White supremacist Richard B. Spencer will headline a “White Lives Matter” protest at Texas A&M University on Sept. 11.
Event organizer Preston Wiginton confirmed Spencer’s attendance Sunday, the day after 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed by a man who drove a car into a crowd of people protesting a “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.
“The event will be to protest the liberal anti-white agenda which includes white guilt which leads to white genocide,” Wiginton told The Battalion, Texas A&M’s student newspaper. “And the other purpose of the event will be to sponsor white identity and white pride in which white lives do matter. This is not an anti-brown event or anti-black event, this is an anti-liberal event.”
Amy Smith, Texas A&M’s executive vice president for marketing and communications, said Wiginton’s ideas were the antithesis of those held by the school, which previously hosted Spencer in December 2016.
“His views and those of the group he represents are counter to the core values of Texas A&M,” Smith told The Battalion. “While he has the right of free speech, so too do we have the right to refute those views and get on with the daily business of a world class university.”
Counter-protests are already being organized online to take place near Rudder Plaza on the school’s campus.
“This tone-deaf rally is positively contrary to our values as a campus and serves only to harass our fellow Aggies of colour,” counter-protest organizers wrote on Facebook, using a collective noun describing Texas A&M students and graduates. “We will be making a silent, outward facing wall around the plaza to protect our students and show that the Aggie Family’s commitment to its own is far greater than any force trying to divide us.”
