This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) appears to be going public as an outright white supremacist. On September 18, he released a tweet showing himself posing alongside European fascist leaders with the phrase, "Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.”
@FraukePetry Wishing you successful vote. Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end. @geertwilderspvv pic.twitter.com/Kp6uieaMDG
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) September 18, 2016
The text is a reference to a racist tenet—common among white nationalists and fascists—that people of color, immigrants and Muslims pose a threat to “white purity.”
In that same tweet, King addressed Frauke Petry, pictured to his right, stating: “Wishing you a successful vote.” Petry heads the far-right Alternative for Germany Party as an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim extremist. Sometimes referred to as “Adolfina,” Petry once called for German border police to shoot migrants and refugees seeking to enter the country. A prominent member of her partyproclaimed that European states’ welcoming of refugees will only encourage Africans to reproduce.
The other person shown in the tweet, pictured to the right of Petry, is Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch fascist Party for Freedom. Wilders is an anti-Muslim extremist who has repeatedly claimed that the Koran is comparable to Hitler’sMein Kampf. Speaking at the July Republican National Convention in support of Donald Trump, he said: "I don’t want more Muslims in the Netherlands and I am proud to say that.”
King has expressed enthusiasm for presidential candidate Donald Trump,particularly when the presidential candidate makes openly racist and anti-Muslim statements, but claims to be holding out on a "full-throated" endorsement.
While this is not the first time King has expressed overt racism, he appears to have ratcheted up his rhetoric in recent months.
During a panel discussion hosted in July by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, King outrageously argued that white people make the most valuable contributions to “civilization.”
“This whole ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie,” King said. “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 are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
Hayes replied, “Than white people?”
King said: “Than Western civilization itself that’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.”
But King’s troubling statements date back further. In 2014, he called for the government to start spying indiscriminately on U.S. mosques. And in 2015, he publicly smeared two Muslim congressional representatives on the basis of their religion. "You won't get Keith Ellison or Andre Carson in this Congress to renounce Sharia law, let alone somebody that's just come out of the Middle East that is someone who has been steeped in Islam for a lifetime,” he told Talking Points Memo.
In a 2013 interview with the right-wing outlet Newsmax, he insulted undocumented children by employing racist and xenophobic stereotypes, stating: “For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds—and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
King’s office did not immediately respond to a request to explain King's white supremacist remarks.
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