Rep. Mike Johnson’s fellow Members of Congress will take a vote today to elect him Speaker of the House and in line for the succession of the Oval Office. They do so after Johnson from Louisiana’s 4th District has spent the last two years promoting white nationalist conspiracy theories that have inspired multiple domestic terrorist attacks.
Here are some of his past remarks of using the dangerous white nationalist “invasion” and “replacement” conspiracy theories.
- 7/26/21 – Fox News Interview: “FOX Business host Dagen McDowell, said “we see what’s going on here, it increases the voting base for the Democrats,” her guest Rep. Mike Johnson (LA-04) responded, “that’s right, we are not conspiracy theorists but that is the only thing that makes sense here.” Johnson continued, “they want to turn these people into voters.”
- 4/5/22 – Breitbart: “Yet, the Biden Administration is proposing an end to Title 42, which will only make this unprecedented crisis even worse.” “There is no longer any other conclusion: The chaos is intentional.”
- 4/19/22 – Twitter: “Last month alone, there were over 40,000 more illegal migrants encountered by CBP at our southern border than the entire population of Shreveport (the 3rd largest city in LA). The Biden Administration is intentionally allowing the destruction of our country.
- 4/21/22 – News Release: “Allowing illegal immigrants to flow freely across our southern border…President Biden’s continued intentional destruction of our country at the expense of our own people must stop. I am proud to lead this effort alongside Representative Arrington and dozens of our colleagues in support of this case to reverse the administration’s purposefully destructive decision.”
- 4/29/22 – Newsmax: “like an intentional strategy…we believe this is an intentional effort to flood our country with illegals, and it is a dangerous situation”.
- 4/29/22 – Hearing with DHS Secretary Mayorkas: “…because of your deliberate and defiant policies … we have a literal invasion of lawless masses flooding over our border from more than 160 countries … innocent children, sir, are being abducted, assaulted, raped and murdered by human traffickers. Countless numbers of known terrorits and vicious gang members are clearly coming across our border and making their way into our communities all over the country … our entire country is becoming a crime scene”
- 5/12/22 – Twitter: “HERE’S THE ANSWER for all who have asked why in the world the Democrats would intentionally open our borders: Late last night I got them to admit the goal is to TURN ILLEGALS INTO VOTERS!”
- 10/25/22 – Twitter: “The current population of Louisiana is approx. 4.52 MILLION people. Joe Biden and Washington Democrats have happily allowed >4.9 MILLION illegals from 160 countries to cross into our country in the past 2 years! Think about that. And then VOTE like the rule of law depends on it!”
- 2/1/23 – “The Biden Border Crisis I” Judiciary Committee Hearing – “Administration has been reversing the vast majority of the Trump administration’s successful border enforcement policies and they are systematically they are intentionally secretary Mayorkas and and his uh his administration they’re dismantling immigration enforcement they are encouraging illegal immigration” 58:06-58:26
- 2/2/23 – Twitter: “The Biden Administration has RELEASED 1.7 million illegal aliens into American communities. The catastrophe is INTENTIONAL. And our Democrat colleagues refuse to acknowledge the undeniable facts that everyone can plainly see.”
- 3/29/23 – Twitter: “Mayorkas LIED repeatedly to the Senate Judiciary Comm yesterday. I called for his impeachment last year & summarized here why his INTENTIONAL acts will destroy our country if he isn’t stopped. Dems continue to protect & empower this carnage. God help us.”
- 5/11/23 – Twitter: “**The chaos at our open border is the INTENTIONAL outcome created by Biden & Mayorkas.** I coauthored the House Republican bill we are passing today to fix this disaster. It cannot happen soon enough!”
- 5/22/23 – Newmax: “The Biden administration has done this intentionally. [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas has done this intentionally. For what reason? Everybody asks me all the time. I think that ultimately they hope to turn all these illegals into voters for their side.”
- 9/23/23 – Twitter: “232,972 = the number of illegal immigrants encountered at our Southern Border in August, an all-time record for that month. (Countless more came through our open border undetected!) 246,886 = the total population of Shreveport & Bossier City, according to the latest Census.”
White supremacist conspiracy theories about non-white migrants replacing white people and precipitating the downfall of the nation have percolated for over a century. Its modern incarnation, the “great replacement theory,” had previously been confined to the dark corners of American politics, but in the last few years, politicians and pundits have ushered this deadly, racist fiction into the mainstream. They falsely and absurdly assert that non-white migrants and asylum seekers constitute a literal “invasion,” claiming they are part of an intentional plot to “replace” the population and culture of the United States with allegedly pliant non-white immigrants. Most Americans first learned about this racist, anti-semitic lie when they saw videos of white nationalists chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “you will not replace us” during the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August of 2017. Since then, far too many political leaders have come to adopt those bigoted ideas as their own, particularly when it comes to new immigration and descriptions of the southern border. To be crystal clear, when elected officials employ this rhetoric, they are echoing the false conspiracy theories of deadly domestic terrorists and are actively fueling an ongoing threat to public safety. This nativist narrative is as dangerous as it is false.
This invasion and replacement conspiracy has repeatedly been the motivating inspiration for acts of political violence and domestic terrorism. It was chanted in the streets of Charlottesville in 2017, posted online before a man murdered 11 in Pittsburgh in 2018, shared in racist screeds before the murder in Poway and the murder of 23 in El Paso in 2019, believed by those who attacked the Capitol in 2021, and copied by the gunman who killed ten people in Buffalo in May of 2022.
Dr. Heidi Beirich, Co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, draws a direct connection between the rhetoric and the violence. “When migrants are described as invaders, that leads to violence,” she said, “Because how else does one stop an invasion?”
When asked in July 2023, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed in testimony before Congress that when Members of Congress use great replacement conspiracy theory language like describing migrants as an “invasion,” it “fuels the threat landscape we encounter.”
Rep. Mike Johnson’s continued promotion of “invasion” and “replacement” conspiracy theories, especially after a deadly terrorist attack, is a serious black mark. Anyone who votes to elevate him to Speakers is voting to elevate his deadly racist ideas.
