Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) met with a far-right group while touring Europe this August, just one day after completing a trip to Holocaust memorial sites.
King sat down for an interview with the website Unzensuriert, which translates as “Uncensored” and is affiliated with Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, according to the Washington Post.
King spoke with the website about immigration, the rise of Islam, the Deep State, Steve Bannon, and George Soros. King also said in the interview that “Western civilization is on the decline” and suggested that Soros funded the Women’s March.
Austria’s Freedom Party was originally founded by Anton Reinthaller, who was a Nazi SS officer. Heinz-Christian Strache, who participated in neo-Nazi groups as a young person, leads the group now.
King’s trip to Europe was funded by From the Depths, a nonprofit group devoted to educating political leaders about the Holocaust. King visited sites like Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the most notorious death camps, over the five-day trip.
King filed papers with the House Ethics Committee showing that he paid for the portion of the trip after Aug. 23. From the Depths has stated that they were not aware of King’s travel plans after that date. The documents do show, though, that the group paid for King’s airfare to and from Europe.
King has accused his political opponents of making too much of the interview with Unzensuriert and the meetings with members of the Freedom Party. But in the interview, King endorses the European right-wing concept of the “Great Replacement”—the concept that non-ethnic Europeans are being “replaced” by immigrants having children in European countries.
King also touted his relationships with politicians in the Freedom Party, saying, “I have identified them and counted them as friends and allies well before they were winning elections. But that’s a good thing to build those relationships before they come to power.”
King also supported far-right politicians Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France, as well as Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy, who was fired from a conservative Canadian media outlet for appearing on The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.