In Cleveland, Ohio, in 2016, Donald Trump received the Republican presidential nomination as the leader of a successful political insurgency against the party elites, and far-right extremists the party had once tried to ostracize crossed the convention’s threshold for the first time.
Along with the likes of the far-right media figures Alex Jones, VDare’s Peter Brimelow, and Milo Yiannopoulos, the white nationalist Richard Spencer was a prominent attendee that year, and he told the Washington Post that he and other extremists had enjoyed “one big, bourbon-fueled party” in unofficial side venues around the convention center.
