we owe it to a future of equality-based ideals that represents the biggest threat to fascist ideology of them all.