Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) speaks to the media outside of the Criminal Court where former President Donald Trump is on trial on May 13, 2024, in New York City. | Source: Stephanie Keith / Getty
Technically speaking, the GOP is not a white nationalist organization, and perhaps it’s just a huge coincidence that Republicans happen to share the same social views, political leanings and ideology as your average white nationalist. Maybe it’s just by happenstance that Republicans and proud white supremacists sometimes share the same stages and end up facing off against each other in primary elections. Just because the Republican and the white nationalist are two peas in the same political pod doesn’t mean they’re the same, right?
Let’s say, for example, the Great Replacement Theory—which is derived from the ideology of white purity that originated with the Ku Klux Klan and was referenced in a manifesto left by Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron—was also continuously referenced by Republican legislators and political candidates? Does that necessarily mean Republicans are of the same ilk as Klan members and the white supremacist who targeted and gunned down 10 Black people in cold blood at the supermarket?
You know what? Don’t answer that. Instead, here’s Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) ranting about white nations being “overrun by immigrants and the validity of the Great Replacement Theory, which he appears to blame on America’s one non-white president.
“All you have to do is look at Europe, Maria,” Tuberville said. “Sweden, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, they’ve all been overrun by immigrants. They’ve changed their lifestyle. They’ve changed their country. They’ve changed their laws.”
“They want that to happen here,” he continued. “They want to be like-minded with the Democrats, the socialist Democrats here that are headed in that direction for our country.”
Then, out of nowhere, Tuberville invoked the president who hasn’t been in the Oval Office in the better part of a decade but is somehow in his fourth consecutive term in the Oval Office inside the minds of Republicans who just can’t let him go.
“So it’s all a plan—It’s all a plan, started with Barack Obama, transitioning the country to something else,” Tuberville, who has touted the replacement theory in the past, said. “The American people don’t want that. And they’re going to stand up this November.”
“But unfortunately, I’ll tell you, we’re 10 million down right now in terms of people coming here, probably 2 million more of these gotaways,” he added. “We are in a desperate situation. The Democrats know if they can control this White House for another four years, America as we know it and have grown up in will be gone.”
First of all, Tuberville is proving that Republicans aren’t even above revising recent history. Not only was Obama not the friend of undocumented migrants that Republicans accused him of being throughout his presidency, but U.S. deportations of migrants actually reached a record high during his time in office. This is yet another example of how Republicans literally just make things up and trust their audiences not to challenge them on their easily debunked assertions.
Secondly, it’s amazing how people like Tuberville can go off on a whole diatribe about how non-white migrants are taking over predominately white nations and changing the “lifestyles” and “country” of Europeans without realizing how much they sound as much like a grand wizard at a cross burning as they do a political leader in a Fox News interview. Tuberville almost managed to sound as Hitler-esque as Donald Trump did when he said immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country.
But, again, the GOP is not a white nationalist organization, and that means Tommy Tuberville is certainly not a white nationalist. It must simply be another coincidence that Tuberville once alleged that “Democrats are attacking our military” by “saying we need to get out the white extremists” and “white nationalists,” and then justified that argument by astonishingly questioning whether being a white nationalist is even racist. (Really, it wasn’t that astonishing. Former GOP Rep. Steve King was actually the first one to publicly question whether it was racist to be a white nationalist, so Tuberville was just being a biter. Then again, if conservatives had original ideas they wouldn’t be conservatives.)
Also, here’s a not-so-subtle reminder that Tuberville also isn’t very fond of Black people.
OK—well if he’s not a white nationalist, he sure does play one on TV.
