Over two dozen Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee have rejected adding their voices to a letter by House Democrats denouncing White Supremacy.
Earlier in the week, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD.) sent a letter to Republican James Comer (KY.), chairman of the Committee, to urge him and other GOP Lawmakers to join him and Democrats in denouncing white supremacism and white nationalism “in all its forms, including the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory.”
All twenty Democrats on the Committee signed the letter, but none of the 26 Republicans on the Committee did.
The letter, made after the Committee’s recent hearing on the border crisis from the perspective of front-line border patrol agents, was a response to many of the statements Republicans made during the hearing.
The letter references these statements, describing how many GOP members “invoked dangerous and conspiratorial rhetoric” that echoed “racist and nativist tropes peddled by white supremacists and right-wing extremists.”
An example of the rhetoric the letter gives includes Republicans describing the mass migration experienced along the Southern Border as an “invasion.”
Raskin also argues some members used a common conspiracy theory — known as the “Great Replacement” — about pro-immigration policies being a veiled attempt to replace White Americans.
The “Great Replacement” theory has links to several domestic terror attacks, including the mass shootings at a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA.
Raskin identified that Comer and Republicans had been offered several opportunities to denounce “dangerous racist rhetoric that has had deadly consequences in this country,” adding the letter was another such opportunity.
