GOP Senator Suggests America Is 'Only' For White People
Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt Suggests America Is ‘Only’ For European ‘Descendants’ During Conservative Conference
In today’s episode of If They Don’t Want To Be Called White Supremacists, They Should Stop Saying White Supremacy Things, a GOP senator gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday in which he essentially declared that America is of the white people, by the white people and for the white people.
Of course, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO.) didn’t come right out and say that white people are the only true Americans — he just specified that the U.S. is for the descendants of Europeans “only,” talked about colonialism like it was a harrowing journey sanctioned by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost themselves, and declared that this country doesn’t “belong to” anyone but those aforementioned European descendants.
Schmitt’s core message to the conference attendees was that America “belongs to us, and only us,” and before any white devil’s advocates start whining about “race-baiting” and claiming he was speaking of all U.S. citizens, it could almost not possibly be clearer that by “us,” he absolutely meant white Americans. (I say “almost” because, actually, he could have come right out and said, “Get the Blackies and brownies up outta here, leave America to the whites that stole land and committed genocide for it.”)
Schmitt began by white-nationalist-splaining to his audience that the Pilgrims and George Washington’s Continental Army, “believed they were fighting for a nation, a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” and not “for a proposition.”
“They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us,” he said. “They built this country for us. America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, it’s our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all.”
Schmitt continued dog whistling into a bullhorn (while basically sounding like Bull Connor) by characterizing non-white people and immigrants as “new people” who “believe they can build a new America” by “changing the stories we tell about ourselves.”
“But America doesn’t belong to them,” he declared. “It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It’s a way of life that is ours and only ours. If we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”
Again, if you weren’t quite sure that Schmitt didn’t have Black people or people of color in mind when he spoke about “our ancestors” and “heritage,” don’t worry, he goes on to make that abundantly clear.
“We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith,” he said. “Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God.”
Seriously, is there a functional difference between a right-wing rally and a Klan meeting? Because I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of overlapping language between Schmitt’s speech and that of a grand wizard.
Let’s set aside the fact that Schmitt is out here rewriting American history right before our eyes while complaining that those he considers outsiders are “changing the stories we tell about ourselves.” Forget the fact that what Schmitt’s ancestors actually did was sail to an occupied land that was not theirs at all, exterminate the indigenous people who literally taught them how to grow crops on that land, then eventually decided they were too lazy to work the land themselves, so they kidnapped millions of Black people to do it for them, condemning those people to two and a half centuries of intergenerational chattel slavery.
All of that aside, Schmitt went very far out of his way to ensure his audience understood that, in what he would consider a perfect world, a giant “whites only” sign would be hanging over America.
Schmitt is out here cosplaying as the white Kendrick Lamar, only when he says “They not like us,” the “they” he’s talking about is people who bathe daily, don’t skip washing their legs in the shower, and don’t believe raisins are a seasoning substitute in various cookout foods.
Schmitt’s Euros to Heroes version of America’s story is nothing more than racist, ahistorical jingoism masquerading as patriotism. One could say he was saying the quiet part out loud, but for this audience, there simply was no quiet part. Schmitt’s speech was a display of loud and proud white nationalism. It was an expression of the truth about what the white nationalist Great Replacement Theory is really all about, and what is actually meant by “make America great again.”
Not that we didn’t already know. They don’t like being called racist, but they sure as hell enjoy earning the label.
SEE ALSO:
‘It’s for White People’: Trump’s South African Refugee Program Confirms What We Already Knew
Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt Suggests America Is ‘Only’ For European ‘Descendants’ During Conservative Conference was originally published on newsone.com
