Texas students rebuff white supremacist


December 8, 2016
Sarah Benton


Protesters stand silently with their fists raised as Richard Spencer speaks at the Memorial Student Center. Photo by Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer

As Texas A&M protesters embrace diversity, ‘alt-right’ speaker says country ‘belongs to white people’

By Caleb Downs, Breaking News reporter, Dallas news
December 07, 2016

COLLEGE STATION — Thousands of demonstrators turned out at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field on Tuesday night to show their opposition to “alt-right” speaker Richard Spencer, who addressed his supporters across the street.

Spencer is the new face of the “alt-right,” a radical conservative movement mixing racism, populism and a fervent resistance to multiculturalism and globalism.


Richard Spencer, L, motions for calm as supporters and opponents scuffle in front of the stage. Photo by Smiley N. Pool/Staff

He spoke at the university in the face of numerous protests, both fierce and stoic, as well as a counter-protest at the stadium, organized by the university to draw attention away from his presence on campus.

Demonstrations began long before the “unity event” or the speech it sought to drown out, and Spencer was greeted on campus by protesters outside the speech venue.

At Kyle Field, a diverse mix of groups performed to a crowd of about 2,000.

Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp addressed the crowd and let them know the university is no place for racist rhetoric.

If you’re a purveyor of hate and divisiveness and you want to spew that kind of racism, this is the last campus on earth that you want to come to. There is no place, and there is no university where love and respect for each other and loyalty and commitment to each other is stronger than Texas A&M University.

Texas A&M President Michael K. Young also spoke, praising diversity and inclusion:

We’re all so beautifully different. Our cultures, our shapes, our sizes, our ethnicities, our histories, our backgrounds. But our differences enrich us. Our differences make us more complete.

Young noted that the school community’s message would not be overpowered.

Our message will always be louder. It will always be more true. It will always be stronger. It will always mean more. It will always do more. No matter what we do it is fearless.

Across the street in the Memorial Student Center, about 400 people gathered for Spencer’s speech. He entered the room Tuesday night to a mix of boos, cheers and expletives, the Bryan-College Station Eagle reported.
One person dressed as a clown walked in front of the stage while holding a sign that said, “He’s the real bozo.” Others hissed as Spencer spoke. A brief scuffle broke out between audience members, but police stepped in to break it up, KTVT-TV (Channel 11) reported.

He told the crowd that “America, at the end of the day, belongs to white men,” the Austin American-Statesman reported..

“Texas is a wonderful place to live and there are a lot of white men’s bones in the ground to make that happen,” he said. “This country does belong to white people — culturally, socially and politically.”

Spencer, who said he was “euphoric” the night Donald Trump became president-elect, said Trump’s goal of making America great is inspired by the “alt-right.” But he said he’s worried Trump will become “just another Republican,” the Statesman reported.

He wrapped up his speech up by 9 p.m. after a question-and-answer session.

Protesters continued chanting in front of the student centre and at one point forced their way inside, but were removed by law enforcement, KTVT reported.

One woman who refused to leave was escorted out in handcuffs, according to the Eagle. In all, two non-students were arrested, Texas A&M police said.

Outside, state troopers with batons and riot shields pushed the crowd away from the entrance to the building.

Justin X. Hale, a Texas A&M alumnus, told the Statesman he had never seen anything like the events of Tuesday night on campus.

“It’s ridiculous, and not in a good way,” Hale said. “I’m disappointed. We’re in our own student union. It’s 2016 but it feels like the ’50s.”


Caleb Downs @Calebjdowns
Texas State troopers are decked out in riot gear at the entrance to the building where Spencer is speaking.
2:21 AM – 7 Dec 2016

The cavalry is coming in. Protesters are upset that troopers are shutting down the protest but not speech.

Spencer, a graduate of St. Mark’s School of Texas prep school in Dallas, addressed the media hours before his scheduled appearance.

“I want to be mainstream, but I recognized early on that I was going to have to live the life of a heretic,” he said. “I was challenging major taboos.”

Spencer gained national prominence and fierce criticism last month after a viral video from The Atlantic recorded him celebrating Trump’s election while his supporters enthusiastically gave Nazi salutes at the annual conference for the National Policy Institute, which he directs.

“Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” Spencer yelled.
He referenced that moment Tuesday night, calling it “the hail heard round the world,” the Statesman reported.

A petition denouncing Spencer’s appearance in College Station gained more than 10,000 signatures before Tuesday night’s events.

Several protests against the “alt-right” and other movements associated with Spencer’s views were planned in advance, including a silent demonstration organized by Nick Meindl, a 26-year-old graduate student of international affairs.

Meindl said he was compelled to organize the protest to:

show support for anti-white-nationalist values like inclusion and diversity on a national scale, not provide the Spencers of the world the ammunition to polarize the conversation.

This was a nation that was built on the hard work of people from all around the world. My family are immigrants. So are those of a lot of other protesters. It’s confusing that someone would want to reverse domestic policy to undo the work of the people who made this country what it is.

