White Nationalists Exult in Donald Trump’s Election With a Salute: ‘Heil Victory’

Joseph Goldstein, reporting for the NYT:

Earlier in the day, Mr. Spencer himself had urged the group to start acting less like an underground organization and more like the establishment.

But now his tone changed as he began to tell the audience of more than 200 people, mostly young men, what they had been waiting to hear. He railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.”

As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. When Mr. Spencer, or perhaps another person standing near him at the front of the room — it was not clear who — shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back.

These are neo-Nazis, and they now think they are the establishment. This is not normal; this has nothing to do with the pre-Trump partisan divide — deep though it was — in the U.S. Neo-Nazis weren’t pulling for Mitt Romney or John McCain, and they didn’t celebrate George W. Bush’s election.

If you think this is no big deal, you are either with them, or you are in denial regarding a grave crisis.

★ Tuesday, 22 November 2016