House Hearing on White Nationalism Devolves Into Stomach-Churning Hellscape
It didn’t take long for Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the rising threat of white nationalism to devolve into a complete farce, thanks to a pair of ultra-conservative witnesses and a trove of Republican congressmen eager to appease them while paying lip-service to condemning hate.
Joining representatives from the Anti-Defamation League, Equal Justice Society, and the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law—as well as officials from tech giants Facebook and Google—were Zionist Organization of America President Mort Klein, a noted Islamophobic bigot, and Turning Point USA spokeswoman Candace Owens, who recently had to walk back comments in which she seemed to praise, um, Adolf Hitler. Right off the bat, it was clear neither had much interest in discussing the rise of white nationalism, instead choosing to use the hearing as a platform to voice their own grievances with Muslims, the media, and Democrats.
During his opening remarks—delivered just moments after Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha brought members of Congress to tears testifying about the religiously motivated murders of his daughter and son-in-law—Klein launched into a screed dismissing any right-wing or white nationalist animus behind both the anti-Semitic massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh or the mass murder of Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand.
“The Tree of Life synagogue massacre perpetrator was a neo-Nazi who hated President Trump for not being anti-Semitic, called Jews in the Trump administration a ‘kike infestation,’ and also hated anti-Trump Jews,” Klein said.He added: “The New Zealand mosque murderer was actually a left-wing, self-described ‘eco-fascist’ who also published a manifesto praising Communist China as ‘the nation with the closest political and social values to my own.’”