Steve King, Iowa’s Racist 4th District Representative

“One phrase in that long article has created an unnecessary controversy. That was my mistake.”
–Steve King, Iowa’s 4th Congressional District Republican Representative on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives speaking about public criticism of his comments made in a New York Times interview, published January 10, 2019

TRANSLATION: That’s like saying, “Oops! I said ‘jigaboo’ when I should’ve said ‘darkie’.”

Here, in context, is what he said:
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

Iowa US Rep Steve King speaks at The Family Leadership Summit 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa, a thinly veiled Evangelical political summit sponsored in part by the Helms School of Government at Liberty University. Over several years, Liberty has had their own problems with charges of racism, and the Helms is named after late North Carolina Jesse Helms, himself a notorious racist.

When Steve King speaks about preserving “Western culture” or “Western civilization,” along with an obsessive discussion of birthrates and abortion rates among different ethnic groups, those are all buzzwords, catchphrases of ideologies (aka “dog whistles”) that signal to White Nationalists support of their objectives. It’s a type of openly used coded language cloaked in public apparel that means something very different to them than it does to the casual hearer – people whom are often unfamiliar with white supremacists’ cliques and the codewords they use in public speech to identify themselves to one another.

Texas US Senator Ted Cruz stumped for, and endorsed Iowa US Rep Steve King. Both men are Republicans.

Lawrence Rosenthal, Chairman of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies said of Steve King’s specific use of language, that “He uses the concepts of either ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’ to obfuscate that he’s talking about whiteness and race.”

Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, wrote of him that, “Steve King is basically an open white nationalist at this point.”

Iowa Republican Representative Steve King, gesturing on right, shows off his model of “The Wall” – which was ORIGINALLY HIS IDEA MORE THAN TEN YEARS BEFORE Trump’s Presidential bid – to retired Gen. John F. Kelly USMC before Kelly took office as secretary of homeland security. (Photo: Twitter.com/SteveKingIA)

When the new 116th Congress – with record numbers of women, African-Americans, the first Native American women and the first Muslim women – was sworn in, from his seat, Steve King looked over at them (members on the “other side of the aisle”) and said, “You could look over there and think the Democratic Party is no country for white men.”

If one wonders where the resurgent wave of racism in our United States has come from, one need look no further than Steve King and Iowa.

In their interview with Steve King, The New York Times noted that he related this story to them, that early in Trump’s term, he invited Steve King to the Oval Office — despite the fact that he had long been rejected by Republicans like then Speaker of the House John Boehner, and other traditional, centrist, moderate Republicans. He recalled that while he was there, President Trump boasted of having raised more money for Steve King’s Congressional campaigns than anyone else, including during a 2014 visit to Iowa.

While the GOP presidential candidate field was winnowing out, Donald Trump stumped for Steve King’s re-election in Iowa.

He replied and said, “Yes, Mr. President, but I market-tested your immigration policy for 14 years, and that ought to be worth something.”