White nationalist Richard Spencer has been given control over which journalists get to cover his free speech rally at Michigan State University (MSU) Monday — and has responded by banning two local news outlets from the event.
Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a neo-Nazi think tank, is hosting a two-hour talk at MSU’s Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education. MSU denied Spencer the right to speak on campus back in August, saying there were “significant concerns about public safety in the wake of the tragic violence at Charlottesville.” But after a lawsuit was filed against MSU in January, the university relented.
“This is a resounding First Amendment victory for the alt-right,” attorney Kyle Bristow said at the time. “The fundamental right of Americans to think and speak freely is nonnegotiable.”
Monday, however, Spencer showed his true commitment to free speech by banning both the Detroit Free Press and the Lansing State Journal from covering the speech. Because Spencer’s event is technically “private” — tickets are required for entry, as they were during his speech at the University of Florida — white nationalists get to control what media gets to cover the speech and who doesn’t.
“I have… been filtering media requests based on outlets’ past coverage of Spencer,” NPI spokesman Evan McLaren said. “If an outlet has misreported any of several easily verifiable facts… then I elect not to grant to them access.” According to the Free Press, the newspaper had initially been promised tickets for a reporter and a photographer. To make matters even more ridiculous, MSU is being forced to pay the full cost of policing and security, just as the University of Florida had to.
Why the NPI decided to ban the Free Press and State Journal is a bit of mystery. Spencer, who has not exactly been lacking in critical media coverage, has been receptive to journalists reporting on his events, which he sees as a way to further publicize his white nationalist views. “[Mainstream journalists are] the best way to communicate with people,” he once said. “I love mainstream liberals. Those are my favorite journalists.”
But what Spencer’s banning of the Free Press and State Journal proves is that all his talk about “free speech” is just that, talk. The reality is that Spencer is trying to advocate for his racist, dystopian future where America would become a white ethnostate and women would be confined to their homes.