[6][7][8] Spencer has advocated for the enslavement of Haitians by whites and for the ethnic cleansing of the racial minorities of the United States,[9] additionally expressing admiration for the political tactics of American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell.

[29][30][31] Spencer largely ceased to be an effective leader of the alt-right movement after March 2018, following violence outside a Michigan State University event where he was speaking.

[32] Spencer has frequently contradicted his own previous statements about his beliefs and ideals; in one text exchange in 2022, he told a journalist that he "no longer identifies as a white nationalist.

[39] In January 2011, Spencer became president and director of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a White supremacist think tank based in Virginia, which was once run from his mother's $3 million summer house.

[44][29] George Hawley, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, has described NPI as "rather obscure and marginalized" until Spencer became its president.

[56][57][58] Michael Signer, the mayor of Charlottesville, called the protest "horrific", and stated that it was either "profoundly ignorant" or intended to instill fear among minorities "in a way that hearkens back to the days of the KKK".

[61] In November 2019, Milo Yiannopoulos released an audio recording of Spencer using racist slurs immediately after the 2017 Unite the Right rally.

Groups and events which Spencer has spoken to include the Property and Freedom Society,[68] the American Renaissance conference,[69] and the HL Mencken Club.

[70] In November 2016, an online petition to prevent Spencer from speaking at Texas A&M University on December 6, 2016, was signed by thousands of students, employees, and alumni.

[79][80] On August 16, during a television interview with Israeli Channel 2 anchor Danny Kushmaro, Spencer claimed that "Jews are vastly over-represented in... 'the establishment', that is, Ivy League educated people who really determine policy".

According to Clay Calvert, director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, non-violent protesting, booing and suggesting that the speaker leave was not a heckler's veto in law.

[89][93] Later that day, three of Spencer's supporters were arrested on felony charges following an alleged discharge of a firearm, directed at protestors leaving the event.

[97] In the aftermath of the October 19 events, Ohio State University declined Spencer's request to allow him to speak on campus, citing "substantial risk to public safety".

[99] In 2013, a dispute with neoconservative lobbyist Randy Scheunemann at Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana drew public attention to Spencer and his political views.

[103] Also in December 2016, Spencer announced he was considering an independent run for Montana's at-large congressional district in the 2017 special election, although he ultimately did not enter the race.

[107] In the aftermath of his visit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán pressed through legislative measures which banned his entry and condemned Spencer.

[6][7][8][115][116] Jason Wilson in The Guardian has argued that Spencer and other white nationalists are appropriating some elements of socialist rhetoric to critique a "notion of capitalism centered on stereotypes of Jews".

[42][119][120] To this end, he has supported what he has called "the creation of a White ethnostate on the North American continent", an "ideal" that he has regarded as a "reconstitution of the Roman Empire".

[115][116] Spencer claims to be a "white Zionist" and praised Israel's Jewish nation-state law,[121] saying: "Jews are, once again, at the vanguard, rethinking politics and sovereignty for the future, showing a path forward for Europeans.

[123] Prior to the UK vote to leave the EU, Spencer expressed support for the multi-national bloc "as a potential racial empire" and an alternative to "American hegemony", stating that he has "always been highly skeptical of so-called 'Euro-Skeptics'".

[27] He called Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election "the victory of will", a phrase evoking the title of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935), a Nazi-era propaganda film.

[16][17] Spencer also admires George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, for using "shock as a positive means to an end".

He stated that Trump was merely providing "tweets that are meaningless and cheap and express the kind of sentiments you might hear from your drunk uncle while he's watching [Sean] Hannity.

[131][132] Spencer endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, claiming that "Donald Trump and the MAGA movement bring nothing but stupidity and chaos.

[134][135] He also stated in an interview with The Washington Post that his vision of America as a white ethnostate includes women returning to traditional roles as childbearers and homemakers.

[135] Spencer opposes same-sex marriage,[138] which he has described as "unnatural" and a "non-issue", commenting that "very few gay men will find the idea of monogamy to their liking".

[139] Despite his opposition to same-sex marriage, Spencer barred people with anti-gay views from the National Policy Institute's annual conference in 2015.

[33][34] According to political scientist Tamir Bar-On, "Spencer's key intellectual influences are largely those thinkers concerned with winning the 'cultural war' against egalitarianism, liberal democracy, capitalism, socialism, and multiculturalism," citing Nietzsche, the German Conservative Revolution (including Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, and Martin Heidegger), French New Right theorists like Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye, along with other far-right figures such as Julius Evola, Francis Parker Yockey, Aleksandr Dugin, and "US right-wingers with a penchant for race-driven politics or anti-Semitism" like Sam Francis, Jared Taylor, and Kevin B.

[165] Prior to his marriage, Spencer's dating history included Asian women,[166] which he has said predates his white nationalism, though this evaluation is disputed.

[174] According to media reports, the recordings and text messages show Spencer telling his wife that he will "fucking break [her] nose," encouraging her to commit suicide, and apologizing for previous incidents of physical abuse.