Image by YouTube

By Aiden Pink November 21, 2017

A conference organized by white nationalist Richard Spencer on a farm this weekend was quickly curtailed after the farm owners discovered his role in the event.

Spencer’s think tank, the National Policy Institute, hosted around 100 people at an events space at Rocklands Farm in Maryland on Saturday, The Washington Post reported.

The event space was booked by a third-party service that did not reveal the think tank’s role, Spencer told the Post. Guests themselves were not told that the farm would be the location — they were picked up by vans at various locations and driven to the space.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

When Rocklands Farm’s owners discovered who was behind the conference on Saturday afternoon, they told everyone to leave and refunded the group’s deposit. The event attendees agreed.

The farm said in a statement on its website that it had never asked a group to leave before, but acted when they discovered that they were hosting “an organization that is strongly in opposition to our values.”

“I’m not mad, but if I were a business owner, I would not do that,” Spencer said. “If communists came to my establishment, but they were civilized, I couldn’t imagine kicking them out. So I’m certainly disappointed, but we are not going to retaliate. It’s just life in 2017 for us.”

Spencer has had trouble booking and keeping event spaces lately — his attempts to speak on college campuses have led to multiple court challenges, and his think tank was barred earlier this month from hosting a meeting at a federal office building in Washington, D.C..

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

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 polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount