'Absolutely repugnant': Biden's campaign forcefully disavows an endorsement from neo-Nazi Richard Spencer

• Richard Spencer, a prominent neo-Nazi who coined the term "alt-right," said over the weekend that he would vote for Joe Biden in the November election.
• "I plan to vote for Biden and a straight democratic ticket," Spencer tweeted on Sunday. "It's not based on 'accelerationism' or anything like that; the liberals are clearly more competent people."
• Biden's campaign forcefully disavowed Spencer's endorsement shortly after, describing him as part of the "vile forces of hate who have come crawling out from under rocks" in the US.
• Andrew Bates, the rapid-response director for Biden's campaign, tweeted that what Spencer stands for is "absolutely repugnant," adding, "Your support is 10,000% percent unwelcome here."

Richard Spencer, a prominent neo-Nazi who coined the term "alt-right," said on Sunday that he planned to vote for the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.

"I plan to vote for Biden and a straight democratic ticket," Spencer tweeted on Sunday. "It's not based on 'accelerationism' or anything like that; the liberals are clearly more competent people."

Shortly after, Biden's campaign forcefully disavowed Spencer's endorsement.

"When Joe Biden says we are in a battle for the soul of our nation against vile forces of hate who have come crawling out from under rocks, you are the epitome of what he means," Andrew Bates, the rapid-response director for the Biden campaign, tweeted. "What you stand for is absolutely repugnant. Your support is 10,000% percent unwelcome here."

Spencer was an outspoken Trump supporter during the 2016 election and made headlines when he shouted "hail Trump" at a Washington event for a white supremacist think tank shortly after Trump's election and was greeted with cheers and Nazi salutes.

The think tank, National Policy Institute, is spearheaded by Spencer and describes itself as "an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world."

Spencer has repeatedly called for "peaceful ethnic cleansing" and a "new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans."

Spencer was also a featured keynote speaker at the racist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The rally devolved into chaos and violence when a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters and killed a 32-year-old woman named Heather Heyer.

Trump initially refused to explicitly condemn the rally's white-supremacist roots and said there were "very fine people" on both sides.

After he faced harsh blowback, Trump more forcefully denounced "racist violence" at the white-nationalist rally from "the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans."

Spencer brushed off Trump's denunciation, telling reporters afterward that the president's comments were "kumbaya nonsense" and "only a dumb person would take those lines seriously." He also said people in Trump's inner circle like the immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller and then White House adviser Steve Bannon were "connected to the alt-right."

Trump lost Spencer's support earlier this year, however, after he ordered the assassination of Iran's top military general, Qassem Soleimani.

"I deeply regret voting for and promoting Donald Trump in 2016," Spencer tweeted at the time.