Steve King Is Back on His (Racist) Bullshit

Rep. Steve King, the openly white nationalist congressman from Iowa, is back on his bullshit. After keeping his head down for approximately, what, a month? King decided it was time to pour gasoline on the fire yet again.

King’s whole schtick is hedging extremely racist statements with the disclaimers like “it’s not about race,” dogwhistles he’s used throughout his career. And guess what! He did it again. As the Des Moines Register reported last night, King told a told hall crowd:

“If we presume that every culture is equal and has an equal amount to contribute to our civilization, then we’re devaluing the contributions of the people that laid the foundation for America and that’s our founding fathers,” King said in Fort Dodge. “It is not about race, it’s never been about race. It is about culture.”

There he is, the white nationalist we all know and (absolutely do not) love. His remarks are flatly stupid along with boldly racist: The Founding Fathers were all white because they lived in a time when only white people could wield political power in the (soon to be) United States. This is not a difficult thing to work out, but if you are a massive idiot looking for a way to feel better about hating immigrants and anyone with darker skin than you, this is easy justification.

Racists love arguments like these—actually, there’s something inherently different about other cultures!—because it gives them thin cover to claim they’re not actually racist, just interested in culture. But holding up the West as superior is just another way of saying white people are superior, and oddly enough, conservative thinkers like Ben Shapiro love to talk about the West, just like King. Funny how that works out.