Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by intimidated 1408 days ago
Rather than trusting the editors of Wikipedia—who we often admit in other contexts to be highly ideological—seek out his full statements instead.

Richard Spencer has repeatedly, specifically denounced the enslavement of Black people. Here's an example from Time magazine:

https://time.com/4293564/the-billionaire-and-the-bigots/
1 comments
krapp 1408 days ago
You're posting an article which is about Richard Spencer being a white supremacist, and which explicitly calls him such in the article's byline, and not even defending him with a "full statement" but a description of an unsourced quote within a paragraph describing his attempts to soften the image of his white supremacist ideology to make it more palatable to the public.

Meanwhile the source for the claim about slavery appears to contain something closer to a full statement, from his own podcast:

    On his Altright.com podcast in February, Spencer lamented that the United States military never engages in war “for the right reasons,” which he said are when “you want to dominate someone, you want to take their territory, you want to take their women.” And if those reasons don’t suffice, Spencer said, he believes it is acceptable to go to war simply for “vainglory.”

    When one of his guests began to complain that the United States Navy sent ships to provide humanitarian aid to Haitians after a hurricane devastated the country last year, Spencer had another idea for what the military should have done.

    “Exactly, no. You should go enslave them. That would actually be a proper war aim,” Spencer said, before apologizing for “really going nuts” and then retracting that apology because “you need to go nuts in order to prove a point.”

    Spencer said he hoped white people in America get so frustrated with the military’s humanitarian efforts that they “flip over into this domineering type, and I obviously hope that happens.”

    “This is the kind of thing that’s truly traditional and historical. You display your power. Phallic symbols in the center of the capital city. That’s what it’s all fucking about,” Spencer said.
I'm not about to get into a quote for quote debate with a green account trying to defend the integrity of a neo-nazi on the internet, though. So let's just split the difference and say he only sometimes supports slavery under certain circumstances, and in certain company.
link
intimidated 1408 days ago
> You're posting an article which is about Richard Spencer being a white supremacist, and which explicitly calls him such in the article's byline

Yes. I figured you'd trust an article written by someone who largely agrees with you more than an article written by someone who largely does not.

I will find and listen to the podcast. I suspect what I'll find is what can be read between the lines of the "Right Wing Watch" content you copied and pasted into your comment: It's better to be respected than dominated, and it's better to fight war for your own benefit than for someone else's benefit

Am I a Nazi for "defending the integrity of a neo-nazi on the internet"? Should it be legal to assault me and give me a concussion?

link