Unite the Right Trial: Alt-Right White Nationalist Richard Spencer takes the stand

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (FOX 46 CHARLOTTE) — Another defendant in the Unite the Right Trial has ties to the Carolinas.

Richard Spencer was called by the plaintiffs and began his testimony with a recitation of his education including how he left a Duke University Ph.D. program for a job at The American Conservative magazine. He was studying post-German idealism.

The plaintiffs’ attorney doing the direct examination, Michael Low Bloch, asked Spencer if he left academia to become an advocate for white people. Spencer denied this and thus began several hours of combative questions and answers.

Spencer said he didn’t believe that races should be segregated on the stand, but his July 2020 deposition read the opposite.

He agreed he only used the N-word in private with like-minded folks and similarly only spoke of Jewish people in derogatory terms in private. He said rallies were about free speech, not about crushing enemies, and had egoic ideas about being a star.

When confronted with a tweet of his that read “WE WILL CRUSH YOU” from April 2017 Spencer explained it as peacocking and “tough talk.”

When questioned about the tiki torches being symbolic of the Nazis, Spencer dismissed the notion saying its sentiment was more the “mystery and magic of fire and darkness.”

Spencer’s direct examination went for approximately 5 hours, most of the entire day, and most of its entirety felt like a cross-examination. His actual cross-examination continues Friday with his co-defendant Chris Cantwell doing the questioning.