At a white nationalist hearing on Capitol Hill, GOP witnesses dispute there's a threat

WASHINGTON — It was supposed to be a hearing on white supremacy and the faltering efforts of the Trump administration to quell violent expressions of white nationalism. But that’s not quite what took place on Tuesday morning at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, which gave short shrift to issues like the defunding of programs meant to combat white extremism, and the promotion of hatred on social media, and instead featured Republican witnesses disputing seemingly basic facts about history both recent and distant.

One of those witnesses was Candace Owens, an activist with the conservative organization Turning Point USA. Owens — who was recently criticized for a recording in which she appeared to express admiration for Adolf Hitler — was invited by Republican members of the committee to the hearing, which comes just days after three historically black churches were burned in Louisiana.

Owens used her opening statement to declare that the Southern Strategy — Richard Nixon’s use of racial fears to win over Southern whites long loyal to Democrats — was a “myth” that “never happened.” That notion is popular among some conservatives, but it is not shared by mainstream historians.

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Sitting next to Owens was Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, the one other witness invited by Republicans. A close supporter of President Trump, Klein described the murderer of 50 people at a New Zealand mosque as a “a left-wing self-described ‘eco-fascist’ who also published a manifesto praising Communist China as ‘the nation with the closest political and social values to my own.’”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/at-a-white-nationalist-hearing-on-capitol-hill-gop-witnesses-dispute-theres-a-threat/ar-BBVM3kz