We Already Have a Fascist in Congress

The win of self-described Holocaust denier and “former” Nazi Arthur Jones in an unopposed GOP primary for an Illinois congressional seat earlier this year unsurprisingly shocked and angered everyone with a conscience. Even if Jones has no chance of winning—and he does not—who wants a fascist running for Congress? I have some bad news: we already have one in Congress.

On Tuesday night, Iowa Rep. Steve King tweeted an endorsement of a white supremacist who’s running for the mayor of Toronto. Yes, the one in Canada.

Some background: Faith Goldy is a far-right Canadian media personality who formerly worked for The Rebel Media (a former home of Gavin McInnes) before she got fired last year after the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, during which she went on a podcast affiliated with the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer. During a video chat with white supremacist Ayla Stewart earlier this this year, Goldy recommended a book published in the 1930s called For My Legionaires by Romanian fascist and anti-Semite Corneliu Codreanu.

What’s more is that Goldy has absolutely no chance of winning the Toronto mayoral election; last month, polling showed her at 1.5 percent, and yesterday a judge threw out her lawsuit against the broadcaster Bell Media because it wouldn’t air her ads on TV. So Steve King went out of his way to endorse a mayoral candidate who won’t win—in a city in another country—because she’s “pro-Western civilization.”

This is nothing new for King, who over the past several years has traveled that well-worn path from “immigration hardliner” to “open white supremacist.” And shockingly, the Republican leadership does not seem to give a shit. Over the summer, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was asked about King’s support for white supremacists and fascists, and responded with this weak bullshit:

At this point, it’s hard to see what King could possibly do that would lose him the support of his fellow Republicans. But hopefully, given that he’s facing his strongest challenger in years, former baseball player and paralegal J.D. Scholten, we won’t have to find out.