 | |
| Abbreviation | NPI |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2005; 21 years ago (2005) |
| Founder | William Regnery II |
| Dissolved | 2020 |
| Type | |
| Headquarters | Alexandria, Virginia,U.S. |
| Leader |
|
TheNational Policy Institute (NPI) was awhite supremacistthink tank and lobbying group based inAlexandria, Virginia.[1][2][3] Itlobbied for white supremacists and thealt-right.[4] Its president wasRichard B. Spencer.
It has been largely inactive since late 2020,[5] and its website has been inactive or dead since then.[a] In 2022, Spencer confirmed that the organization was defunct.[6]
The NPI was founded in 2005 byWilliam Regnery II.[7] Louis R. Andrews was the chairman until 2010. Andrews said that he had voted forBarack Obama in the2008 presidential election because "I want to see theRepublican Party destroyed, so it can be reborn as a party representing the interests of white people, and not entrenched corporate elites."[8] When Andrews died in 2011, he was replaced byRichard B. Spencer.[9] According to George Hawley, an assistant professor of Political Science at theUniversity of Alabama, NPI was "rather obscure and marginalized" until Spencer became its president in 2011, at which point Spencer's website, AlternativeRight.com, became an NPI initiative.[10]
The group was based inAugusta, Georgia, at its founding, but by 2013 had relocated toMontana.[11] Spencer divides his time between Montana and Virginia;[12] in 2016, the group was based inArlington, Virginia.[13][14] By early 2017, the NPI had leased a townhouse office space onKing Street inOld Town Alexandria, Virginia, where it maintains its headquarters today.[15][16] City leaders in Arlington and Alexandria acknowledged the NPI's right to operate, but denounced the group's views.[14][16] The group's presence in Alexandria has prompted several protests.[16]
In December 2013, NPI launched a website,Radix Journal, which describes itself as "a periodical on culture, race,metapolitics, critical theory, and society".[17] The NPI received a grant from thePioneer Fund, a racist pseudo-scientific organization.[2][18]
In 2016,Twitter suspended the accounts of the NPI, its leader Richard B. Spencer and others under itsterms of use. Spencer said that "digitally speaking, there has been execution squads across the alt-right"[19] and accused Twitter of "corporate Stalinism".[20] However, Twitter's suspension was not based on the content of Spencer's posts, but rather on Twitter's rule barring multiple accounts with overlapping uses.[20] Spencer's personal Twitter account was reinstated several weeks later; the NPI's remained suspended.[20]
Spencer was the headline speaker at a 2016 NPI conference held in Washington, D.C., and celebrated the election ofDonald Trump as "the first step towards identity politics in the United States"[21] and "the victory of will" (a reference toTriumph of the Will, the Nazi propaganda film).[22] Spencer "railed against Jews and, with a smile, quotedNazi propaganda in the original German". Spencer finished his speech by yelling "Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!" as audience members responded by standing up and making theNazi salute.[22][23] TheUnited States Holocaust Museum issued a statement condemning the "hateful rhetoric" of the conference.[24] Other speakers included Scotland-based YouTuberMillennial Woes.[25]
In July 2017, Evan McLaren becameexecutive director.[26] He resigned in April 2018.[27] As of January 2020, he has not been replaced.[28]
The NPI was banned fromYouTube for not following the platform's policies onhate speech in June 2020. Spencer announced he would appeal the ban.[29]
In 2021, a federal judge ordered the NPI to pay $2.4 million to a man injured at the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.[30]
According to theAssociated Press, NPI "raised $442,482 intax-deductible contributions from 2007 through 2012".[31]
NPI'stax-exempt status was revoked in 2017 by theInternal Revenue Service (IRS) for failing to file tax returns.[32] The group had not filed aForm 990 since 2013.[33] In March 2017, theVirginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), which regulates the operation of charities in Virginia, removed the NPI's entry from its public database of nonprofits and announced that it was reviewing the group's status.[32] The NPI raised $50,000 in late 2016 and early 2017 from an online fundraising drive and has solicited donations to be sent to its Arlington, Virginiapost office box, but in February 2017 VDACS had listed the group as "not authorized to solicit in Virginia."[32] As of August, 2019, mail sent to the address was being returned as "undeliverable".[28]
NPI's website says that "the dispossession of White Americans will have catastrophic effects for the entire world, not just for our people". The organization has produced a series of reports onaffirmative action,race andconservatism, theSouthern Poverty Law Center, and a report edited and predominantly written byVDARE contributor Nicholas Stix.
The NPI has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a white supremacist organization.[34] Marilyn Mayo, the co-director of theAnti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said that the group "basically was founded to be kind of a white supremacist think tank".[11]
The NPI is regarded as part of a group of white nationalist organizations that, according toThe New York Times, "try to take a more highbrow approach, couching white nationalist arguments as academic commentary on black inferiority, the immigration threat to whites and other racial issues."[35] Other groups that advance similar strategies include theNew Century Foundation (and its publicationAmerican Renaissance,[7][35]) theCharles Martel Society (and its website theOccidental Observer),[7][11][35] and the Pioneer Fund, all of which have been described by the SPLC as playing leading roles in the promotion of "academic racism".[7]
Despite the innocuous name, NPI has since its inception been a white-nationalist organization. The organization was rather obscure and marginalized until Spencer was chosen as its new president in 2011, at which point Alternative Right became an NPI initiative.
Spencer's group raised $442,482 in tax-deductible contributions from 2007 through 2012.
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