[Long series of tweets omitted]

A far less civil protest was held by radical leftists outside the Memorial Student Center. A Facebook group titled “Make Racists Afraid Again” called on anarchists, communists and other leftist groups to form a “united front against the normalization of facism.”

“[Spencer] aims to explain and justify his twisted paradigm while discussing its potential,” a message on the group’s Facebook page said. “Allowing this to happen normalizes it and gives the appearance of legitimacy. That [expletive] is not going to fly.”


Neo-nazi David Duke with Preston Wiginton who organises far-right speakers for university campuses.
“In the fall of 2007, [Wiginton] booked a multi-campus tour for Nick Griffin, chairman of England’s fascist, neo-Nazi leaning British National Party (BNP). In the 1990s Griffin often employed the nail-bombing, murderous crew of English neo-Nazi skinheads, Combat 18, as his personal security detail. Griffin, himself an avid Holocaust denier, “later described Wiginton on the BNP website as the ‘host and organizer of the whole tour’.” Texas A&M was a stop on that tour.” from Southern Poverty Law Center

[Jared Taylor, above] the self-described “race realist” is unrepentant in embracing the label and expounding his views. He founded the alt-right American Renaissance website 25 years ago, which started as a print monthly to emphasize race as society’s most “prominent and divisive” fault line, and that mainstream politics and media tries to “gloss over” the issue….from The races are not equal The Guardian, August 26th, 2016

Asked to define what the diffuse alt-right stands for, Taylor said there were “areas of disagreement”, but that “the central element of the alt-right is the position it takes on race.”

Spencer was invited to speak at Texas A&M by former student Preston Wiginton, 51, who has been organizing events around the country and inviting far-right speakers to Texas A&M for more than a decade.

Spencer’s invitation from Wiginton follows a 2012 appearance by Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance and an influencing figure in Spencer’s life in 2012. He also invited the radically conservative political scientist Aleksandar Dugin of Russia last year to deliver a lecture titled “American Liberalism Must Be Destroyed.” Dugin is another influence Spencer has cited.

In the days leading up to Spencer’s speech, Wiginton was dumbfounded by the amount of attention he was receiving.

Dugin’s lecture drew only 17 attendees. Spencer’s appearance drew media from around the country.

“I never expected anything like this,” Wiginton said.

Media from across the state and world attended the talk. A TV crew from France was on hand. Wiginton allowed only 12 news cameras in to record the event, including crews from ABC, NBC, CNN and Al Jazeera, the Texas Tribune reported.


Opponents protest as Richard Spencer speaks at the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University. Photo by Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer

Administrators at Texas A&M were less enthusiastic about Spencer’s speech. Amy Smith, A&M’s senior vice president and chief marketing and communications officer, made clear in a November statement that the university did not invite Spencer, nor was it aware of his scheduled appearance.

She said A&M does not “endorse his rhetoric in any way.”

“In fact, our leadership finds his views as expressed to date in direct conflict with our core values,” Smith said.

Young, the university’s president, issued a statement a week before the appearance, saying he found Spencer’s views “abhorrent and profoundly antithetical” to everything he believes, but to not allow him to make use of the Memorial Student Center, a public space, would be a violation of his free-speech rights.

Young said he was “truly heartened by the clear message that the Aggie community is sending in reaction to this intrusion — the firm resolve to speak up in opposition to these views, the resounding affirmation that they do not represent the Aggie values we espouse and to which we aspire, and the call to action to reject these views.”

Staff writers Claire Z. Cardona and Tom Steele contributed to this report.



Protest on the day white nationalist leader Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute is due to speak on campus at an event not sanctioned by the school, at Texas A&M University in Colle. Photo by Spencer Selvidge, Reuters

Jews, Muslims Join Together to Protest White Supremacist’s Texas A&M Visit

This may be one spark, but if you don’t make it clear you’re going to stamp it out, it can catch and spread like wildfire,’ one professor says.

By Marisa Fox-Bevilacqua, Haaretz premium
December 08, 2016

“I’ve never seen anything like this here,” says Texas A&M architecture Professor Anat Geva, an Israeli who received her Ph.D. from the university 21 years ago and was one of thousands protesting the appearance of alt-right leader Richard Spencer there Tuesday night. “I’m the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and never expected to see a man spewing Nazi ideology here.”

It’s not everyday a white supremacist gets an academic pulpit. To the Jewish students on the College Station campus, who represent 0.5 percent of its demographic, it was a wake-up call, says Hillel Rabbi Matt Rosenberg.

Though most of the demonstrations on the Texas campus were peaceful, police in riot gear clashed with hundreds of vocal protesters wielding signs, chanting “Spread love not hate,” and heckling Spencer as he entered the Memorial Student Center. Police eventually stormed the building and arrested two activists from off campus.

