[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 16, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E56-E57]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
A TIMELINE OF STEVE KING'S RACIST REMARKS AND DIVISIVE ACTIONS
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HON. BOBBY L. RUSH
of illinois
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Mr. RUSH. Madam Speaker, I would like to include in the Record, an
article by Trip Gabriel that was published in the New York Times on
January 15, 2019 detailing racist remarks and divisive actions made by
Rep. Steve King.
[From the New York Times, Jan. 15, 2019]
A Timeline of Steve King's Racist Remarks and Divisive Actions
(By Trip Gabriel)
While some Republicans suggested the Iowa congressman's
views were new to them, Mr. King has a long and documented
history of denigrating racial minorities.
Representative Steve King of Iowa, who was stripped of his
House committee seats on Monday night after making remarks
defending white supremacy, has a long history of racist
comments and insults about immigrants.
Republicans rarely rebuked him until recently, with some
suggesting that Mr. King's language and views were new to
them.
``This just popped up on Friday,'' Representative Steve
Scalise, the second-ranking House Republican, said on Sunday,
when asked if the party would penalize Mr. King for saying,
in an interview with The Times, ``White nationalist, white
supremacist, Western civilization--how did that language
become offensive?''
National Republicans courted his political support in Iowa:
He was a national co-chairman of Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential
effort and of Gov. Kim Reynolds' 2018 election. House
leadership appointed him chairman of the subcommittee on the
Constitution and civil justice. And President Trump boasted
in the Oval Office that he raised more money for Mr. King
than for anyone else. Yet Mr. King, who won a ninth term in
November, has publicly promoted white nationalists and neo-
Nazis on Twitter and disparaged nonwhite groups for years.
2002
Mr. King, in the Iowa State Senate, files a bill requiring
schools teach that the United States ``is the unchallenged
greatest nation in the world and that it has derived its
strength from . . . Christianity, free enterprise capitalism
and Western civilization.''
Mr. King is the chief sponsor of a law making English the
official language of Iowa.
2005
Now in Congress, Mr. King introduces the English Language
Unity Act, a bill to make English the official language of
the United States.
Mr. King sues the Iowa Secretary of State for posting
voting information on an official website in Spanish,
Laotian, Bosnian and Vietnamese.
2006
At a rally in Las Vegas, Mr. King calls the deaths of
Americans at the hands of undocumented immigrants ``a slow-
motion Holocaust.'' He claims that 25 Americans die daily
because of undocumented immigrants, an unsupported and
illogical leap from government statistics, which years later
influences talking points by President Trump.
On the House floor, Mr. King demonstrates a model of a 12-
foot concrete border wall topped with electrified wire that
he designed: ``We need to do a few other things on top of
that wall, and one of them being to put a little bit of wire
on top here to provide a disincentive for people to climb
over the top or put a ladder there. We could also electrify
this wire . . . We do that with livestock all the time.''
2010
Mr. King on the House floor, speaking of how law
enforcement officers can spot undocumented immigrants:
What kind of clothes people wear . . . what kind of shoes
people wear, what kind of accent they have . . . sometimes
it's just a sixth sense they can't put their finger on.
2011
Mr. King in a speech opposing the Affordable Care Act's
mandate to cover contraception:
Preventing babies being born is not medicine. That's not
constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let
our birthrate get down below the replacement rate, we're a
dying civilization.
2012
On a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference
with Peter Brimelow, an open white nationalist, Mr. King
referred to multiculturalism as:
A tool for the Left to subdivide a culture and civilization
into our own little ethnic enclaves and pit us against each
other.
2013
Mr. King on why he opposes legal status for Dreamers, who
were brought into the country as children:
For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out
there that weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size
of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana
across the desert. Those people would be legalized with the
same act.
2015
Mr. King invites the far-right, anti-Islam Dutch politician
Geert Wilders to Washington and appears with him at the
Capitol. Mr. Wilders has called Islam ``not a religion,''
said the Quran was ``worse than Mein Kampf,'' and called for
the closing of mosques.
Mr. King tweets a selfie with Mr. Wilders in front of a
portrait of Winston Churchill.
[[Page E57]]
Mr. Wilders praises Mr. King for having ``the guts to speak
out.''
