Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
They don't like to be called white supremacists.
The well-dressed men who gathered in Cleveland's Ritz-Carlton bar after Donald Trump's speech accepting the Republican nomination for president prefer the term "Europeanists," ''alt-right," or even "white nationalists." They are also die-hard Trump supporters.
And far from hiding in chat rooms or under white sheets, they cheered the GOP presidential nominee from inside the Republican National Convention over the last week. They obtained credentials to attend the party's highest-profile quadrennial gathering.
Several gathered in the luxury hotel well after midnight following Trump's Thursday address, a fiery appeal they said helped push the Republican Party closer to their principles.
"I don't think people have fully recognized the degree to which he's transformed the party," said Richard Spencer, a clean-cut 38-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, who sipped Manhattans as he matter-of-factly called for removing African-Americans, Hispanics and Jews from the United States.
"We'll help them go somewhere else. I'm not a maniac," Spencer said of the minorities he wants to eject from the country. "I know in order to achieve what I want to achieve, you have to deal with people rationally."
Like most in his group, Spencer said this year's convention was his first. On his social media accounts, he posted pictures of himself wearing a red Trump "Make America Great Again" hat at Quicken Loans Arena. And he says he hopes to attend future GOP conventions.
"Tons of people in the alt-right are here," he said. "We feel an investment in the Trump campaign."
Trump's "America First" message, backed by his call for a massive border wall and focus on immigrants, has energized people like Spencer. He described their mood as "euphoric." "Trust me. Trump thinks like me," Spencer said. "Do you think it's a coincidence that everybody like me loves Trump and supports him?"
The New York billionaire's campaign declined to comment on the attendance last week by Spencer and other white supremacists at Trump's nominating convention.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/energized_white_supremacists_c.html#incart_most-commented_politics_article