White Nationalist GOP Congressman Gosar Doubles Down on Assist for White Nationalist ‘America First’ Group

During this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., And Former Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, at the nearby America First Political Action Conference, spoke on AFPAC founder Nick Fuentes Weiß delivered nationalist and Christian-nationalist messages.

The fact that a seated member of Congress spoke to AFPAC gave Fuentes’ efforts to attract young conservatives to his far-right ideology a boost in credibility. And Gosar’s appearance on the AFPAC stage was not the last.

Gosar, who sat in Fuentes’ speech and emphasized the importance of maintaining a white “demographic”, hailed the January 6 insurrection as “great”, and mocked the disability of Republican MP Madison Cawthorn, met the next Day with Fuentes.

Gosar responded to criticism by saying he had denounced “white racism”, but a week after the conference he posted a tweet with a slogan that was repeated many times on AFPAC: “America First is inevitable.”

A comment in the Republic of Arizona condemned Republican officials’ silence about Gosar’s appearance on AFPAC. MP Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Who has been with Trump supporters, was one of the few Republicans to criticize Gosar for appearing at the “clearly racist” AFPAC event.

Gosar skipped a House vote on the COVID-19 aid package in order to make it to Florida in time for his AFPAC appearance. Although Fuentes’ record of bigotry and extremism resulted in his banning from CPAC and some social media platforms, Gosar’s appearance at AFPAC didn’t stop him from speaking at CPAC the following day.

Prior to the conference, die-hard Gosar was a supporter of Trump’s false claims about stolen elections and a supporter of the “Stop the Steal” movement. MSNBC’s Steve Benen commented Tuesday, “House Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Released a 2,000-page report late last week that revealed thousands of social media posts from GOP lawmakers who attacked the presidential election and spread lies before and after the storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump trying to reverse the results. “Gosar’s messages took up 177 pages.

As Benen reported, Gosar has a history of extremist rhetoric. A few years ago Gosar attended a chapter of the Oath Keepers in Arizona. When asked if the US was on the way to civil war, Gosar reportedly replied, “We’re in. We just haven’t started shooting at each other yet. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who repeatedly warned that militias would wage a bloody civil war if Trump did not stay in power, was identified by federal prosecutors this week as a role in the January 6 riot.

A month before Gosar’s appearance on AFPAC, a New York Times article about Republican officials’ associations with extremists stated:

In July, dentist Gosar posed for a photo with a member of the Proud Boys. Two years earlier he spoke at a rally for an imprisoned leader of the British fringe anti-immigrant group in London, where he slandered Muslim immigrants as a “scourge”. And in 2014, he traveled to Nevada to aid the armed standoff between law enforcement agencies and supporters of rancher Cliven Bundy, who refused to stop entering states.

On Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released its report on the AFPAC meeting detailing the speakers’ white nationalist rhetoric.

This article was originally published by Right Wing Watch and is republished here with permission.