2016
At the Republican National Convention in July, Mr. King
claims that nonwhite groups haven't contributed as much as
whites to civilization: ``This whole business does get a
little tired. I would ask you to go back through history and
figure out where are these contributions that have been made
by these other categories of people you are talking about.
Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to
civilization?''
Mr. King to The Washington Post days later: ``The idea of
multiculturalism, that every culture is equal--that's not
objectively true . . . We've been fed that information for
the past 25 years, and we're not going to become a greater
nation if we continue to do that.''
In a tweet during a meeting in Amsterdam with Mr. Wilders
and Frauke Petry, the leader of Germany's far-right
Alternative for Germany party, Mr. King says, ``Cultural
suicide by demographic transformation must end.''
In October, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right
party, tweets a picture of her meeting with Mr. King, the
first elected American official to meet her.
Also in October, Mr. King meets in Austria with leaders of
the far-right Freedom Party, including Heinz-Christian
Strache and Norbert Hofer. The party was founded in the 1950s
by former Nazis.
2017
``Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our
destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody
else's babies,'' Mr. King tweets in his endorsement of Mr.
Wilders in Dutch elections.
On March 14, Mr. King defends the tweet on Breitbart radio:
``We're watching as Western civilization is shrinking in the
face of the massive, epic migration that is pouring into
Europe. That's the core of that tweet. They're importing a
different culture, a different civilization--and that culture
and civilization, the imported one, rejects the host culture.
And so they are supplanting Western civilization with Middle
Eastern civilization and I say, and Geert Wilders says,
Western civilization is a superior civilization--it is the
first world.''
On Iowa talk radio, Mr. King recommends ``The Camp of the
Saints,'' a racist 1973 novel about an invasion of Europe by
nonwhite immigrants.
Mr. King tweets agreement with Viktor Orban, Hungary's
authoritarian leader: ``Mixing cultures will not lead to a
higher quality of life but a lower one.''
2018
Mr. King says he does not want Somali Muslims working in
meatpacking plants in Iowa: ``I don't want people doing my
pork that won't eat it, let alone hope I go to hell for
eating pork chops.''
Asked by a reporter for HuffPost if he is a white
nationalist or white supremacist, Mr. King responds: ``I
don't answer those questions. I say to people that use those
kind of allegations: Use those words a million times, because
you're reducing the value of them every time, and many of the
people that use those words and make those allegations and
ask those questions can't even define the words they're
using.''
In an interview with a web publication in Austria,
unzensuriert.at, which is linked to the far-right Freedom
Party, Mr. King again praises the novel ``Camp of the
Saints'': ``This narrative should be imprinted into
everyone's brain. When you are importing people, even
importing one single person, you are importing their
culture.''
In the same interview, Mr. King demonstrates familiarity
with the ``Great Replacement'' conspiracy theory, also known
as ``white genocide,'' which posits that an international
elite, including prominent Jews like George Soros, are
plotting to make white populations minorities in Europe and
North America. ``Great replacement, yes,'' Mr. King says.
``These people walking into Europe by ethnic migration, 80
percent are young men. They are somebody else's babies.''
Mr. King endorses a Toronto mayoral candidate, Faith Goldy,
who had recited the ``14 words'' used by neo-Nazis and gave
an interview to a podcast for the neo-Nazi website The Daily
Stormer.
The Anti-Defamation League writes to Speaker Paul D. Ryan
calling for the censure of Mr. King for endorsing Ms. Goldy.
The group also notes that the Austrian Freedom Party is
``riddled with anti-Semitism and Holocaust trivialization.''
Representative Steve Stivers, chairman of the Republican
House election committee, condemns Mr. King in a tweet: ``We
must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms,
and I strongly condemn this behavior.''
Asked on Oct. 21 on WHO-TV in Iowa, ``What is a white
nationalist?'' Mr. King answers: ``First of all, I think you
have to be white, but then we've got Rachel Dolezal who
didn't have to be black to be black. It is a derogatory term
today. I wouldn't have thought so maybe a year or two or
three ago. But today they use it as a derogatory term and
they imply you are a racist. That's the bottom line for
that.''
2019
``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?'' Mr. King said in an interview with
The New York Times published last week.
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