Politics

Republican Congressman Promotes Far-Right European Politician

March 12th 2017

On Sunday, Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, made his latest statement promoting white supremacist rhetoric when he tweeted out praise for a far-right Dutch politician along with the message that the United States “can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke tweeted his support for the statement.

King, who represents a district that was 93 percent white in 2015, sent the tweet amid a heated election in the Netherlands, in which far-right politician Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) is fighting for dominance. Wilders has become notorious for his anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric, having said that freedom, democracy, and human rights are incompatible with Islam and having called Moroccan immigrants “scum.”

Wilders, convicted of hate speech last year, has campaigned on taking hard-line stances on immigration, closing mosques, and banning the Quran.

Wilders and King have been seen together, most notably in a tweet sent out King last year, in which he lamented the “cultural suicide” that can occur due to demographic changes. The term is one commonly used by white nationalist and white supremacists who believe that Eurocentric nations will lose their identities and cultures as more non-white immigrants enter.

King has put forward a very public effort to throw his support behind far-right politicians in Europe, but he is not alone in this regard. In the past two years, the PVV’s donations have come almost exclusively from right-wing Americans and American organizations.

This isn’t the first time King has been seen as promoting white supremacist messaging. Last year, King was slammed for questioning whether non-whites have ever contributed to civilization.

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