Richard Spencer Loves His European Heritage, But Europe Just Banned Him

By David Boddiger | November 25, 2017 | 5:17pm

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Trust fund white supremacist Richard Spencer, the guy who brags about his white, European heritage and wants to create a racist “ethno-state” in the U.S., just got banned from most of Europe.

The five–year ban was reported earlier this week by Polish news site Niezalenzna and the Polish Press Agency, and announced by the Southern Poverty Law Center. While it comes at the request of the Polish government, the ban applies to the 26 European Union countries of the Schengen Area, including Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Hungary, and others.

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According to the SPLC, the Polish Interior Ministry’s request to block Spencer from Europe followed his attempts to visit that country for an Independence Day march in Warsaw that drew tens of thousands earlier this month. While there, he had planned to visit various Polish nationalist groups.

But one of Poland’s leading anti–racism organizations, the “Never Again” Association, led protests that convinced the Polish government to tell Spencer he wouldn’t be welcome. While Spencer apparently canceled that trip himself, Poland took it a step further and issued the 26–country ban.

Last month, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said Spencer “defames what happened during World War II, defames the Holocaust,” the Associated Press reported. “He should not appear publicly, and especially not in Poland,” Waszczykowski added.

Spencer responded by saying he was being “treated like a criminal by the Polish government,” according to the AP.

This isn’t the first time Spencer has been booted from Europe. The SPLC notes that he was banned from the Schengen Area for three years after he tried to host a white supremacist rally in Hungary in 2014. That year, he was arrested, held in jail for three days, and then deported.

The news of the most recent ban capped off what turned out to be a bad month for Spencer, which means it was a good month for everyone else. Earlier this week, we learned that Spencer and his dwindling National Policy Institute tried to hold a low–key meeting in a barn at Rocklands Farms outside of Washington, D.C., in Maryland. When management at the winery and events center learned that the gathering wasn’t a “corporate” event, but rather a bunch of white supremacists, they booted them.

“Throughout our history of hosting private events, we have never had to ask a group to leave,” Rocklands Farms said later in a statement. “However, yesterday, November 19, we discovered that a private event held there was, in reality, a gathering of an organization that is strongly in opposition to our values. We immediately and politely asked the group to leave.”

And last week, Twitter revoked Spencer’s and other white supremacists’ blue verification badges, prompting Spencer to ask, “Is it not okay to be proudly White?”

Sorry, Dick, your racist little world just seems to be growing smaller and smaller.