Richard Spencer brought his white supremacy message to Texas A&M on Tuesday night, drawing thousands of protesters.
Protesters also attended a university-sponsored event that was being held to counter Spencer’s speech.
“At the end of the day, America belongs to white men,” Spencer said to an audience, most of whom appeared to be there in opposition.
Ahead of the speech, Spencer sat down for a wide-ranging interview with CNN in which he claimed he is not a white supremacist, despite speaking of a Western civilization that, he said, “only white people can support.”
He told reporters the university’s reaction to his speaking “shows the power of the alt-right and the power of our ideas.”
Spencer addressed a controversial gathering of the alt-right movement last month in Washington when its members gathered to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory. Atlantic magazine, which is recording footage of Spencer for a documentary, published a video of the same event showing audience members apparently giving the Nazi salute.
“Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” Spencer declared.
Spencer told the audience Tuesday that the viral video was the result of “a desire by the media to slander us with one piece of 30-second footage.”
There was a tense moment in the middle of his speech.
A protester stood up near the front in the center aisle facing Spencer, silently, with a sign. Then another protester came up and locked arms with him in solidarity.
A man who supported Spencer went up, trying to stare them down. Others joined the standoff. Security personnel intervened to defuse the moment.
The Texas A&M Police Department tweeted that two people attending the speech were arrested — but charges have not yet been revealed. The people arrested were not students, authorities said.
Images on social media showed a battalion of police moving protesters from the Memorial Student Center as Spencer spoke in the building. One person in the crowd held up a handwritten sign that said “RESPECT MINORITY LIVES.”
Protesters chanted “The whole world is watching.”
Texas A&M is in College Station. It was one of the town’s residents, Aggie alum Preston Wiginton, who invited Spencer to campus. Because the school is a public university, permission for the event could not be denied, officials said.
In a Monday interview on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Wiginton said Spencer’s message contained some “valid points” that the election of Donald Trump has further validated.
“I think (the United States) 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.”
A hate supreme
Until Monday night, Wiginton had only known Spencer through online circles. But he wanted to bring to campus Spencer, the president of the National Policy Institute, an alt-right group known for espousing views of white supremacy, because he wanted to spread the message that white people face marginalization.
“Why would I want to see America become less white?” Wiginton said. “Why would I want to be displaced and marginalized?”
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks white supremacists, Wiginton once said he wanted to “prevent the populations of ‘white nations’ from becoming what he has termed ‘a homogenous muddle of sludge.'” In his CNN interview, Wiginton said he was misquoted, but that the larger point still holds true.
“It’s not just pigment,” he said. “It’s people’s behavior, people’s IQ, people evolve over different time and places.”
Wiginton said he hopes for a full ban on immigration in the future.
“I don’t think that you can bring Somalians into America and expect them to assimilate,” he said.
Challenged, the white nationalist didn’t offer further evidence about his views.
“Sometimes maybe being a bigot is wise,” he said.
Officials: We don’t endorse Spencer’s rhetoric
Texas A&M Senior Vice President Amy Smith has said in a statement that the school “finds (Spencer’s) views as expressed to date in direct conflict with our core values.”
Smith noted that private citizens like Wiginton can reserve space given the university’s public status, but must cover rental expenses to avoid burdening taxpayers.
“To be clear, Texas A&M University — including faculty, staff, students and/or student groups — did not invite this speaker to our campus nor do we endorse his rhetoric in any way,” Smith said.
At the same time, Texas A&M University President Michael K. Young noted in a statement, the right of free speech must be acknowledged.
But to show solidarity, Smith was to participate in the university’s “Aggies United” event at Kyle Field that will feature actor Hill Harper, journalist Roland Martin and Holocaust survivor Max Glauben, among others. The event is being held during the time Spencer plans to speak.
‘We pledge to move forward’
Regarding the potential backlash, Wiginton told CNN affiliate KBTX that Spencer’s appearance is “reminiscent of civil rights events of the 1960s era, which were often met with whiskey bottles and baseball bats.”
To him, the event needed to go on, not only to exercise a right of free speech, but to further the cause of white supremacy.
“We pledge to move forward,” said Wiginton.