Trip Gabriel of the New York Times put together a timeline of Rep. Steve King’s bigotry. I have reproduced it here with added comments.

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.”

The founders rejected Christianity. As for ‘civilization’, the Chinese, Indians and other Asians, as well as African cultures, both Northern and sub-Saharan have contributed just as the Irish, Italians, and Poles did — after they were dismissed as Catholic wastrels.  America is a capitalist country, but its most significant economic advances came after regulation, labor laws and social security were introduced  

• Mr. King is the chief sponsor of a law making English the official language of Iowa.

The Constitution doesn’t mandate an official language for the US — 230 years later we seem to have muddled by. Most American strivers realize that fluency in English enhances their prospects. So let’s not legislate language but allow the market to decide.

2005

• Now in Congress, Mr. King introduces the English Language Unity Act, a bill to make English the official language of the United States.

See above

• Mr. King sues the Iowa Secretary of State for posting voting information on an official website in Spanish, Laotian, Bosnian and Vietnamese.

Let’s not flog a dead horse.

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.

King, like many conservatives, is so sure his arguments are valid that if he can’t find facts to support them, he will make stuff up. And why not, so often the zealots believe those ‘facts’ – even when they know they aren’t true.

• 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.”

King demonstrates once again that conservatives share a collective lack of empathy. It is a racist trait to reduce the ‘out’ group to no more than mere beasts or paint them as sub-human.

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.

Do you think that King is talking about people with Irish accents?

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.

In King’s mind, women’s only job is to produce children. In this, his thinking is in lockstep with the Vatican’s, fundamentalist Islam, and ultra-orthodox Jews.

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.”

Blind to irony, King is blissfully unaware that racism separates people into ‘little ethnic enclaves’. Whereas multiculturalism celebrates the differences that unite us as Americans. Or as the Founders put it “E Pluribus Unum” — “from many, one” — the unofficial motto of the US, until King’s parent’s generation cynically shoehorned the divine into a secular nation with: “In God We Trust”.

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.”

King doesn’t seem to understand who DACA recipients are. Most of them, because of their lack of citizenship, have never left the country. Of course, he has no evidence for his claim. And how much someone weighs is relevant is unclear — perhaps it’s some kind of racist code.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.

Just in case you aren’t sure if King is racist, rest assured all his good friends are.

• Mr. King tweets a selfie with Mr. Wilders in front of a portrait of Winston Churchill. Mr. Wilders praises Mr. King for having “the guts to speak out.”

In King’s estimation, a quality man is one who flaunts his bigotry.

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?”

There was a time when the GOP gave racists a platform. Then they realized there weren’t enough white men to win elections. But Steve King dismisses entire civilizations because he has no interest in studying history. 

• 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.”

I don’t know how you ‘score’ a culture. All multiculturalism demands is that every culture is respected. King is free to be culturally a ‘head up his ass white supremacist’ all he wants. But he has to understand there are consequences to being a bigot.

• 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.”

King is blind to the ‘ demographic transformation’ that has made America the strongest and richest nation in the world. A status that is ironically threatened by white nationalism. Or does King think that the best US Olympic teams are ‘white only’?

• 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.

King adds to his collection of photo-ops with racists — showing this time he won’t be sexist in his abomination.

• 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.

King is going for a complete set.

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.

America was built “with somebody else’s babies”. 

• 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.”

This is precisely what Americans have said about the Irish, Italians, Poles & Jews. And every other first-generation immigrant.

• On Iowa talk radio, Mr. King recommends “The Camp of the Saints,” a racist 1973 novel about an invasion of Europe by nonwhite immigrants.

Conservatives are often aroused by racist porn telling lurid tales of domination by “The Other”.

• 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.”

America shows that argument is ridiculous.

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.”

So much for a BLT at a Jewish deli.

• 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.”

He doesn’t deny it.

• 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.”

Racist porn again.

• 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.”

King channels his inner Nazi. Demands a return to racial purity and the master race

• 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.

More Nazi

• 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.”

King was born 50 years too late. 

• 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.”

That’s all well and good, but the man at the top is encouraging white supremacy

• 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.”

‘They’ aren’t implying you are a racist Steve. They are saying you are a racist. And you keep giving them evidence.

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.

Did the schools King attended claim that slavery was justified? That lynching was an appropriate facet of criminal justice? That Jim Crow was a proper social policy?

To be American and not understand that American success has relied on people who look different, speak differently and worship different Gods is to put bigotry above history. It would be a bitter irony if the country that achieved greatness by attracting the brightest and hardest working from around the globe was brought low by white nationalists. 

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