Richard Bertrand Spencer is an American white nationalist, alt-right leader, white supremacist, and political activist known for promoting white nationalism, white separatism, ethnonationalism, anti-immigration views, and coining 'white genocide' rhetoric. He is the founder of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white supremacist think tank established in 2011, and its online journal Radix Journal, where he popularized the term 'alt-right' to describe a tech-savvy, ironic brand of white identity politics/identitarianism. Born on May 11, 1978, in Boston, Massachusetts, he was raised in Richardson, Texas, where his family owned a cotton and pecan farm. Spencer attended Colgate University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in music in 2001, and later earned a master's degree in humanities from the University of Virginia in 2005. Initially involved in mainstream conservative circles, his views radicalized in the mid-2000s, leading him to embrace white nationalism. His early career included work in think tanks like The American Conservative and as an assistant editor at Taki's Magazine, a paleoconservative outlet. He founded AlternativeRight.com in 2009, which later merged into Radix Journal. Spencer gained national prominence during the 2016 U.S. presidential election for supporting Donald Trump and celebrating his victory with a 'Hail Trump' salute at an NPI conference. He organized the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11-12, 2017, which resulted in the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer and led to lawsuits against him; he settled one for $25,000 in 2020. His ideology draws from paleoconservatism, the European New Right, and identitarian movements, advocating for a white ethnostate in North America. Criticized and accused of neo-Nazism, antisemitism, misogyny, inciting violence, and promoting conspiracy theories, Spencer has faced deplatforming from social media, bans from platforms like YouTube and Twitter (now X), financial institutions, and venues, leading to the decline of NPI's operations. He has been physically assaulted multiple times, including a viral punching incident in 2017. His personal life includes a contentious divorce from Russian translator Nina Kouprianova in 2018 (previously married in 2017), with whom he has two children, amid allegations of domestic abuse, though unproven in criminal court. His influence waned post-Charlottesville, but he remains a figurehead in far-right circles, residing in Whitefish, Montana, and continuing to advocate for a white ethnostate through podcasts, writings, and speaking at far-right events, influencing online extremist communities. His network includes ties to figures like Jared Taylor and Paul Gottfried, though he has distanced himself from some mainstream conservatives.