Holds sway
Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister since 2010. Wilders’ radicalism, like his dyed blond swept-back hair, gives him an international brand.”
That brand was championed in Washington this week by Republican Congressman Steve King, who, in a tweet that sparked headlines, celebrated Wilders as a defender of the West.
King tweeted: “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilisation with somebody else’s babies.”
King included an image of Wilders with his finger in the proverbial dyke, holding off the toxic tide of Islam. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke applauded the Iowan’s comment, and alt-right leader Richard Spencer referred to King’s declaration as the 15 Words, placing it on par with the “14 Words” — the guiding motto of white nationalists.
King’s tweet is a powerful sign of the times. The US has always had a tradition of xenophobic nativism stalking its politics, but it has taken a sharper edge in recent years, adopting the rhetoric of far-right parties in Europe.
American political commentator Josh Barro mused over why this is the case, especially considering how the social conditions that fuel Wilders’s ire — in particular, the growth of large, ghettoised Muslim communities — simply do not exist in the US.
“I think the answer is that American nationalists tend to oppose immigration for reasons that are fundamentally racist. They want white people to have more babies and fewer minorities to come here,” Barro wrote.
“But the facts on the ground in the United States are not useful for arguing that case without explicit appeals to racism. So obsess over Europe, where immigration has created more problems and birthrates are more dire.”
Today, King, who has a long history of racial demagoguery, is hardly a fringe figure. His white nationalism is embraced, in various degrees, by some of Trump’s top advisers — and breezed over by other Republican leaders. “I meant exactly what I said,” King told CNN on Tuesday. Hours later, House Speaker Paul Ryan said of King’s comment, “I’d like to think he misspoke and it wasn’t really meant the way it sounds.”
“King’s statement is, at bottom, a particularly explicit expression of the white nationalist ideology that fuelled the Trump campaign — and shaped the worldview of top Trump advisers Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller,” journalist Sarah Posner wrote. “Advocates for that ideology are now directing strategy and policy from the West Wing.”