The Slatest

GOP Congressman Steve King Is Now Endorsing Explicitly Racist Books, Because He’s Steve King

Rep. Steve King speaks to guests at the Iowa Freedom Summit on Jan. 24, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Iowa Rep. Steve King, already in hot water over a casually white nationalist tweet and CNN interview, said more horrible things on Monday in an interview with an Iowa radio station. King predicted a race war between Hispanics and black people before recommending that listeners read Jean Raspail’s racist 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints. From CNN:

King, a Republican, was on the radio responding to a question about Univision anchor Jorge Ramos’ comment to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that whites would become a majority-minority demographic in America by 2044, a point Ramos used to make the argument that it is a multiracial country.

“Jorge Ramos’ stock in trade is identifying and trying to drive wedges between race,” King told Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson on 1040 WHO. “Race and ethnicity, I should say to be more correct. When you start accentuating the differences, then you start ending up with people that are at each other’s throats. And he’s adding up Hispanics and blacks into what he predicts will be in greater number than whites in America. I will predict that Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other before that happens.”

In responding to a question from host Jan Mickelson about whether “civilization has to be on purpose,” King recommended, without context or elaboration, that listeners read The Camp of the Saints.

Mickelson: If we don’t raise godly children to take our place … that vacuum will be filled by whatever washes up on our shore and makes a claim on our territory. Civilization has to be on purpose. Isn’t that correct, Congressman King?

King: It has to be on purpose and I would recommend a book to your listeners, and the title of it is The Camp of the Saints. And it’s written by a Frenchman, Jean—J-E-A-N—Raspail—R-A-S-P-A-I-L.

The Camp of the Saints is a racist, anti-immigration 1973 novel about the invasion of Europe by deviant nonwhite migrants led by a ruler who eats feces. As the Huffington Post reported earlier this month, it is a favorite of both white supremacists and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has referenced it repeatedly as a comparison point for Muslim immigration into Europe. Here’s how Huffington Post’s Paul Blumenthal and J.M. Rieger summarized the book, of which King is apparently a huge fan:

Dithering European politicians, bureaucrats and religious leaders, including a liberal pope from Latin America, debate whether to let the ships land and accept the Indians or to do the right thing — in the book’s vision — by recognizing the threat the migrants pose and killing them all.

The non-white people of Earth, meanwhile, wait silently for the Indians to reach shore. The landing will be the signal for them to rise up everywhere and overthrow white Western society.

The French government eventually gives the order to repel the armada by force, but by then the military has lost the will to fight. Troops battle among themselves as the Indians stream on shore, trampling to death the left-wing radicals who came to welcome them. Poor black and brown people literally overrun Western civilization.

Good stuff, Steve King and the Republican Party. Good, good stuff.