{"id":446,"date":"2017-10-18T12:09:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T16:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=446"},"modified":"2018-03-04T12:13:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-04T17:13:46","slug":"hes-not-a-racist-he-says-just-an-identitarian-and-he-books-richard-spencers-campus-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=446","title":{"rendered":"He\u2019s not a racist, he says, just an \u2018identitarian,\u2019 and he books Richard Spencer\u2019s campus talks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Cameron<\/picture><\/div>\n
Cameron Padgett, photographed downtown in Atlanta, sued, successfully, for white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak at Auburn University in April after the Alabama school tried to cancel the event. Padgett calls himself an \u2018identitarian,\u2019 not a white nationalist, and insists that \u2018advocating for the interests of white people\u2019 doesn’t make him a racist.\u00a0<\/span>David Goldman<\/span>\u00a0AP<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

BY ALEX HARRIS<\/span><\/p>\n

aharris@miamiherald.com<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

October 18, 2017 04:25 PM<\/span><\/p>\n

Updated October 19, 2017 09:01 AM<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

ATLANTA\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\n

Cameron Padgett says he\u2019s not a racist.<\/p>\n

He calls himself an \u201cidentitarian,\u201d a phrase coined by Richard Spencer, a leader in the white nationalist community who has explicitly advocated for a whites-only nation. That word, like \u201calt-right,\u201d Spencer\u2019s other linguistic contribution, dodges the nastier connotations that common terms like white nationalist, white supremacist or Nazi carry.<\/p>\n

Padgett, 29, the graduate student who books Spencer\u2019s campus speeches, is the fruit of Spencer\u2019s rebranding campaign: A well-off young man who grew up in a non-political home who feels comfortable sitting in a public place discussing ideas of racial superiority and inferiority.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Inside a hookah cafe in Atlanta, down the street from Georgia State University, where Padgett is earning a graduate degree in finance, he sips his drink and talks race.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Identitarian means you identify with your race, with your people, with your culture,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d say everyone in Japan is an identitarian. Everyone in Japan. I\u2019d say everyone is an identitarian. They might not admit that because propaganda and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He points to the megachurches in Atlanta, separated into majority black and majority white, to public schools, to the suburbs.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one forces them to do that. They just naturally do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thumps his LSAT study notes for emphasis. Padgett sees this segregation as the answer to racial division. The U.S. would be a better place, he says, if every race were relegated to their own corner of the country to live.<\/p>\n

Spencer calls him a friend and a \u201cgo-getter,\u201d without whom he couldn\u2019t have been able to pull off his uninvited campus tour and spread his message of an all-white nation. He even let Padgett run his Periscope video when his white nationalist movement returned to Charlottesville to protest again, weeks after a young woman died in the protests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis wouldn\u2019t be possible without him,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n

Padgett\u2019s involvement with Spencer and the white nationalist community has changed his life. He\u2019s studying for a graduate degree in finance at GSU, but now he wants to switch careers and become a \u201ccivil rights\u201d lawyer dedicated to defending the movement he\u2019s a part of.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

One attendee at the speaking event featuring white supremacist Richard Spencer at Auburn University on April 18, initially asked Spencer to define how white people are more racially oppressed than black people. Her second question was: \u201cHow did it feel when you got punched in the face at the inauguration?\u201d\u00a0Twitter\/MBucklesXO via Storyful<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That was never supposed to be the plan.<\/p>\n