Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

White Supremacist Cheers Trump’s ‘De-Judification’ of Holocaust

For Richard Spencer, the leading ideologue of the “alt-right,” Donald Trump’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that failed to mention Jews or anti-Semitism was an important, perhaps revolutionary, step.

Spencer dubbed it the “de-Judification” of the Holocaust.

Jewish activists, Spencer wrote in a short post for his new website, Altright.com, have long insisted on making the Holocaust “all about their meta-narrative of suffering” and a way to “undergird their peculiar position in American society.”

The Holocaust, in Spencer’s opinion, has become a sort of moral bludgeon — used against white nationalists like himself.

“We can’t limit immigration, because Hitler. We can’t can’t proud of ourselves as a Europeans, because Holocaust. White people can be Christian, but not too Christian, because Auschwitz,” he wrote.

Spencer went on: “Effectively, any policy, idea, or belief that is markedly right-wing and traditional — that evokes identity, power, hierarchy, and dominance — must be regulated by the possibility that it could potentially lead back to the German Führer.”

Spencer, a one-time Duke University doctoral student, popularized the term “alt-right,” a broad label that defines a new generation of white nationalists.

While other influential members of the movement, like Andrew Anglin, clearly identify with Nazis (Anglin’s Daily Stormer website is named after the Nazi propaganda sheet Der Stürmer), Spencer says he is not a Nazi and that he denies the label often attributed to him, preferring the term “identitarian,” a reference to a far-right political movement that has roots in France.

Spencer dismissed Jewish responses to Trump’s statement as “kvetching,” using a Yiddish term for “complaining.”

In speaking about Hitler and the Holocaust, Spencer has also elided Jewish suffering, telling The Daily Caller that “terrible things were done to many different people during that terrible war.”

He also does not condemn Hitler outright, instead calling him a “historical figure.” “He’s done things that I think are despicable,” Spencer told The Daily Caller, but did not go into details. “I’m not going to play this game.”

In Spencer’s viewpoint, the “de-Judefication” of the Holocaust is a quintessentially “Trumpian” statement. Spencer championed Trump through the presidential campaign — and though he has been critical of the president at times, he seems to have come around to Trump.

“Trump is a white nationalist, so to speak, he is ‘alt-right’ whether he likes it or not,” Spencer said in a recent interview on “The David Pakman Show.”

Contact Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected]

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.