Ron Johnson pushes racist 'great replacement' theory in Fox appearance

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) espoused white supremacist talking points on Thursday in an appearance on Fox Business, questioning whether Democrats want more immigrants in the United States because they will vote for Democrats in future elections.

“This administration wants complete open borders, and you have to ask yourself why,” Johnson said during an appearance on former Trump administration official Larry Kudlow’s new Fox Business program, lying about Democrats’ position on immigration. “Is it really they want to remake the demographics of America, to ensure their — that they stay in power forever? Is that what’s happening here?”

What Johnson talked about is known as the “great replacement theory,” which the Anti-Defamation League defines as “the hateful notion that the white race is in danger of being ‘replaced’ by a rising tide of non-whites.”

He’s the latest Republican to push the racist theory.

Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Scott Perry made similar comments on Wednesday during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on immigration.

“For many Americans, what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is, what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born Americans, native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation,” Perry said, according to a report from the York Dispatch.

Meanwhile, the theory is so racist that it got former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) kicked off his House committees — and eventually out of Congress in 2020.

In 2017, King tweeted, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” And in a 2017 radio interview on right-wing Breitbart radio, King said of migrants in Europe, “They’re importing a different culture, a different civilization — and that culture and civilization, the imported one, rejects the host culture. And so they are supplanting Western civilization with Middle Eastern civilization and I say … Western civilization is a superior civilization — it is the first world.”

Johnson, for his part, has been criticized for making radical and racist comments since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, after which he has tried to absolve the violent Donald Trump-supporting insurrectionists of culpability for the deadly riot.

In a March radio interview, Johnson said he “never felt threatened” by the insurrectionists — who attacked law enforcement officers and threatened to hang Mike Pence because he wouldn’t block President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory from being certified — because they “love this country.” Instead, he said if the insurrectionists were Black Lives Matter activists, he “might have been a little concerned.”

Johnson is up for reelection in 2022. He hasn’t decided whether he’s running yet. But Democrats are targeting his seat for a pick-up, as Biden carried the state in the 2020 election.

Ben Winkler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, slammed Johnson for his latest racist comment.

“Ron Johnson never met a far-right conspiracy theory he didn’t like, so you had to figure he’d land on the white supremacist Great Replacement theory sooner or later,” Winkler tweeted Thursday night. “Makes me sick to my stomach that this guy — temporarily — represents Wisconsin in the Senate”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.