American Racist Group Will Hold Meeting in Hungary Despite Ban

Richard Spencer at National Pol­icy Institute

Update — 10/06/14: On Octo­ber 3, Hun­gar­ian police arrested National Pol­icy Insti­tute (NPI) head Richard Spencer for not hav­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion papers with him at an infor­mal gath­er­ing of peo­ple who had planned to attend NPI’s con­fer­ence in Budapest. Jared Tay­lor, work­ing with oth­ers, held an NPI meet­ing at a restau­rant in Budapest where he and Tom Sunic spoke to about 75 peo­ple. Spencer is expected to be deported from Hun­gary today.

Richard Spencer, the head of the National Pol­icy Insti­tute (NPI), a white suprema­cist think tank based in White­fish, Mon­tana, asserts that his group will still hold a meet­ing in Budapest on Octo­ber 3–5, despite the Hun­gar­ian government’s ban on the con­fer­ence. In addi­tion, the venue in Hun­gary where the con­fer­ence was to be held has report­edly can­celled its con­tract with NPI organizers.

Per­versely invok­ing the civil rights anthem, “We shall over­come,” Spencer declared to sup­port­ers in an email that NPI would per­se­vere and that peo­ple plan­ning to attend would still be able to meet and exchange ideas. Spencer usu­ally holds NPI con­fer­ences in Wash­ing­ton, DC where he reg­u­larly invites Euro­pean and Amer­i­can racists to share their ideas about white nation­al­ism in Europe and the U.S.

Spencer, 36, is the new face of white supremacy who over­sees a num­ber of projects in addi­tion to NPI. He cre­ated an online jour­nal Radix, which fea­tures the work of intel­lec­tual racists and runs Wash­ing­ton Sum­mit Pub­lish­ers, which pub­lishes racist tracts. Prior to openly embrac­ing white nation­al­ism in 2009, he worked at the Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor, a main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive mag­a­zine. In 2010, he founded Alter­na­tive Right, a white suprema­cist online jour­nal, which cur­tailed oper­a­tions in Decem­ber 2013.

In a 2011 inter­view, Spencer said, “By 2009, I was much more will­ing to express hereti­cal views on race and egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, as well as write more forth­rightly on cul­ture.” Spencer has advo­cated for a white ethno-state in the U.S. In 2011, he became the head of NPI and his annual con­fer­ences have attracted dozens of attend­ing, includ­ing a num­ber of young people.

The con­fer­ence in Hun­gary was sched­uled to fea­ture a num­ber of other Amer­i­cans includ­ing Jared Tay­lor, head of the white suprema­cist jour­nal Amer­i­can Renais­sance and John Mor­gan, an Amer­i­can who heads Ark­tos Media, based in Budapest. Ark­tos, a co-sponsor of the NPI con­fer­ence, pub­lishes books that pro­mote the Iden­ti­tar­ian move­ment in Europe. Iden­ti­tar­ian groups are pro-white, anti-immigrant and stress racial/ethnic iden­tity. Tom Sunic, who is Croa­t­ian and a leader in Amer­i­can Free­dom Party (for­merly known as Amer­i­can Third Posi­tion), was also sched­uled to address the NPI gath­er­ing. The Amer­i­can Free­dom Party is a white suprema­cist polit­i­cal party that runs extrem­ist can­di­dates in the U.S. Other speak­ers included Mar­ton Gyongyosi, a leader in the ultra­na­tion­al­ist Hun­gar­ian party Job­bik, who has since report­edly bowed out of the NPI event and Alexan­der Dugin, a Russ­ian ultra­na­tion­al­ist ideologue.

The con­fer­ence would build fur­ther ties between Amer­i­can and Euro­pean racists and nation­al­ists and exploit ris­ing ultra­na­tion­al­ist sen­ti­ment in Hun­gary as evi­denced by Jobbik’s elec­toral gains in the April 2014 elections.