'The Only Language Women Understand Is Violence:' Inside Richard Spencer's Allegedly Abusive Marriage

The wife of white nationalist Richard Spencer has alleged that he was abusive in a slew of different ways while they were married, claiming that Pepe the Frog-loving firebrand repeatedly told her that the “only language women understand is violence,” according to explosive divorce documents.

In filings in Flathead County District Court in Montana obtained by BuzzFeed News, Spencer’s wife Nina Kroupiianova, who married the alt-right provocateur in August 2010 and has two children with him, claims in the documents that he was “physically, emotionally, verbally and financially abusive” while they were living together; she said specifically that she was “being hit, being grabbed around by her hair, being held down in a manner causing bruising and being prevented from calling for help.”  

Kroupiianova has allegedly “been reluctant to call police or seek an order of protection for fear of further reprisal” by Spencer, her lawyers said in the filings.

The documents also argue that Spencer’s whole family has been at increased risk of violence due to his “controversial” public image.

“Despite the risk to his family,” Kroupiianova said in court, “[Spencer] continues to engage in extremely polarizing public speech advocating ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’ and a white-only ‘ethno-state’ which tends to invite passions and violence.”

Spencer is alleged to have kept a loaded firearm in his bedroom that his children could access after he was “assaulted in public” the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Kroupiianova also says in the filings that Spencer’s increased drinking directly correlated to his “aggressive and erratic behavior” toward her and people like the children’s babysitter. He is said to have called the caretaker a “f—king sub-mediocre human being” and a “f—king moron.”

Most notably, Kroupiianova claims that Spencer’s catchphrase, of sorts, was, “The only language women understand is violence.”

She says that in 2012, Spencer “had me down on the ground smashing my head into the floor,” while in early 2014, while she was four months pregnant, Spencer “got on top of me, held me down with his bodyweight, and held me by my neck and lower jaw.”  

In October 2017, when she was nine months pregnant, she alleges that Spencer tried to punch her, while transcripts of audio recordings of the incident show Kroupiianova saying to Spencer, “You’re going to hit a pregnant woman?” And then later on, “You just tried to push me into the freaking stove.”

Kroupiianova also maintains that Spencer told her one more than one occasion that, “I’m famous, and you are not! I’m important, and you are not.”

Spencer, for his part, said in the filings, which include his own 48-page affidavit, that he “dispute[s] many of her assertions” and “denies every, and all allegations.”

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