Steve Scalise, the Republican majority whip in the House of Representatives and one of the most senior conservatives in Washington, appeared to acknowledge having previously spoken at a white supremacist conference backed by former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Scalise, a
Louisiana congressman, was recently promoted to number three in the House Republican party hierarchy. On Monday, his office put out a statement regarding a 2002 event organised by a group called European-American Unity and Rights Organization (Euro) at which he reportedly spoke, but claimed he was unaware of its views and said he does not share them.
“Throughout his career in public service, Mr Scalise has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints,” spokeswoman Moira Bagley said in the statement. “In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around. In 2002, he made himself available to anyone who wanted to hear his proposal to eliminate slush funds that wasted millions of taxpayer dollars as well as his opposition to a proposed tax increase on middle class families.”
The admission follows revelations by a Louisiana blogger, Lamar White, who unearthed evidence of Scalise’s participation in the event on a neo-Nazi website called st0rmfr0nt.
It is thought that Scalise – then a Louisiana state representative – took part in the event outside New Orleans, and that David Duke, who founded the group two years earlier, also appeared via video link from an affiliated event in Europe.
Anti-racism campaigners claim Euro, ostensibly aimed at protecting the rights of European Americans, is primarily a vehicle to promote the far-right writings of Duke, a former KKK leader.
Allies of Scalise
told the Washington Post on Monday that he was unaware of the group’s history and was poorly advised due to a lack of staff at the time, although separately a Post reporter
said that even the hotel that hosted the event was concerned enough to rebuke the group after it found out their intent.
“He has never been affiliated with the abhorrent group in question,” added Scalise’s spokeswoman. “The hate-fueled ignorance and intolerance that group projects is in stark contradiction to what Mr Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband, and a devoted Catholic.”
Duke is
perhaps the most well-known white supremacist in America, and was briefly also a Louisiana state representative in the early 1990s after switching his party allegiance from Democrat to Republican.
Neither House speaker John Boehner, majority leader Kevin McCarthy, nor the Republican National Convention responded to requests for comment from the Guardian, but the revelations may put intense pressure on Scalise, who
won a fiercely-fought whip election in June as a Tea Party-backed candidate but is often at odds with Republican leadership.
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