That creaking sound you hear is the sound of Pandora’s box slowly swinging open.
US Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) is the incoming House Majority Whip. According to his official biography, Scalise is a “uniter” who, through his “strong conservative leader[ship],” has advocated for the destruction of the ACA, gutting the social safety net, allowing corporations to pump unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns, bolstering the oil companies, killing off environmental regulations and government-funded green programs (“Solyndra!!!”), and defunding the FCC on behalf of the telecom industry. He brags about it.
What he doesn’t brag about is his association with white supremacist groups.
We know this because valiant blogger Lamar Smith, Jr found out for us. Smith, presumably after chowing down a handful of anti-nausea meds, went hunting through the archives of the neo-Nazi, white supremacist Website Stormfront. He found gold in them thar polluted hills. Smith learned that in May 2002, Scalise was a featured guest and speaker at an international conference of white supremacist leaders.
I didn’t find that tidbit of info on Scalise’s Congressional page.
I Didn’t Know Nothing about Nothing
Scalise admits to attending the conference, but says he had no clue that they were anything but concerned citizens. Scalise says that he “has never been affiliated with the abhorrent group in question. The hate-fueled ignorance and intolerance that group projects is in stark contradiction to what Mr. Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband, and a devoted Catholic.”
So the next time I head off to take part in the regularly scheduled stripper convention at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch, I’ll just tell my wife that I had no idea it was anything except a convention for concerned citizens, that I find the entire idea of women forced to strip for money abhorrent, and that as a father, husband and devoted agnostic, there’s no way I would support their activities. That’ll fly.
Admittedly, the convention was not hosted by the Imperial Grand Wizard of … wait, yes it was. It was hosted by David Duke, who was Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan before Duke and some flunkies decided to swap out the white robes for the business suits in an attempt to rebrand the Klan. Duke, who even underwent plastic surgery to make himself more telegenic as part of his long-running attempt to make his white supremacist ideology more media-friendly, had just created a new organization with the innocuous title of “European-American Unity and Rights Organization,” or EURO, in an attempt to connect with neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in Olde Europe. Duke wasn’t at the conference, which took place in Metarie, Lousiana, but he was at a similar event somewhere in Europe — probably not hosted in Hitler’s secret underground bunker, much to Duke’s presumed chagrin — and would be at the Metarie conference via the magic of telecommunications.
How Was He Supposed to Know?
So, gee, you whiny liberals, the organization wasn’t named the Klan, Duke didn’t look like he used to look, no one was wearing robes and hoods … how is a self-respecting Congressfella supposed to recognize that those guys were actually white supremacists? Setting a pretty high bar, aren’t you?
Hmph. Duke was well-known throughout the nation, and particularly in his home state of Louisiana — Scalise’s home turf! — as a white supremacist leader, even proudly posing for photos in Nazi uniforms until he decided to “soften his image.” He was a member of the Louisiana State Legislature from 1989-1992. He almost won a race for US Senate in 1992, prompting so much outrage that lawmakers and political leaders from both parties formed an organization to alert the media to Duke’s virulent racism. (Duke’s campaign manager from that election told a reporter in 2006: “The Jews just aren’t a big issue in Louisiana. We keep telling David, stick to attacking the blacks. There’s no point in going after the Jews, you just piss them off and nobody here cares about them anyway.”) Duke mounted a strong campaign for governor in 1992, prompting then-President Bush to denounce him as unfit to hold public office because he has espoused racist and neo-Nazi beliefs. Bush told reporters:
“When someone asserts the Holocaust never took place, then I don’t believe that person ever deserves one iota of public trust. When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society.”
He ran for president in 1992, and for US Senate again in 1996, prompting then-RNC chairman Jim Nicholson to say, “There is no room in the party of Lincoln for a Klansman like David Duke”.
But all of this just flew under Stevie’s radar. Heckfire, he goes to speak to all kinds of groups, he now says. He even went to talk to the League of Women Voters that one time. Gee. Klan, League of Women Voters, who can keep up?
Well, the League of Women Voters might be a bunch of radicals, what with those flat shoes and pantsuits and all, but I don’t think they routinely and loudly proclaim the same kind of virulent anti-black and anti-Semitic views that Duke and EURO espouse. EURO loves to hark back to those halcyon days of 1930s Germany, that “workman’s paradise” (their words) that has now degenerated into what they call “a multi-racial cesspool” that is genetically, culturally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually inferior to the Aryan master race.
And while Duke wasn’t there at the Metarie conference, his flunky Vincent Breeding was there passing out literature and sucking up to the power structure — which that day was Scalise. Breeding was a former member of the National Alliance, the hate group that lit Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s fuse who in 2002 ran Duke’s hate site martinlutherking.org (no, I’m not linking to it), a site dedicated to trashing Dr. King personally and professionally. Think Breeding might have shared a few of his views with Scalise? If he did, Scalise didn’t yark a hairball in outrage and run for the exits. Instead, he spoke to the convention, and was, according to one participant, “a highlight” of the evening. Scalise’s topic of conversation? How government organizations like the Department of Housing and Urban Development were giving away billions in tax dollars to lazy minorities.
Political Endorsements? Sure, I’ll Take ‘Em
Shortly after that, Stormfront began touting Scalise as a great candidate for national office. Stormfront writer “Alsace Hebert” wrote:
“I suppose if Duke does not make the election for whatever reason, this gentleman would be a good alternative.”
Well, gee, if the damn voters won’t put our Klan boy in office, maybe this Scalise fellow would be a good alternative. Ya think?
Well, just a few years later, Scalise got himself elected to the US House, and six years after that, found himself occupying the august position of House Majority Whip — the guy who enforces ideological correctness on his fellow House Republicans. I guess they put the right guy in charge.
More to Come
Lamar Smith writes:
“Most importantly, assuming Hebert’s posts are accurate, why was Scalise even there in the first place? He can’t pretend like he was confused and just stumbled into the wrong conference due to a scheduling error or a drug-induced hallucination, and he can’t feign ignorance about the organization; their acronym may have been vague, but their agenda was crystal clear. Unless Steve Scalise is totally incompetent, he knew exactly where he was headed when he parked his car in the lot in front of the Landmark Best Western. And from the sound of it, Scalise accomplished what he came there to do: He convinced some vehement white racists and neo-Nazi bigots to vote for him.”
You can bet there’ll be more on this story. Stay tuned, and if you’re popping popcorn, save some for me. Until then, enjoy the short video, which includes some footage of Scalise’s political supporters in full, snowy-white regalia.
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Michael has been writing about politics, history and Web development since 2001. His first book is in development.
