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Supporters of Donald Trump give Nazi-style salutes as Richard Spencer calls on them to 'Hail Trump' at a Washington gathering of alt-right activists over the weekend. Photo: The Atlantic / YouTube

‘Hail Trump!’: Watch secret video showing neo-Nazi alt-right crowd cheering US president-elect with Hitler salutes

Donald Trump

A newly released video shows a room full of people doing the Hitler salute and yelling “Hail Trump!” after listening to a speech about white nationalism that invokes Nazi terminology.

The secretly recorded video was taken over the weekend by a reporter for The Atlantic while working on a documentary about Richard Spence, the person speaking in the video. He runs the National Policy Institute, a self-described “alt-right” think tank that openly supports white nationalist and neo-Nazi policies.

In the past, secretly recorded in Washington on Saturday, he has called for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing” of the United States.

In the video, Spencer calls the media “leftists” and “cucks” (cuckolds), invoking popular “alt-right” insults for people they disagree with. He calls the media the “Lugenpresse,” which is what the original Nazi Party called the media in Germany — the “lying press.”

“We don’t exploit other groups,” he says, the “we” referring explicitly to white people. “We don’t gain anything from their presence.

“The press has clearly decided to double down and wage war against the legitimacy of Trump and the continued existence of white America,” he continues. “But they are really opening up the door for us … . 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.”

Last week, the Twitter accounts for Spencer and his think tank were suspended, along with a number of other “alt-right” accounts.
Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, answers questions from the media at the annual white nationalist conference hosted by his organisation at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. Photo: Washington Post / Linda Davidson

Trump’s campaign issued a statement in response to the video: “President-elect Trump has continued to denounce racism of any kind and he was elected because he will be a leader for every American. To think otherwise is a complete misrepresentation of the movement that united Americans from all backgrounds.”

White supremacists have credited Trump’s win with sparking a new interest in their movement.

“An awakening among everyone has occurred with this Trump election,” said Spencer, as he opened the conference. “We’re not quite the establishment now, but I think we should start acting like it.”

The men resembled Washington lobbyists more than the robed Ku Klux Klansmen or skinhead toughs who often represent white supremacists, though they share many familiar views.

This new generation is aiming to influence Washington in Washington’s own ways: churning out position papers, lobbying lawmakers and, and, perhaps most important, removing the cloak of anonymity to fully join the national political conversation.

Heidi Beirich, who monitors hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said today’s nationalists are picking up where David Duke left off when the former Klan imperial wizard shed his robes to enter politics in the early 1980s.

“This is how you sneak these ideas into the mainstream,” she said. “The guys in the suits are the ones we have to worry about.”

Additional reporting by Associated Press

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Right-wingers ‘hail Trump’ at gathering
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