Hundreds of people protested a white nationalist’s speaking engagement at the Texas A&M University campus Tuesday night.

Several groups protested outside of the student center during and before the appearance by Richard Spencer, who leads a white nationalist organization.

‘At the end of the day, America belongs to white men,’ Spencer said to an audience.

About 400 people filled a student center ballroom — some listening to Spencer, others jeering him.

Videos and images on social media showed riot police moving protesters from the Memorial Student Center as Spencer spoke in the building.

Spencer, who is known for spreading white supremacist views, was disowned by his elite Texas prep school last month when he was caught on camera saying ‘hail Trump’ as the crowd flashed him a Nazi salute.

He told the network that the university’s reaction to his speaking ‘shows the power of the alt-right and the power of our ideas’.

A group of officers were even barricading a stairway, while protesters chanted ‘The whole world is watching.’

One student from the university tweeted out several videos of the scene. One video several people were heard yelling, ‘Let them go!’ as police tried to ‘push protesters’ out the door.

In one video, a woman was dragged from the crowd and onto the floor by police, who tied her hands behind her back with a plastic tie.

‘No Nazi’s, no KKK, no fascist USA!’ protesters chanted.

At one point during Spencer’s speech, a woman dressed in a clown outfit walked in front of the stage holding a sign that said: ‘He’s the real bozo.’

Those attending the speech had to walk a gantlet of chanting protesters while leaving the hall.

Hundreds more gathered at nearby Kyle Field to hear music and speeches highlighting diversity and unity as a counter to Spencer.

Earlier on Tuesday, some protesters silently held placards while others loudly chanted slogans.

A&M officials say they didn’t schedule the speech by Spencer. Instead, he was invited to speak by a former student who reserved campus space available to the public.

Texas A&M Senior Vice President Amy Smith told CNN in a statement: ‘To be clear, Texas A&M University, including faculty, staff, students and/or student groups, did not invite this speaker to our campus nor do we endorse his rhetoric in any way.’

The university is located in College Station, a town where Aggie alum Preston Wiginton, who invited Spencer to the campus, lives.

Because the school is a public university, permission for the event could not be denied, officials told CNN.

In a Monday interview on CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360,’ Wiginton said: ‘I think the reaction to Trump being elected, and the reaction with the alt-right being popular, is a reaction to it (US) declining as a white nation.’

Wiginton said he wanted to bring Spencer to campus because he wanted to spread the message that white people face marginalization.

‘Why would I want to see America become less white?’ Wiginton asked rhetorically in the interview. ‘Why would I want to be displaced and marginalized?’

In his interview with CNN, he also addressed the speech he gave last month when members of the alt-right movement gathered to celebrate Donald Trump’s victory.

‘Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!’ Spencer shouted during the speech in November, as the crowd gave him a Nazi salute.

Shortly after the controversial speech, his prep school, St Marks, said that the values honored by friends and alumni of the school were ‘under attack’ by their white supremacist classmate.

‘Spencer’s views are un-American and a threat to civil society,’ they said in a statement. ‘We reject them and urge everyone to join us in condemning him and his agenda.’

He made the speech at a gathering by the National Policy Institute, a think-tank that is part of the alt-right movement that includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites, on Saturday, November 21.

The headmaster of St Mark’s School, in Texas, David W Dini, told NBC News that Spencer’s comments brought ‘even greater attention to these hateful, divisive, racist, and anti-Semitic views.’

SOURCE: Daily Mail / AP