Richard Spencer is a threat Republicans must purge

Hogan’s Heroes, the sixties sitcom with loveable Nazi buffoons like the rotund Sergeant Schultz, whose worst war crime was binging on apple strudel, is enjoying new popularity on the “MeTV” cable channel.

A sign of rising neo-fascism in America? No, but the almost comic spectacle of a youthful, energetic commentator substituting “Hail Trump!” for “Heil Hitler!” as some in the packed room he addressed last month gave Nazi salutes, since seen by millions on YouTube, is indeed disconcerting.

{mosads}Maybe Richard B. Spencer, president of the anodyne-sounding National Policy Institute, just wandered off the set of Col. Klink’s office. After all, he actually sports a Hitler Youth “undercut” hairstyle – skinheadesque on the sides and back, thick on the top — and when blasting the liberal media he likes to refer to them, as he puts it, “in the original German” as the Lügenpresse or “lying press.”

Is this really the leader of the infamous alt-right, or Alec Baldwin doing an over-the-top impersonation of the leader of the alt-right on Saturday Night Live?

P.G. Wodehouse and Monty Python proved that fascists can be very funny.  Is Spencer just doing a schtick, like the late Andy Kaufman’s alter ego, Tony Clifton, a character so ugly he couldn’t possibly be real?

Unfortunately, Spencer is for real.  And plenty ugly.  His National Policy Institute is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world” and “the revival and flourishing of our people.”  Indeed, Spencer followed up “Hail Trump!” with “Hail our people!” – not the people of America or the world; “our people” obviously means whites only.

Spencer’s riff, “Hail Trump!  Hail our people!  Hail victory!” is disturbingly similar to the Nazis’ “Ein volk!  Ein Reich!  Ein Fuhrer!”

The similarities are clearly intentional; it’s proved a great way for Spencer to attract notoriety. Which raises the point: why further inflate his importance by talking or writing about Spencer, unless you’re someone who wants to hurt President-elect Trump by association?

The answer is that Spencer must be dealt with rather than ignored, especially if you recognize the fact that mass immigration will soon make it impossible to elect a conservative Republican president ever again. (Trump did, after all, lose the popular vote by more than two-and-a-half million ballots.)

Immigration was the issue Trump rode to the White House. It’s also Spencer’s big issue.  A lot is expected of Trump to get it under control, but Spencer can only hurt Trump’s efforts.

Last week, Liz Wheeler on the One America News Network’s “Tipping Point” program pressed Spencer to admit, “I think immigration should preference people of European descent, yes.” In other words, “Keep America White.”

But race is not why immigration – both legal and illegal — must be significantly reduced over the long term.

A 44-page January 2014 report authored by the late Phyllis Schlafly and Eagle Forum, “How Mass (Legal) Immigration Dooms a Conservative Republican Party,” laid out what’s really at stake.

“Immigrants and their children are more supportive of government expansion, Obamacare, affirmative action, gun control, greater environmental regulation, and of other issues championed by the Left,” Schlafly warned, buttressing the case with mounds of polling data.

It’s not the color of their skin, but rather the content of their political creed.  Today, even the white Europeans Spencer romanticizes would, as new U.S. citizens, help their Mexican-American fellow immigrants elect liberal Democrats and impose lots more socialism on the Land of the Free.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 immigration act, a grinning Bobby and Teddy Kennedy at his side in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, he assured the nation it was “not a revolutionary bill.  It does not affect the lives of millions.”  Yet in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s combined, fewer than 7 million immigrants came to America; after the immigration act, from the ‘70s to today, 35 million arrived here, including nearly 14 million in the single decade from 2001 to 2010.

Not only was it a revolution, it’s been the biggest voter recruitment drive for the Democratic Party in history. If Trump is to lead a successful counter-revolution and stop this ongoing disaster, he cannot be tainted by those falsely hailing him as an ethnic cleanser. 

Decades ago, William F. Buckley purged the Birchers and other genuine “deplorables” within conservatism so the right could rise to power. Trump, or his surrogates, are similarly going to have to purge Spencer and his minions – and do it before the TV cameras – if the new president is to keep his promise to regain control of who comes to and shapes America.

Thomas McArdle is humorist for the new app ElectionWarz, was senior writer for Investor’s Business Daily, and was a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

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