Richard Spencer runs the National Policy Institute, an anodyne name for a white-supremacist think tank. He is also, according to a new report from Reveal, one of the absentee landlords on his family’s 5,200-acre cotton and corn farm in a poor, rural area of Louisiana. That farm is also heavily supported by the United States government; between 2008 and 2015, the operation received $2 million in federal farm subsidies.
Spencer reportedly owns the farm — which was passed down from his maternal grandfather — with his mother and his sister, and it is likely worth millions. Spencer refused to comment on how much money he receives from the business, telling Reveal, “I’m not involved in any direct day-to-day running of the business. I’m going to navigate the world as it is, and I’m not going to be a pauper.”
According to the report:
The Spencers have received payments from two federal farm programs. One is the commodity subsidy program, intended to guarantee income for farmers who are helping to maintain supplies of certain crops deemed important by the government. The other is the conservation reserve program, which pays farmers for environmentally sound farming practices. Most of the $2 million paid to the Spencers has been in commodity subsidy payments for growing cotton.
Spencer’s racist shtick focuses on how America’s success — past and future — relies on the achievements of white men. “America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity,” Spencer said at a conference after the election, where attendees gave “Hail Trump” salutes. “It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”
