Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) accused Iowa Rep. Steve King (R) on Thursday of using “white supremacist” rhetoric by retweeting a white nationalist podcast host.
In a tweet Thursday, the Democratic senator said she had “no words” to describe King’s retweet of Lana Lokteff, the host of white nationalist YouTube channel that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said promotes hate speech.
“I have no words for @SteveKingIA and his white supremacist propaganda, but you should give to his opponent @Scholten4Iowa right now,” Warren said, referring to King’s Democratic opponent in November’s midterm elections, J.D. Scholten.
In her tweet, Lokteff accused liberals, including U2’s lead singer Bono, of calling Swedish children with white parents “Nazis” alongside a stock image of three blonde-haired, blue-eyed children. Bono recently condemned the rise of the Swedish far-right.
In his comment retweeting Lokteff, King wrote, ” ‘Nazi’ is injected into Leftist talking points because the worn out & exhausted ‘racist’ is over used & applied to everyone who lacks melanin & who fail to virtue signal at the requisite frequency & decibels. But…Nazis were socialists & Leftists are socialists.”
{mosads}Many social media users were quick to comment in response to King’s retweet that Nazis were not Socialists.
The Iowa congressman has been criticized before by members of his own party for his controversial comments about race, diversity and immigration. Last year, he was chided by Republicans for a tweet claiming that “diversity” was not a positive quality for America.
“Assimilation has become a dirty word to the multiculturalist Left. Assimilation, not diversity, is our American strength,” he tweeted in December.
Earlier this week, King also linked to a two-year-old article detailing efforts from students of color at several U.S. colleges to establish “safe spaces” for black students, a policy he likened to “George Wallace’s segregation.”
King, an eight-term Iowa incumbent, leads Scholten by 10 points according to a poll of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District released this week.