Protesters Confront Alt-Right White Nationalists in D.C. (photos)

Several hundred protesters marched outside the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington, D.C., on Saturday, Nov. 19, to protest the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white nationalist group holding a conference inside, in part to celebrate Donald Trump’s presidential victory. The NPI leader, Richard Spencer, coined the term Alternative-Right, or Alt-Right, to express an ideology based on white supremacy, xenophobia and racism.

The protest began peacefully, but turned violent when two NPI advocates waded into the protest carrying a cameraphone and a microphone, asking one protester if he was a “self-hating white person.” To the chants of “Nazis Go Home,” things soon got physical, with the man holding the camera suffering a bloody cut on his forehead. Police from the Department of Homeland Security came in to separate the combatants.

Inside, Spencer and others took questions from the media, who were restricted from taking pictures of any of the attendees without their consent. The attendees were predominantly young and male. Spencer is positioning his organization as a vanguard or a think tank for the Trump Administration. That “race is the foundation of identity” is one of the “essences” of the Alt-Right. According to Spencer, the Alt-Right is a relatively young movement. A young white person in 2016 is beginning to feel like a “minority.” “This … is the historical foundation of the Trump campaign … Trump was elected because he was the identity president.” According to Spencer, the “identity of the United States of America … fundamentally derives from European people.” He advocates “a break on all immigration, particularly non-European immigration, for a 50 year period.”

Other comments from Spencer during the press conference:

“The Cold War is over … Putin wants to maintain a traditional Russian hegemony … that’s no concern of ours.”

“Donald Trump does not need Congress to build the wall. That can be an executive decision … engaged through the Department of Homeland Security.”

*View Jeff Malet’s photos of the NPI conference and protest by clicking on the icons below.*