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WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 19: Richard Spencer is in town for the largest white nationalist and Alt Right conference of the year in Washington, DC on November 18, 2016. Spencer, a 38-year-old Dallas native and graduate of St. Mark's School of Texas prep school, is a key intellectual leader of the alternative right, a label he coined in 2008 to describe the radical conservative movement defined by white nationalism and a fervent resistance to multiculturalism and globalism. Spencer currently resides in the resort town of Whitefish, Montana, in what was described as a "Bavarian-style mansion" in a profile in Mother Jones. He was born in Massachusetts but moved to the Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas when he was about 2 years old. "It was a fairly idyllic, suburban childhood," Spencer said with a laugh. "I remember riding bikes around the neighborhood, and so on. I guess you could say I lived in a bubble to a certain extent, like a lot of the kids in that area. But it was very nice." (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

“America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”  Richard Spencer, white nationalist.

Richard Spencer brought his sensational message of racial hatred to Texas A&M University.

With Donald Trump’s victory as president, white supremacists like Spencer are becoming even more emboldened and speaking out against African-Americans, Hispanics and Jews in an effort to elevate their promotion of bigotry and hate.

Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, which fosters white supremacy, was invited to speak at Texas A&M on Tuesday by alum Preston Wiginton who advocates for ethnic cleansing.

During a press conference before Spencer’s speech, he called Donald Trump “a kind of alt-right hero.” Trump, Spencer said, has a “deep connection” with the alt-right because of his commitment to white superiority.

“Donald Trump as a potentiality was undoubtedly energizing,” Spencer told CNN. “And what I mean by that is that the Donald Trump campaign was the first time in my lifetime that an identity politics for white people was on the scene.”

Trump, meanwhile, has disavowed the alt-right, a movement described as fostering racism and white supremacy.

Texas A&M has denounced Spencer, his bigotry, and did not know about Spencer’s speech in advance. More than 10,000 people signed an online petition urging the university to cancel Spencer’s speech. But because the university is a public institution which supports the First Amendment, there was nothing Texas A&M could do to stop the speech.

“There has been deep concern expressed by our Aggie community about an individual planning to speak at our campus,” the university said in a statement.

I support free speech but I am fed up with white supremacists. Spencer is a man filled with hate and he’s dangerous because his followers are becoming more emboldened – and perhaps even violent.

Consider some of Spencer’s previous statements:

“We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again,’ can live amongst family and feel safe and secure,” Spencer said, according to an article in The Washington Post.

 And according to Mother Jones, Spencer said “that Hispanics and African-Americans have lower average IQs than whites and are more genetically predisposed to commit crimes.”

Sure we’ve heard this bigoted nonsense before but today, four weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, white nationalists are feeling more empowered because of the racist tone set by Trump during the campaign.

In a Monday interview on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Wiginton said that Spencer’s message contained some “valid points” that the election of Donald Trump has further validated.

“I think (the US) was at one time (a white nation),” Wiginton told CNN. “I think the reaction to Trump being elected, and the reaction with the alt-right being popular, is a reaction to it declining as a white nation.”

Why would I want to see America become less white?” Wiginton said. “Why would I want to be displaced and marginalized?”

It’s hard to have a rational discussion with irrational people.

Meanwhile, racist rhetoric like Spencer’s – and a reported rise in white supremacist groups – have resulted in a surge of gun sales among African-Americans who are arming themselves to protect against fanatical white nationalists.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, has reported more than 900 incidents of racial harassment since Trump was elected.

“There is a high uptick of African-Americans buying guns across the country,” Phillip Smith, president of the 14,000-member National African-American Gun Association, told me. “There is a tension in the air with the new political climate after the [presidential] election.”

Last month, Spencer convened 200 bigots at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. for the annual conference of the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as “an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.”

“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” Spencer yelled at the conference.

White supremacists fear America’s changing racial demographics favor Black and brown people (they are right) and Black and brown citizens fear, correctly, that they could be killed by angry white supremacists.

Fear is dangerous. We’re headed for a precarious four years.

What do you think?

PHOTO: AP

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