Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has been harping on about how immigration is destroying America since the era when Donald Trump was a mere failed crooked real estate developer reduced to playing a successful businessman on a mediocre low-brow “reality” show.
The long-time Iowa representative of what some would call the neo-Nazi wing of the Republican party has been advocating for a border wall since long before it became a sword for Trump to fall on, and is so unapologetic in his racism that it’s practically a religion to him.
His morally bankrupt beliefs were on full display in an interview published in The New York Times today where Congressman King’s statements were as horrifying as any plot written by the novelist with a similar name but diametrically opposed political views, Stephen King.
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King actually asked the New York Times readers. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”
Yes, you read that correctly, King just repudiated one of the seminal principles in the founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence by endorsing white supremacism over the self-evident truths “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
KIng’s radical racial views violate not just the basic political values our nation was founded upon, but the very Christian teachings that helped create the Western Civilization that King is supposedly so concerned about immigration destroying.
The Times article details Rep. King’s support of the ultra-right nationalist conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement,” a belief that ” shadowy elites are working behind the scenes to reduce white populations to minorities in their own countries.” King’s embrace of this crackpot delusion has led him to oppose the contraception coverage mandated by the Affordable Care Act.
“That’s not constructive to our culture and our civilization,” King said in a speech in the House. “If we let our birthrate get down below the replacement rate, we’re a dying civilization,” he claimed, ignoring the dangers that the world’s overpopulation has had on the environment and the earth’s diminishing resources.
King points to Europe’s refugee crisis as an example of the “Great Replacement.”
“Great replacement, yes,” Mr. King said in the interview. “These people walking into Europe by ethnic migration, 80 percent are young men.”
The congressman joins the tiki-torch-carrying white nationalists who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia last year while chanting “Jews will not replace us” in his support of this reprehensible view.
Rep. King’s white-bred rejection of multiculturalism as a desirable and productive social goal rooted in the very immigration melting pot that created modern America is another aspect of his hateful rhetoric.
“What does this diversity bring that we don’t already have? Mexican food. Chinese food,” he said. “Those things, well, that’s fine, but what does it bring that we don’t have that is worth the price?”
King’s unmentioned price is his being forced to co-exist with people who don’t look, act, and think exactly the way he does, a condemnable intolerance that is not only hateful and dehumanizing to others, but is the basis of human conflict that has fueled wars and the deaths of millions from time immemorial. That’s a price that humanity needs to evolve away from not seek to return to.
The Iowa representative must have realized that he revealed too much of his true nature in his interview with The New York Times since he released a statement trying to walk back the obvious conclusions of the meaning of the words he was recorded speaking.
My statement on the New York Times article. pic.twitter.com/IjBHgZYgRD
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 10, 2019
The congressman’s attempted repudiation of the racial connotations of his statements belie the facts of what he has actually said and what his legislative record demonstrates.
Like President Trump, Rep. King wants the “white” in “white nationalist” to be silent and implied, imbued with plausible deniability designed for consumption by decent human beings, but unmistakably the entire point for their racist supporters.
Iowa should be ashamed at having such a despicable bigot representing them in Congress. At least as ashamed as the rest of decent Americans are of having one dwelling in the White House.
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Original reporting by Trip Gabriel in The New York Times.
