Do you remember where you were on January 20th, 2017, the day Donald Trump was inaugurated as 45th President of the United States of America? White supremacist Richard Spencer sure does: he was getting smacked in the face while explaining his Pepe the Frog badge to a reporter.
You might be the sort of person who found that use of violence anywhere from distasteful to morally abhorrent, but most people would agree that Richard Spencer is just sort of the fucking worst. Like the bulk of these far-right dipshits, he hides behind the term ‘white nationalism’ instead of admitting to white supremacy, but he has openly stated in the past that he basically only doesn’t call himself a Nazi for PR reasons – something which hasn’t stopped his fans from throwing up Nazi salutes. Between his tendency to “[rail] against Jews“ and his advocating for an ethnic cleansing of North America (albeit a ‘peaceful’ one, whatever that might mean), he is, in no uncertain terms, a huge piece of shit.
When he’s not having a sook about college campuses not wanting to play host to a white supremacist, Spencer spends most of his time getting upset about the dumbest things in the world. Right now, for instance, he’s working himself into a tizzy at the prospect that James Bond might be played by someone who isn’t white.
This has, of course, come up because rumours (which are very much just that) are floating around again that Idris Elba is set to don the tux next. A normal person’s response to this is something along the lines of ‘That would be cool, let’s see if it happens.’ Spencer’s response has been, uh… not that.
Given the fact that he is a crazy person, it’s a little tough to fully unpack what Spencer is saying here, but it seems to hinge upon the fact that having Elba (who was born in fucking Hackney) would be an immeasurable crime against the good people of Britain:
Let there be no mistake, a Black James Bond would be an act of dispossession far greater than a flotilla of a million refugees. Refugees are, after all, refugees. James Bond is a symbol of British identity—indeed, the British empire—and of European masculinity writ large.
Other than being completely incoherent, it also distinctly smacks of someone that just learned the phrase ‘writ large’ and wanted to take it for a test drive. Don’t worry, though, it gets even more pathetic. Spencer, who apparently hasn’t been to a movie in his entire life, seems to be of the mind that seeing a white man in a leading role would be some sort of rare treat:
There’s reason to believe that the next James Bond will be White. Hollywood is a “dream factory”; it gives us depictions on screen of what we can’t have in real life. As White men are discriminated against and demeaned, why not offer us “guilty pleasures” in the cinema?
The great miracle of Spencer’s life is that he barely has the brain power to function but somehow has just enough to form shitty opinions about race.
