Steve King has now officially become a white supremacist icon
If you thought U.S. Representative Steve King’s recent “somebody else’s babies” tweet was the sort of race-fueled trash an actual white supremacist might say, you’re not alone. Actual white supremacists have latched onto the Republican congressman’s comments and have transformed it into their very own ultra-nationalist slogan!
Yes, that’s white supremacist Richard Spencer (of “Hail Trump! Hail victory! fame, and also getting punched in the face) using King’s tweet as a riff on neo-Nazi David Lane’s infamous “14 words” (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children“) which were described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world” (Nazi website Der Stormer simply dubbed him “our guy“).
On Twitter, budding white nationalists have already begun picking up Spencer’s “15 words” shorthand as a rallying cry for racism, often combining it with the number 88, a reference to the eighth letter of the alphabet, “H,” and used as an abbreviation for “Heil Hitler”
The 15 Words:#MAGA https://t.co/A7TqSzUE6l
— I0n~whitE~10 (@I10ONWHITE) March 13, 2017
@RichardBSpencer 1588
— Radec (@ZachGTR) March 12, 2017
On Monday, King doubled down on his racist statement during an appearance on CNN. He has yet to acknowledge his having been turned into a white supremacist meme.