'Textbook white nationalism': GOP senator blasted for declaring America is 'only ours'

03 September

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2, 2023 (Image: Shutterstock)

U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) is under fire after telling the National Conservatism Conference that America “belongs to us, and only us,” drawing accusations of racism and historical ignorance.

Senator Schmitt, a freshman dubbed a “key White House ally” by Fox News, told attendees that the Pilgrims and George Washington’s Continental Army, “believed they were fighting for a nation, a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” and not “for a proposition.”

“They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us,” he declared. “They built this country for us. America, in all its glory is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, it’s our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all.”

He denounced what he called “a new people” who “believe they can build a new America” by “changing the stories we tell about ourselves.”

“But America doesn’t belong to them,” he alleged. “It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It’s a way of life that is ours and only ours. If we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”

Schmitt’s full remarks were published at the right-wing Daily Signal. In them, he declares, “it should be clear that the fact that something is sanctioned by our government does not mean it’s good for our country. That much is obvious with various forms of legal immigration today.”

Schmitt also said:

“We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God.”

In an opinion piece in Missouri’s Kansas City Star, David Mastio calls out Schmitt for giving “a speech about American history in which the only brown person mentioned was George Floyd, a Black man murdered when a police officer kneeled on his neck for nine minutes over a $20 counterfeit bill.”

Mastio wrote: “Imagine American history without Italians and Irish and Jews. Imagine America without Frank Sinatra. Imagine invading the beaches of Normandy with just the pilgrims’ kids.”

“Imagine American history without Blacks,” Mastio continued. “Imagine fighting the battles of America’s Cold War triumph from Korea and Vietnam and on with just the pilgrims’ kids. Imagine America without Rosa Parks. Imagine our culture with just the pilgrims’ kids.”

“Imagine American history without Asians,” he added. “Imagine America’s economy today without the silicone-inspired contributions of the tech immigrants. Imagine America without Jensen Huang, the founder of the most valuable company in our history. Imagine tackling the future with just the pilgrims’ kids.”

Other critics slammed Schmitt as well.

“This is ignorant. This is also textbook white nationalism. . . And by the way, fun fact, [your] ancestors weren’t the only ones who built this country so f– off,” wrote pollster Cornell Belcher, an MSNBC/NBC News political analyst.

“This is 100% RACIST. No shock that a member of the @SenateGOP would say this. And not one mainstream network will call this trash out,” declared journalist Roland Martin.

“Who’s ‘us’ Senator?” asked Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett. “Does it include my ancestors, who were still in Polish shtetls in the late 19th c? Does it include people who came here chained to the floor of slave ships? The Chinese who helped build the railroads? I’m guessing that’s a no on all three.”

Tennessee Democratic state Senator Jeff Yarbro called Schmitt’s remarks “Legitimately one of the most unpatriotic, most un-American speeches ever given by a United States senator.”

“By his own account,” wrote Freethink editor-at-large Robert Chapman-Smith, “Schmitt’s ancestors arrived in America from Germany in the 1840s. They arrived in an America steeped in the question of who is American. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln spoke about the ‘electric cord’ of liberty that rebukes this idea of blood and soil nationalism.”

Michigan Democratic state Representative Phil Skaggs added, “What makes America great, why we are a shining city on a hill, is because, at our best, we are a beacon for those in search of freedom and opportunity. We’re not some old European ethno-state. Republicans are veering quickly to a dark Aryan Master Race place. It’s un-American.”

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