Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is a horrible congressman but he’s a white man. Even better, he’s a white man who holds white nationalist and white supremacist beliefs and he wants to know when those terms became offensive ... because only a white nationalist or a white supremacist would.
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” King asked in an interview with the New York Times. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”
King also told the Times that he’s not a white nationalist or white supremacist.
“I want to make one thing abundantly clear; I reject those labels and the evil ideology that they define. Further, I condemn anyone that supports this evil and bigoted ideology which saw in its ultimate expression the systematic murder of 6 million innocent Jewish lives,” he said in a statement.
“It’s true that like the Founding Fathers I am an advocate for Western Civilization’s values, and that I profoundly believe that America is the greatest tangible expression of these ideals the World has ever seen. Under any fair political definition, I am simply a Nationalist.”
Except King keeps saying white nationalist or white supremacist shit.
This isn’t King’s first rodeo as this is from another piece I wrote on him in November 2018:
He’s been a card-carrying white nationalist since he joined Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District in 2013 and his reward points are piling up with each consecutive year. He has not only doubled-down on his positions to “Make America White Again” but he’s confused when people don’t understand his openly white agenda. He’s spouted racist and incendiary rhetoric since being elected and why should that stop now?
On Monday, King joked that he hoped “Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor would ‘elope to Cuba’ so conservatives can take control of the country’s highest court,” HuffPost reports.
And this is from HuffPost:
King attacked Sotomayor and Kagan in 2015 over their rulings in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. In September, he fiercely defended then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh against allegations of sexual misconduct. King’s comment on Monday appeared to indicate a hope that older, progressive-leaning justices might age off the court in time for President Donald Trump to appoint more justices like Kavanaugh.
King has a long history of making incendiary and bigoted comments. He recently drew backlash over an interview he gave to a far-right publication in Austria.
In the interview, King said he believed European cultures are superior to other cultures. He also expressed a belief that Europe and the United States are threatened by Muslim and Latino immigration.
“If we don’t defend Western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice,” King said.
The Republican has since lost a number of corporate donors, was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and blasted by top House Republican Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) for expressing white supremacist beliefs.
And then there was the time that King compared immigrants to dirt. So yeah, King is going to King and Iowa is going to Iowa and, as The Root’s Social Media Guru and resident Chief Beyoncè Officer, Corey Townsend, often says, “Water is wet.”
King continues to stir the racist pot by spouting race-laced stuff while claiming that he’s not a card-carrying member of the knights of white nationalism or white supremacy. He would like to know what’s so bad about the name because he doesn’t believe himself to be a member ... but other members do.
And I believe Steve King is genuine.
While we know “western civilization” is a code word for white supremacy (because there is nothing “civilized” about kidnapping Africans, using them as human chattel, stealing a continent from the Native Americans or instituting Jim Crow), I truly believe Steve King doesn’t think he said anything wrong. Like many white people, he actually believes that whiteness is superior and that he must fight to keep that ideology alive.
The idea of what King calls “nationalism” centers around the thought that outside ethnic groups will lead to the ruination of a country. But there is no such thing as nationalism in America unless the idea is held by the Native Americans. America is a country composed of the enslaved, immigrants and the collective will of those people. The only group in the history of this country who has rejected that collective will in favor of their own ideology is white people.
Those people fought a war to keep slavery when their nation wanted to outlaw it. Those people left the Democratic Party to keep segregation when their nation tried to stop Jim Crow. Steve King and men like him have never cared about their nation, they care about whiteness.
Therefore King and his ilk are not nationalists, they are white nationalists.
Which is to say, Steve King is a white man.