Rep. Steve King Being A Nazi Out Loud Again

It's not really big news that Iowa Congressman Steve King is a big old racist, what with his talk of most Dream Act kids being drug mules with "calves the size of cantaloupes" and his fears of America being overwhelmed by immigrant hordes. But King stepped it up a bit over the weekend with this tweet in support of Dutch politician (and racist, did we mention racist?) Geert Wilders in this week's elections in the Netherlands:

Hmm. It's almost as if he's gone over the edge, or a little farther over the edge, since he already hopped on the white supremacist grand wizardwagonlast fall, when he wished good luck to a far-right German politician with this cheerful little message of support:

So we got your fears of cultural suicide by demographic transformation and your worries about "restoring" our civilization, which can't be done with "somebody else's babies." Pretty charming! The other pro-Wilders Tweet was from September, so we guess folks in King's Iowa district are good with a little race-baiting, as long as it uses the right dog whistles at least. He's not racist, after all, since he didn't use that one word, and also because he's talking about "culture," as he sort of explained on CNN this morning:

Rep. Steve King doubles down on his controversial tweet: "I meant exactly what I said" https: //t.co/6OZtrfIwim   https: //t.co/4SYoAAiGtQ 
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 13, 2017 

He "meant exactly what he meant," you see, and he's talking about preserving culture, not race, for heaven's sake. Europeans aren't having enough European babies, and if they don't fuck more, the not-European hordes will take over. That's all he meant. And he loves American diversity, as long as it looks like the crowd at a football stadium, preferably one full of Cornhuskers. (Thirty years ago, if possible). He just doesn't like all these illegals (or legals, for that matter) coming here and refusing to assimilate, and also he has completely ignored research showing that current Latino immigrants are assimilating at the same rate as previous generations of immigrants. On the other hand, those researchers don't have a hissy about cultural suicide every time they're asked to press 1 for English.

King went on to explain that he really does like the idea of some good old-fashioned homogeneity, because sameness is the spice of life:

Oh, heck, Steve, all you need to do is read some science fiction, then, in which most humans are a pleasing shade of caramel in a few centuries. That may not be what he was going for, though. It's also rather difficult to reconcile his insistence that it's "not about race" with that desire that we "look a lot the same," unless maybe he means we'll all be we wearing the same Arby's uniform (no risk they'll ever go halal). Not surprisingly, King's Tweet brought to mind his similar defense, during the Republican convention, of poor beleaguered white people. When Esquire columnist and Friend of Wonkette Charlie Pierce observed, “If you're really optimistic, you can say this was the last time that old white people would command the Republican Party's attention, its platform, its public face," King spoke up in defense of People of Pallor:

King: This 'old white people' business does get a little tired, Charlie. I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out. Where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?Chris Hayes: Than white people?
King: Than, than Western civilization itself. It's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That's all of Western civilization.

We're pretty sure those non-whites did one or two things, like the whole foundation of civilization in the first place, the invention of the alphabet by those people in Phoenix, and the Chinese with their invention of gunpowder and pasta and all that. But what have they done for us lately, besides winning Nobel Prizes and stealing our spelling bees? 

King's message was wildly popular in some predictable corners:  

If you're getting ecstatic responses from David Duke, you may want to reconsider some of your basic assumptions. Also, best reply to that Duke Tweet we've seen: "Every time you tweet I'm gonna race mix."

But King certainly got some people excited, like this lady who sounds like she has to be joking, but apparently is completely in earnest:

Now, before you good decent Wonkers start in with the despair, let's also keep in mind that the vast majority of reaction to King, online and in meatspace, has been appropriately disgusted. Take, for instance, this fine follow-up from Rep. Ted Lieu of California:

Former presidential candidate and never-Trumper Evan McMullin Tweeted, "GOP Congressman @SteveKingIA promotes the un-American ideas of white nationalism. Will any Republican congressmen condemn his bigotry?" So far, we haven't seen a heck of a lot of condemnation from big names, although Rep. Carlos Curbello, a Florida Republican, took him to task, demanding King put his race card on the table: "@SteveKingIA What exactly do you mean? Do I qualify as 'somebody else's baby?'" We're looking forward to King saying something smarmy about how Lieu and Curbello's babies speaka da English, so they're perfectly American, but THOSE PEOPLE are a threat to "our" culture.

Beyond the domestic reaction, King has also wandered into the middle of a Dutch election that's already increasing friction between the Netherlands and its NATO ally Turkey. Hmm. Tensions in NATO? Wonder if that's something the Trump/Putin administration is excited for?

In conclusion, fuck Steve King, and please consider a campaign donation to Kim Weaver, who's already gearing up to run against King again in 2018. King's helping her out, at least: Sunday, following his Tweet, she received 895 donations for $19K, almost a fifth of her fundraising goal for September.

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[ Steve King on Twitter / WaPo / NYT /   WaPo ]