Richard Spencer claims alt-right followers were jealous of his fame and Charlottesville was like 'his concert tour'

Richard Spencer and many of those involved in what was previously called "the alt-right" spoke to CNN's Elle Reeve as the group faced the verdict in the civil suit that they ultimately lost. She's been following the white power and white supremacy movement since 2015, first starting at VICE News and now for CNN.

Spencer told Reeve that his real purpose was to be famous and that the people who followed him were really just jealous of his success and that they wanted to be famous too.

"I was trying to unite everything where it would be simply me and it would have been better if they had f*cking bent the knee and shut the f*ck up," Spencer said. "The whole 2016, 2017 experience was quite something, wasn't it? I was making headlines every week. Trump was also reaching people online and the alt-right became an advertising wing. And the alt-right's anonymous — I am not anonymous if I dare say so, I think I'm interesting."

She asked if that meant he was part of a broader movement that never had a face to it.

"Exactly, yeah," Spencer agreed. "And people could kind of freak out and love to hate me and maybe hate to love me."

He went on to say that he felt like there were a lot of people that wanted to "come hang out in the alt-right. And yeah, I just was too old. I was slumming. I don't know."

"Did I predict this? No. I feared there was going to be some kind of violence at a lot of those rallies. That was becoming present. I think I underestimated a lot of people," Spencer continued. "I think a lot of people wanted to be me. One of the big things the alt-right was I want to be Spencer. I want to be in the headlines. It created a tremendous amount of jealousy."

He admitted that he knew that he would attract attention if he was at the rally in Charlottesville.

"And I wanted attention," said Spencer. "Yeah. It was just kind of almost like a concert tour or something."

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