White nationalist Richard Spencer has said he will be backing Democratic candidate Joe Biden in November's election after previously distancing himself from Donald Trump.
Spencer, who was one of the key figureheads of the alt-right movement, tweeted how he is "on Team Joe" on Monday, adding in a self-made campaign slogan, "Liberals are clearly more competent."
In a series of tweets, Spencer further explained his reasoning for backing Biden.
"The MAGA/Alt-Right moment is over. I made mistakes; Trump is an obvious disaster; but mainly the paradigm contained flaws that we now are able to perceive. And it needs to end," Spencer wrote. "So be patient. We'll have another day in the sun. We need to recover and return in a new form."
In another tweet, Spencer added: "I will never flip on my fundamental principles. (My principles were never voting for the supposed 'the lesser or two evils' or 'stopping big government.')
"Walking into certain defeat, even death, is not heroic. It's foolhardy. I have no sympathy for martyrs. I admire winners."
— Richard "5%" Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) August 24, 2020
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Spencer as "a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old."
Spencer first rose to prominence in 2016 after shouting "Hail Trump!" and being greeted with Nazi salutes at an event in Washington shortly after Trump was elected.
However, Spencer said earlier this year that he regrets voting for Trump, following the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Spencer feared that Trump's approved airstrike which resulted in the death of Soleimani brought the U.S. to the brink of war with Iran.
"I deeply regret voting for and promoting Donald Trump in 2016," Spencer tweeted. "To the people of Iran, there are millions of Americans who do not want war, who do not hate you, and who respect your nation and its history.
"After our traitorous elite is brought to justice, we hope to achieve peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness," he added.
Spencer also led a protest against the Trump administration launching an airstrike on a Syrian airbase in 2017.
Credited with creating the term "alt-right," Spencer was also one of the main organizers of the neo-Nazi "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 at which counter-protester Heather Heyer died after being struck by a car driven by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr.
In a statement released on the third anniversary of the deady rally, Biden said: "Three years ago today, the world watched in horror as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and far-right extremists with torches in hand descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, spewing the same anti-Semitic bile that was heard in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s.
"It was a moment of testing for our country, and a wake-up call to the fact that hate never dies—it only hides. And when our leaders give it oxygen, it can come roaring back to life.
"And then our president claimed that there were 'very fine people on both sides.' Donald Trump had the audacity to assign moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those who stood against it.
"I knew then that we were in a battle for the soul of this nation. And I knew then that I could not stand by and let Donald Trump destroy the core values of this nation. Now, three years later, we can see even more clearly that everything that has made America, America, is at stake."
Spencer and Biden's campaign team have been contacted for comment.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
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