Faith Goldy is one of 35 candidates for mayor of Toronto. You’ve probably never heard of her, because she has little chance of victory, and because she is mostly known only in far-right circles online. Thanks to Iowa Rep. Steve King, however, a lot more Americans are finding out who she is. That’s because the Republican politician, for no clear reason, enthusiastically endorsed her on Twitter today to his 101,000 followers:
Faith Goldy, an excellent candidate for Toronto mayor, pro Rule of Law, pro Make Canada Safe Again, pro balanced budget, &…BEST of all, Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values. @FaithGoldy will not be silenced. https://t.co/uqkeaUjm7i
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) October 17, 2018
Now, Goldy is not your run-of-the-mill right-wing commentator. She personally traveled all the way from her home in Canada to participate in and sympathetically cover the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. She called alt-right luminary Richard Spencer’s manifesto released before the event “well thought out,” though afterward claimed this “was not an endorsement, it was my sense that there were grounds upon which to engage in conversation, not physical combat, with the alt-right.” Later, Goldy was fired from her job at the conservative outlet Rebel Media after she appeared on a podcast affiliated with the neo-Nazi flagship outlet The Daily Stormer and chummily agreed with the host on every point.
In an April interview, she recommended For My Legionaries, a book by a Romanian fascist which repeatedly assails the alleged “parasitism of the Jews” and calls to combat “the Jewish menace.” She then backtracked slightly, misleadingly claiming that the book’s anti-Semitism was merely a stray aside, rather than a constantly reiterated theme: “It’s now come to my attention that there is a disturbing line later in that book and I wish to state for the record: I do not endorse it.” (A quick look through the full text for Jewish references—available here—easily demonstrates Goldy’s dishonesty.)
Like many bigots, Goldy is an equal opportunity offender. In a December interview with a far-right YouTuber, Goldy smilingly declared, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”—what the Anti-Defamation League calls “the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world,” known as “the 14 words.” Goldy, for her part, added, “I don’t see that that’s controversial; is that bad? I think it’s controversial to say the opposite.” She regularly appears on white nationalist channels on YouTube and elsewhere. She also promotes conspiracy theories like the claim that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad never used chemical weapons.
Why did King endorse a bizarre fringe figure like Goldy? How did he even know who she was? Perhaps it’s because they share similar outlooks, and he swims in the same online ideological universe as she does. After all, in March 2017, King infamously tweeted in support of an anti-immigration European candidate: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” (At the time, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said, “I’d like to think he misspoke.” King told CNN, “I meant exactly what I said.”) In July 2016, King similarly told a panel on MSNBC that “This whole ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?” And in 2013, he said that for every child of illegal immigrants “who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
Perhaps, then, the question is not why did Steve King endorse Faith Goldy, it is: what took him so long?
A request for comment from the Republican Jewish Coalition, which does not appear to have held an event with King since 2012, was not immediately returned at press time. Shortly after publication, RJC head Matt Brooks told us, “The RJC has been deeply troubled by a number of Rep. King’s statements and associations recently. As a result we have not endorsed him, contributed to him or hosted events with him.”
Yair Rosenberg is a senior writer at Tablet. Subscribe to his newsletter, listen to his music, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.