The protest, which united four disparate groups, was the largest on the campus in decades, reports the local newspaper Eagle. Some 400 students entered the building to attend Spencer’s lecture, but MSNBC reports that his fans only numbered a dozen, with the vast majority speaking out or covering it as press, including a reporter for the neo-Nazi newspaper Daily Stormer. One protester, dressed in a clown costume, stood by Spencer’s side as he spoke, and held a sign that read: “He’s the real Bozo.” A counter-rally for diversity drew thousands to Kyle Field, a 100,000-seat football field off campus.

“I thought, God forbid this is where it all started. How could I ever look my kids in the eye some day and say, I stood on the sidelines and did nothing? That’s why I felt I had to go and confront him,” says Rosenberg, who led a group of 70 students from the Hillel building to MSC. “It was our first act of civil disobedience. Though we protested in peace, we showed we are not a silent minority.”

Hillel partnered with other religious student organizations like the Muslim Student Association to amplify its message, says Joan Wolf, women’s and gender studies professor and member of the Jewish Faculty Network. “This is an assault on any society that is diverse and inclusive, and that means Muslims and gays, as well as undocumented student immigrants from Central America in Texas,” she says. “When Richard Spencer says something like, ‘Let’s party like it’s 1933 [as he did in November at his Washington, D.C. rally] that resonates with Jews, because we think of Nazi Germany. We have a visceral [understanding] of that.”

Spencer, who leads the National Policy Institute, a hate group that advocates a “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, drew headlines last month when he led a crowd in Hitler salutes, chanting “Heil Trump!” just feet away from the White House.

‘Trump first step toward white identity politics’
Richard Spencer

“This country belongs to white people,” he told students last night, according to the Houston Chronicle. “Trump was the first step toward white identity politics in the United States. … He is not going to be the last. The alt-right is a new beginning.”

When the Washington Post first reported Spencer’s appearance on the Texas campus a few days before Thanksgiving, it caught university officials off guard. Thousands of outraged students urged the university president to cancel Spencer’s visit, says Rosenberg. But university spokeswoman Amy Smith said it couldn’t because of state laws and free speech. A former student who is not affiliated with the university reserved the room, she added.

Texas A&M’s president, Michael K. Young, organized a counter-event, a celebration of diversity called Aggies Unite (Aggies is the nickname for A&M students), which drew between 4,000 to 6,000 attendees, according to local estimates, which wasn’t a bad show considering it was the next to last day of finals.

“I was going to attend it,” says Rabbi Matt, as he’s called. “But it didn’t feel like a direct or serious enough response. This isn’t a party. And the university president should have considered the feelings of the Jewish community when he planned this celebration.”

Rosenberg said that marching alongside 12 other members of the campus clergy, the way Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel did with Martin Luther King at Selma, felt more appropriate. His group carried signs that read “Our Race is the Human Race,” “Aggies Against Hate” and “I am a Jew and I Love You.”

Earlier in the day, Rosenberg confronted Spencer at his press conference, inviting him join in love, not hate, and study Torah with him. Spencer replied: “Do you really want radical inclusion in the State of Israel?”

He also arranged for 88-year-old Holocaust survivor Max Glauben, who had been in the Warsaw ghetto and five concentration camps, to speak at Aggies Unite. His granddaughter is a Texas A&M pre-med senior and Hillel member.

“I came to be united with you so that hate and bigotry won’t win,” he told the stadium crowds as his speech was live-streamed through the university’s website. “It’s better to be an upstander than a bystander.” His granddaughter Delaney Becker, who visited Nazi concentration camp Majdanek with him four years ago, said watching him address her peers about neo-Nazis felt surreal:

I remember sitting in the gas chamber with him and he kept saying, ‘life must go on.’ You have to pull yourself up. Goodness wins. I just never thought we’d have to deal with this.

For Geva, who recalls listening to the trial of Adolf Eichmann broadcast on Israeli radio when she was 11 years old, participating in the protests felt like a personal mission. She remembers riding the bus with her mother when she recognized the woman who hid her during the Holocaust, and she broke down in tears.

“An experience like that you never get over,” Geva says. “That’s why I’m here today. Never again!”

Wolf echoed the sentiment:

I hope this whole thing is extinguished very quickly. This may be one spark, but if you don’t make it clear you’re going to stamp it out, it can catch and spread like wildfire.

Though the university has not reported any swastikas on its walls, as has been the case on other college campuses in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory, [sic, truncated sentence]

Jews on campus feeling buoyed

All the Jewish students and faculty who spoke to Haaretz said they felt heartened by the protests, calling it a silver lining to Spencer’s visit.
Dianne Craft, dean of the college of medicine, said,

I’ve never seen such a huge outcry here. My father was in the U.S. Air Force, so I grew up all over. I was a teenager in Germany and visited Dachau with my mother in 1966, before it was fixed up. I remember seeing the claw marks on the wall. And there was still this stench. That’s as much of a sense of the Holocaust any of us should have to take.

As for Rabbi Matt, he says he has his work cut out for him.

We can’t allow hate to be normalized here. It may not hurt much if you’re white. But many of our Muslim brothers and sisters are scared to death. You don’t allow that on campus again. Let the courts decide what’s a violation of speech.

© Copyright JFJFP 2024