Our old “friend” Congressman Steve King of Iowa used to claim that he wasn’t a racist. Now that white ethno nationalism is fashionable among the deplorables, those days are gone, gone, gone:
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies. https://t.co/4nxLipafWO
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017
Guess who applauded King:
https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/status/841006623262986241
The Wilders mentioned by King is far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders whose ironically named Party for Freedom is running first in the polls in that nation’s upcoming election. A headline in the “failing” NYT captures the horror of what’s happening in the Netherlands: How The Dutch Stopped Being Decent and Dull. I’d like to throw another D word in the mix: depressing.
The good news is that, thanks to Holland’s multi-party system, Wilders is unlikely to be the next Prime Minister BUT his party has gone from being cranks to contenders. That’s bad news for those of us who have admired the Dutch for their political common sense and cultural tolerance. The French presidential election is next up and Marine LePen may lead in the first round. The conventional wisdom is that her opponents will unite against her as they did against her father in 2002 but the CW has taken a beating in the last few years. Stay tuned: if France leaves the EU, it’s as dead as the Weimar Republic.
Back to Steve King. The Iowa cornholer is standing by his statements. It’s now safe in certain circles for an elected official to sound like David Duke, Richard Spencer, and Geert Wilders. King was on CNN this morning and went into a rhapsody about his horrendous views:
“I’ve been to Europe and I’ve spoken on this issue and I’ve said the same thing as far as ten years ago to the German people and to any population of people that is a declining population that isn’t willing to have enough babies to reproduce themselves. And I’ve said to them, you can’t rebuild your civilization with somebody else’s babies,” King said on CNN. “You’ve got to keep your birth rate up and that you need to teach your children your values.”
There you have it, we’re not “making” enough babies. It’s what happens when women get uppity and think they can do other things and not just be baby factories as in The Handmaid’s Tale. There’s a new teevee version of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic and it couldn’t be timelier. Make sure you read Ms. Atwood’s essay about The Handmaid’s Tale continuing relevance in the “failing” NYT.
In addition to supporting the King of Bigots, the erstwhile Gret Stet Fuhrer is bragging about his own fertility. Duke only has two kids whereas his role model Joseph Goebbels had six. Of course, he murdered his children in 1945. Some hero. Some role model.
Remember when mainstream conservatives ran away from David Dukkke? Now they sound just like him: Steve King is merely a canary in the coal mine. That’s life in the 21st Century, which is starting to feel like the 1930’s with memes. The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland recently had a great deal to say about that, so I’ll give him the last word:
If there’s a common thread linking 21st-century European nationalists to each other and to Trump, it is a similar, shared contempt for the structures that have bound together, and restrained, the principal world powers since the last war. Naturally, Le Pen and Wilders want to follow the Brexit lead and leave, or else break up, the EU. And, no less naturally, Trump supports them – as well as regarding Nato as “obsolete” and the UN as an encumbrance to US power (even if his subordinates rush to foreign capitals to say the opposite).
For historians of the period, the 1930s are always worthy of study because the decade proves that systems – including democratic republics – which had seemed solid and robust can collapse. That fate is possible, even in advanced, sophisticated societies. The warning never gets old.
But when we contemplate our forebears from eight decades ago, we should recall one crucial advantage we have over them. We have what they lacked. We have the memory of the 1930s. We can learn the period’s lessons and avoid its mistakes. Of course, cheap comparisons coarsen our collective conversation. But having a keen ear tuned to the echoes of a past that brought such horror? That is not just our right. It is surely our duty.
History only repeats to those paying attention.
“We have the memory of the 1930s. We can learn the period’s lessons and avoid its mistakes.”
Yeah, maybe.
Unfortunately while some have learned “punch Nazis early and often”, others have learned that fascism needs a great big dose of corporatist christianism.
Boy, for such manly he-man masters of the universe racial purists, the skeered white boyz brigade sure are a bunch of nervous nellies. I wonder what they’re so afraid of? That they’ll be treated by others the way they’ve treated those others when they had the upper jack boot? Why do they hate Jesus so much? Remember that the prayer he taught his disciples specifically petitions the almighty to treat those disciples in the same manner that the disciples treat others.
There’s a way to avoid such righteous, just retribution, Rep. King: Quit being such a racist asshole.
King’s rhetoric isn’t just white-nationalist, it’s a not-so-subtle dog whistle to Nazis, evoking as it does the Nazi rhetoric of Blut und Boden (“blood and soil”).
Confederates, like NAZIs, are Traitors, enemies of the American People, enemies of the American way of life. Flying a Confederate flag is no different than flying a NAZI swastika. Those who fly a Confederate flag or a NAZI swastika are a traitors. An enemies of the American People, enemies of the American Way of Life, and if not taken out behind the barn and summarily executed rounded up and escorted, at gunpoint, to a reservation somewhere out in the hinterlands. Preferably Antarctica, or the moons of Mars.
Funny thing, all them white dogs look alike to me!
The history of the 1930s teaches that the cause of fascism was austerity. Not just the austerity that came from economic depression, but the austerity that came from government policy to cut government spending. That’s what Chancellor Bruening did, cutting the tiny amount of relief spending that the government had allowed before him. I notice that’s what the European Union government have done for the last ten years. That’s what Donald Trump is doing in his current budget.