William Regnery II, Reclusive Millionaire Who Financed American Fascists, Dead At 80
Source: Huff Post
William H. Regnery II, a racist, reclusive multimillionaire who used his inherited fortune to finance vile white supremacist groups in the hopes of one day forming an American whites-only ethnostate, died earlier this month, his family and associates confirmed. He was 80 years old. ...
.....
In the final two decades of his life, William Regnery funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars and likely much more to extremist groups. He is often credited with being one of the main funders of the so-called alt-right, the resurgent fascist movement that gained momentum during the rise of former President Donald Trump.
William Regnerys sordid influence was felt from the deadly Charlottesville Unite the Right rally to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, said Tarso Luís Ramos, executive director of Political Research Associates, a social justice think tank that monitors the far right
Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-regnery-dead-white-nationalist-millionaire-financier-richard-spencer_n_60f0f53ae4b01f118957ee93
FarPoint
(12,408 posts)left his monies with more racist white supremacy groups....my guess anyways.
LymphocyteLover
(5,644 posts)underpants
(182,823 posts)Boy thats something being written about you that you cant get away from.
AZ8theist
(5,470 posts)cstanleytech
(26,293 posts)AZ8theist
(5,470 posts)...just don't think THAT ONE was good garbage....
MrsCheaplaugh
(183 posts)He's dead. Good.
Ricky-by-the-lake
(14 posts)Of graves I want to urinate on.
Mr. Evil
(2,844 posts)I'd eat a bowl of the hottest chili, loaded with jalapeno peppers. Then drink the juice from the jar. Then I'd top it off with some greasy refried beans laced with Metamucil and Exlax. Finally, I'd top that off with some old veggies (including corn), place myself on the headstone and shoot the resulting flaming, explosive diarrhea all over his grave. I'd piss elsewhere so the fire can just burn.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Ricky-by-the-lake
(14 posts)BComplex
(8,053 posts)RIH, not RIP.
Warpy
(111,267 posts)Unfortunately, it tends to live on and on.
dalton99a
(81,513 posts)POS lived too long
MarcA
(2,195 posts)Xoan
(25,321 posts)Riddance.
bahboo
(16,339 posts)Old Okie
(145 posts)Why are they only outed after they die! MSM should be talking about what the Mercer's, Koch, etc are doing to poison this country. It is telling that members of the family were eulogized by the NYT and others served in various Republican administrations.
JohnSJ
(92,204 posts)BumRushDaShow
(129,053 posts)The Regnery familys influence extended beyond the publishing world. Bill Regnerys cousin Alfred Regnery was an official at the Department of Justice under President Ronald Reagan before eventually taking over the family publishing company.
Bill Regnery started showing an interest in politics while a student in the early 1960s at the University of Pennsylvania, where he launched a conservative student magazine. He never graduated from Penn, however, telling BuzzFeed News in an extensive 2017 interview that he was still a couple credits short of a degree.
He said he left to work for the 1964 presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, the far-right senator from Arizona. As BuzzFeed News described, Regnery claimed to have hatched a bizarre scheme to suppress Democratic votes on Election Day that year:
His most memorable effort, he claimed, was a convoluted scheme called Operation Dewdrop, intended to suppress Democratic voters in Philadelphia. At the time, he explained, the theory was that Democrats voted less in the rain. So on election day, he said, he tried to seed rain clouds by using dry ice and a twin-engine airplane. It didnt rain, he recalled, but he burned his fingers from the dry ice canisters, a detail that helps add a ring of authenticity. Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide.
(snip)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-regnery-dead-white-nationalist-millionaire-financier-richard-spencer_n_60f0f53ae4b01f118957ee93
thucythucy
(8,065 posts)This racist creep would likely never have had this kind of money to throw around if we limited inherited wealth.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)NEOBuckeye
(2,781 posts)He is now very good. He can no longer suck air or actively spread such vile ideological filth around the planet. Good fucking riddance.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Thanks for brightening my day.
I need to find out where his grave is, so I can leave something for him.
Not flowers.
The Unmitigated Gall
(3,817 posts)That is all.
NEOBuckeye
(2,781 posts)I dont often wish harm to befall anyone, but the death of man so racist and vile as Regnery, is not a loss at all.
Wish he could be dug up and brought back to life so he could be fried in the electric chairand with no water on the sponge, and then buried again.
What an evil, horrible person. Just like so many of these nasty billionaires like Charles Koch and Erik Prince. These people all need to be rounded up, and at the very least thrown in prison and have all their fortunes and assets seized and liquidated.
JHB
(37,160 posts)SharonAnn
(13,776 posts)SharonClark
(10,014 posts)dalton99a
(81,513 posts)In his own words:
In my ethnostate, I would exclude, as a rule of thumb, non-whites, non-Europeans, wherever, however you want to define them. So, that includes blacks. We keep getting back to blacks, but weve got to throw in Han Chinese, have to throw in Amerindians, people who are distinctly different.
