White supremacist Richard Spencer has been banned from more than two dozen European countries for five years, according to reports.
The European Union’s Schengen Area, a group of 26 countries that allow visa-free travel, banned Spencer, who has become a poster-boy for white nationalism in America.
Poland’s state-run news agency PAP announced the news on Wednesday and quoted Spencer condemning the ban: “I’m being treated like a criminal by the Polish government. It’s just insane.
He added: “I haven’t done anything. What are they accusing me of?”
AP said Spencer planned to contest the ban.
Last month, Poland expressed its opposition to Spencer’s plan to attend a seminar organised around the country’s independence day and an international right-wing conference.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its strong opposition to visits to Poland by individuals who propagate views that are based on racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic ideas,” it said in a statement.
Spencer told the AP he decided to cancel his travel plans because “it just didn’t feel like it was worth it”.
He was previously banned from the Schengen Area for three years after he attempted to host a white nationalist conference in Hungary in 2014.
Spencer ended up being arrested and imprisoned for three days before being deported, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This week Spencer and his think tank, the National Policy Institute, was kicked out of a Maryland winery where they had gathered for a conference once the owners discovered who was hosting it.
Last month a state of emergency was declared in Florida in advance of a university speech Spencer was to make in Gainesville.
Thousands of protesters greeted Spencer and his followers with “we don’t want your Nazi hate” and “go home Nazis”.
Earlier this month Twitter removed the verified status of Spencer and Britain’s Tommy Robinson for breeching its new guidelines.
Users can now have their coveted blue ticks taken away for a number of offences including “promoting hate”, “harassment” and posting “gruesome, shocking and disturbing imagery”.
Almost a year ago Spencer, along with other white nationalists, celebrated Donald Trump’s presidential victory with a Nazi salute and a “heil victory” chant.
At the time Spencer called Trump’s win an “awakening”.