White nationalist planning protest at Texas A&M

Onetime student wants event to grow alt-right

A white nationalist organizer said he’s planning a White Lives Matter event at Texas A&M University next month, announcing the protest the same day a person died near a “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Va.

Preston Wiginton, a onetime Texas A&M student who brought white nationalist Richard Spencer to the College Station campus in December, said Saturday that he aims to use the event to grow the so-called alt-right, a political group that largely rejects immigration and multiculturalism.

A Texas A&M official confirmed Wiginton booked an outdoor public space Sept. 11. A spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

“While he has the right of free speech, so, too, do we have the right to refute those views and get on with the daily business of a world-class university,” spokeswoman Amy Smith told the Battalion, the student newspaper.

In December, Texas A&M hosted speakers, artists and singers at the football stadium at an event called Aggies United to counter the Spencer program. Hundreds of others protested outside both venues with signs that rejected hate and racism.

Wiginton said he plans to host the White Lives Matter event Sept. 11 at the Rudder Fountain on Texas A&M’s campus, which was named after Maj. Gen. James E. Rudder, a World War II hero who fought Germans on D-Day. At the Charlottesville event this weekend, attendees brought Nazi paraphernalia. “The key purpose of the event is to protest the liberal agenda of White Guilt and white genocide that is taught at most all universities in America,” Wiginton wrote in a news release.

Holding the event at Texas A&M, Wiginton said, is also an effort to pressure the university to stand up for free speech.

It’s also familiar territory for Wiginton — he took classes in College Station in 2006 and 2007 but never graduated.

Bobby Brooks, Texas A&M’s student body president, said in a Facebook post that he will develop a plan to keep students “safe and informed.”

“I will never know what it is like to be a student of color at Texas A&M University and in this world, but I acknowledge that this rally, offensively hosted on September 11th, signifies hatred,” he wrote. “As Aggies, we are better than people who attempt to derail our safety and our right to receive an education. Their success is built off of how well they intimidate us, how well they control our lives, and I simply will not let them detract from the fact that Texas A&M actively develops leaders of character.”