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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.

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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

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