Richard Spencer Has ‘A Face In Need Of A Slap’
Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman November 13, 2017
Richard Spencer was a racist, grandstanding, insufferable classmate — but an impeccable German speaker — wrote one woman who spent a summer studying the language with him in Berlin.
Julie Hill, a New Zealander, was one of a number of classmates who grew to find the future “alt-right” leader’s xenophobia so off-putting that they boycotted his speech about Nietzschean philosophy on the last day of class.
“There is a German word that applies well to Spencer: Backpfeifengesicht,” wrote Hill. “It means ‘a face that is crying out for a slap.’”
Hill describes how Spencer initially endeared himself by helping her master complex German tenses — before blowing it by railing against Mexican immigrants. In Hill’s telling, Spencer lost the respect of the entire class (and the teacher) when he suggested that the white lacrosse players accused in 2006 of gang-raping a stripper were innocent because they would not want to have sex with a black woman.
“Our class was composed of people of all ages, from all walks of life, and from all parts of the planet, but if there was one thing that united us, it was that we hated Richard Spencer’s guts,” wrote Hill.
Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