In an interview with Buzzfeed News, 2017
For three generations, William H. Regnery IIs family has been a force in right-wing politics. His grandfather, William H. Regnery, was a founding member of the America First Committee, dedicated to maintaining American neutrality towards Nazi Germany. His cousin Al Regnery is a former president of Regnery Publishing, as well as a former official in the Department of Justice under President Ronald Reagan. There, as reported at the time by The New Republic, He was criticized by Republicans and Democrats alike for awarding a $186,710 grant to a dean at Jerry Falwells Liberty College for the purpose of designing a high-school course on the Constitution. He drew even more bipartisan criticism when he awarded $789,000 to Judith Reisman, a former songwriter for the Captain Kangaroo show, to do a study of the cartoons in Penthouse, Playboy, and Hustler. Since 2002, Al Regnery has chaired the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization that promotes conservatism on college campuses.
William Regnery II was steeped in conservative thought from early in his life. While he was in boarding school, his father bought him a subscription to Human Events, an early conservative magazine published by Henry Regnery, his uncle. (Henry split from that publication in 1947 to create Regnery Publishing, a influential right-wing press that has published books from conservative luminaries ranging from William F. Buckley and Jack Welch to Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin.) William Regnery II attended the University of Pennsylvania but left before he graduated to work for the 1964 Barry Goldwater presidential campaign.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/william-h-regnery-ii
LudwigPastorius
(9,148 posts)I did have the thought that I would have liked this to be the first thing that son of a bitch saw after he died.
peppertree
(21,636 posts)SCantiGOP
(13,871 posts)Ive never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
dhol82
(9,353 posts)Even many of the nazis were married and had children.
I wonder what shaped his mind to such an evil end.
dalton99a
(81,513 posts)according to public records
Chellee
(2,097 posts)From the article: "Regnery, who went by Bill, was born Feb. 25, 1941, into a prominent Republican family.
His grandfather and namesake, textile magnate William H. Regnery I, was a founding member of the infamous America First Committee. The organization, led by anti-Semitic aviator Charles Lindbergh, opposed Americas intervention in World War II and counted many Nazi sympathizers among its ranks.
In 1947, Bill Regnerys uncle, Henry, founded Regnery Publishing, which would grow into one of the most influential right-wing media dynasties in America. In its early years, the company published prominent conservative thinkers, including William F. Buckley, a racist and segregationist, and Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, the anti-communist conspiracist group."
The cousin, Alfred, mentioned in the article? When he ran for office in Wisconsin in the 70's, he lied about his home being broken into and his wife being raped. Police found no evidence of that actually happening. He didn't win that race.
So, the whole family is tainted.
Solly Mack
(90,769 posts)Jilly_in_VA
(9,979 posts)He's dead. Good.
Efilroft Sul
(3,579 posts)"Welcome home, Bill! I've been waiting a long, long time for you, and we have so much time to catch up!"
appleannie1
(5,067 posts)FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)William Regnery II, a man who inherited millions but struggled in business, tried for 15 years to ignite a racist political movement and failed. Then an unforeseen phenomenon named Donald Trump gave legitimacy to what Regnery had seeded long before: the alt-right. Now, the press-shy white separatist breaks his silence.
How did explicit racism move from a taboo to an open, unabashed force in American politics? A loose but sprawling internet army, often called the alt-right, gave white supremacy a massive megaphone. And with the rise of Donald Trumps candidacy, it suddenly seemed to be everywhere at once.
In fact, that movement had an infrastructure organizations, journals, conferences, money that had been laid down years before. It was in large part funded by one person: a secretive and aging multimillionaire named William H. Regnery II, the most influential racist youve never heard of.
Despite inheriting immense wealth, having grown up in a prominent family in the conservative movement, he had managed to chalk up virtually no public success in his first six decades of life. He never graduated from college, and he floundered in his attempt at running the family business.
But starting in 1999 when he convened a dozen other middle-aged white nationalists at an ornate seaside hotel nicknamed the Pink Palace he has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the quest to transform America and create what he calls a white ethnostate.
- more at link -
BuzzFeed graphic:
LudwigPastorius
(9,148 posts)buys a lot of white hoods and swastika armbands.
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)So I think he put up the seed money for their alt-right blogs and websites. That's how they were able to meet up and organize across the country. Once Facebook came along they already had a huge "friend" list ready to go.
Hassler
(3,379 posts)msfiddlestix
(7,282 posts)We need to know who they are, presumably they will be carrying on his legacy. It's probably in the will anyway.
freakin hell.
rpannier
(24,329 posts)He seems horrible and nasty
He does not appear to have ever married
So, that likely means all his fortune will go toward fascist organizations
msfiddlestix
(7,282 posts)I trust the SPLC is likely following this one closely.
rpannier
(24,329 posts)There have been several of these individuals that have bettered the world by dying. At least rummy will have company