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packman

(16,296 posts)
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 10:18 AM Jul 2021

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 Regnery’s 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

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William Regnery II, Reclusive Millionaire Who Financed American Fascists, Dead At 80 (Original Post) packman Jul 2021 OP
His Will probably.... FarPoint Jul 2021 #1
Ugh, what an awful prospect-- them having more $ LymphocyteLover Jul 2021 #23
K evin MacDonald -- perhaps America's foremost anti-Semite, underpants Jul 2021 #2
Good riddance to bad trash... AZ8theist Jul 2021 #3
Lets us not sully and malign real honest trash by lumping him in with it. cstanleytech Jul 2021 #14
I have the utmost respect for honest garbage.... AZ8theist Jul 2021 #28
According to Bette Davis, it's improper to say anything but good of the dead... MrsCheaplaugh Jul 2021 #4
One more added to my list.. Ricky-by-the-lake Jul 2021 #5
I got this. Mr. Evil Jul 2021 #10
Yikes! lagomorph777 Jul 2021 #20
hell yeah! Ricky-by-the-lake Jul 2021 #41
May he rot in hell. BComplex Jul 2021 #6
If only their poison died with them Warpy Jul 2021 #7
Hope he suffered dalton99a Jul 2021 #8
Agreed. At least that would have been some justice. n/t MarcA Jul 2021 #31
Good ... Xoan Jul 2021 #9
yeah...that's too bad....fuck him.... bahboo Jul 2021 #11
Milliomaire facists Old Okie Jul 2021 #12
Good riddance. JohnSJ Jul 2021 #13
This part in the OP article made me take notice -- BumRushDaShow Jul 2021 #15
Yet another reason for bringing back a robust tax on inherited wealth. thucythucy Jul 2021 #16
He died July 2nd. First paragraph says "earlier this month". . . . nt Bernardo de La Paz Jul 2021 #17
The only good fascist is a dead fascist. NEOBuckeye Jul 2021 #18
Good news! lagomorph777 Jul 2021 #19
Scum. The Unmitigated Gall Jul 2021 #21
What a truly vile person. NEOBuckeye Jul 2021 #22
Any connection to RW propaganda mill and Wingnut Welfare dispenser Regnery Press? JHB Jul 2021 #24
Yes, read the article. SharonAnn Jul 2021 #25
That's too easy. SharonClark Jul 2021 #40
Yep. His uncle founded that publishing empire dalton99a Jul 2021 #26
I don't believe in Hell (or Heaven, really), but... LudwigPastorius Jul 2021 #27
"And now, my son, thou shalt be reborn..." peppertree Jul 2021 #35
Clarence Darrow quote fits here: SCantiGOP Jul 2021 #29
Does anybody know if he produced any children? Just curious. dhol82 Jul 2021 #30
Never married, no kids dalton99a Jul 2021 #32
What shaped his mind - His family. Chellee Jul 2021 #39
He lived too long. Solly Mack Jul 2021 #33
Speak only good of the dead. Jilly_in_VA Jul 2021 #34
Looks like Limbaugh and Rumsfeld got the day off in Hell. Efilroft Sul Jul 2021 #36
Some in the GOP lost one of their donors appleannie1 Jul 2021 #37
BuzzFeed News article from 2017: "The Money Man Behind the Alt-Right" FakeNoose Jul 2021 #38
I'd bet a half a million bucks and change... LudwigPastorius Jul 2021 #47
Yes a lot of this was before Twitter and Facebook FakeNoose Jul 2021 #48
Maybe fascist lover, Charles Koch will take a hint and join Regnery in post-retirement. Hassler Jul 2021 #42
His Family? msfiddlestix Jul 2021 #43
The only one quoted for an article I read was a cousin, Alfred rpannier Jul 2021 #45
just great. wack a mole. msfiddlestix Jul 2021 #46
And another one gone, another one gone. Another one bites the dust rpannier Jul 2021 #44

underpants

(182,271 posts)
2. K evin MacDonald -- perhaps America's foremost anti-Semite,
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 10:24 AM
Jul 2021

Boy that’s something being written about you that you can’t get away from.

Mr. Evil

(2,746 posts)
10. I got this.
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 11:34 AM
Jul 2021

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.

Old Okie

(135 posts)
12. Milliomaire facists
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 11:46 AM
Jul 2021

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.

BumRushDaShow

(127,275 posts)
15. This part in the OP article made me take notice --
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 12:02 PM
Jul 2021
(snip)

The Regnery family’s influence extended beyond the publishing world. Bill Regnery’s 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 didn’t 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

(7,983 posts)
16. Yet another reason for bringing back a robust tax on inherited wealth.
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 12:13 PM
Jul 2021

This racist creep would likely never have had this kind of money to throw around if we limited inherited wealth.

NEOBuckeye

(2,778 posts)
18. The only good fascist is a dead fascist.
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 12:19 PM
Jul 2021

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)
19. Good news!
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 12:21 PM
Jul 2021

Thanks for brightening my day.

I need to find out where his grave is, so I can leave something for him.

Not flowers.

NEOBuckeye

(2,778 posts)
22. What a truly vile person.
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 12:35 PM
Jul 2021

I don’t 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 chair—and 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.

dalton99a

(81,065 posts)
26. Yep. His uncle founded that publishing empire
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 12:53 PM
Jul 2021
About William H. Regnery II

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 we’ve 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 II’s 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 Falwell’s 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

(8,943 posts)
27. I don't believe in Hell (or Heaven, really), but...
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 12:53 PM
Jul 2021

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.



SCantiGOP

(13,855 posts)
29. Clarence Darrow quote fits here:
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 01:11 PM
Jul 2021

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

dhol82

(9,351 posts)
30. Does anybody know if he produced any children? Just curious.
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 01:17 PM
Jul 2021

Even many of the nazis were married and had children.

I wonder what shaped his mind to such an evil end.

Chellee

(2,086 posts)
39. What shaped his mind - His family.
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 04:21 PM
Jul 2021

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 America’s intervention in World War II and counted many Nazi sympathizers among its ranks.

In 1947, Bill Regnery’s 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.

Efilroft Sul

(3,573 posts)
36. Looks like Limbaugh and Rumsfeld got the day off in Hell.
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 02:56 PM
Jul 2021

"Welcome home, Bill! I've been waiting a long, long time for you, and we have so much time to catch up!"

FakeNoose

(32,329 posts)
38. BuzzFeed News article from 2017: "The Money Man Behind the Alt-Right"
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 03:37 PM
Jul 2021

(link) https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/hes-spent-almost-20-years-funding-the-racist-right-it

This Man Used His Inherited Fortune To Fund The Racist Right

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 Trump’s 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 you’ve 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:





FakeNoose

(32,329 posts)
48. Yes a lot of this was before Twitter and Facebook
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 11:34 PM
Jul 2021

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.

msfiddlestix

(7,264 posts)
43. His Family?
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 09:01 PM
Jul 2021

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

(24,304 posts)
45. The only one quoted for an article I read was a cousin, Alfred
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 09:29 PM
Jul 2021

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

rpannier

(24,304 posts)
44. And another one gone, another one gone. Another one bites the dust
Fri Jul 16, 2021, 09:21 PM
Jul 2021

There have been several of these individuals that have bettered the world by dying. At least rummy will have company

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