On Friday, the Neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer issued a call to “take action” against “Jews” in Whitefish, Montana, the hometown of alt-right white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, in reaction to a local campaign against the business of Spencer’s mother, Sherry Spencer. From the Stormer:
This is the Jews for you, people.
They are a vicious, evil race of hate-filled psychopaths.
When you do something they don’t like, they will use the power of the media to come down on you, assassinate your character. They will call you names and accuse you of all sorts of things. They will go after your money.
If all of that fails, they will attack your mother.
The post goes on to list the names, pictures, contact information, and addresses of alleged Jews in Whitefish, including local realtor Tanya Gersh, who allegedly called on Sherry Spencer to sell a downtown mixed-use building she owns and donate the proceeds or face protests, and the leaders of the anti-hate group Love Lives Here.
“Tell them you are sickened by their Jew agenda to attack and harm the mother of someone whom they disagree with,” Stormer founder Andrew Anglin wrote, later noting that while Tanya Gersh appeared not to have any social media accounts, her young son (“a creepy little faggot,” Anglin called him in a photo caption) evidently did. “You can hit him up, tell them what you think of his whore mother’s vicious attack on the community of Whitefish.”
Anglin’s post both warns against committing acts of violence and encourages the Stormer’s anti-Semitic readers to seek out the Gersh family personally at provided addresses for their home and Tanya’s husband’s law firm. “Hey—if you’re in the area, maybe you should stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions,” Anglin wrote.
The Stormer’s commenters have responded to the post predictably. “You really understand why virtually all the world has wanted to eradicate the Jews for as long as they’ve existed,” one wrote. “The only thing that’s kept them from doing it are the ethical standards gentiles have.” Another bemoaned the infeasibility of “the only other alternative”: “round them up, gas, soap and lampshade for real this time. To bad that couldn’t be a real possibility.”
The post, published in the Stormer’s “Jewish Problem” section, was spurred by a Medium essay written by Sherry Spencer on Friday in which she criticizes the effort to have her sell her building. “Richard does not own the building, nor has he ever used it for his writing or publishing,” Spencer wrote. “Put simply, the building has nothing to do with politics — and it has everything to do with tourism and local businesses.”
“Whatever you think about my son’s ideas — they are, after all, ideas — in what moral universe is it right for the ‘sins’ of the son to be visited upon the mother?” she continued.
Spencer later shared the Medium post on his Twitter account and called it “a heartbreaking testimony.”
Richard Spencer’s father Rand told the local Montana paper, the Daily Inter Lake, that Richard had, in fact, owned a stake in the property but no longer did. Additionally, Nicole Hensley of the New York Daily News writes that Richard Spencer’s think tank, the National Policy Institute, had “listed his mother’s home as its primary office, according to Virginia state records,” although Rand Spencer told the Inter Lake that the organization’s headquarters had moved to Arlington, Virginia.
On Saturday, Rand and Sherry Spencer distanced themselves from their son’s views in an Inter Lake op-ed. “We are not racists,” they wrote. “We have never been racists. We do not endorse the idea of white nationalism.”
Spencer’s work and beliefs have been a source of ongoing controversy in Whitefish for some time now. Mayor John Muhlfeld signed a proclamation earlier this month repudiating “the ideas and ideology of the white nationalist and so called alt-right as a direct affront to our community’s core values and principles.” An anti-discrimination resolution was passed by the city council in response to a Love Lives Here rally against Spencer in 2014. Spencer, by all appearances, seems to be invested in maintaining ties to Montana. On Friday he reiterated to the Inter Lake that he was considering a run for the state’s House seat. “I voted for Trump in Montana. I pay taxes there and I have a Montana driver’s license,” he said. “I’m a resident.”
