ICYMI: Blake Masters Has a Lot of Thoughts About Black People [New York Magazine]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

New York Magazine: Blake Masters Has a Lot of Thoughts About Black People
By Matt Stieb
August 30, 2022

Key Points:

• You may know Blake Masters, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, as one of the guys who got $10 million from anti-Democratic billionaire Peter Thiel or as the candidate endorsed by a prominent Nazi. But over the past few months, Thiel’s ex-stenographer has been trying to jolt his way into the minds of the electorate by stripping away the subtext of common Republican talking points and getting directly to racist ideas, from blasting the first Black vice-president as an unqualified “affirmative action” hire to blaming “Black people” (yes, really) for most gun violence in the U.S.

• On Sunday, the Associated Press published a story about increasingly diverse ranks in the Federal Reserve’s leadership, noting there are more female, Black, and LGBT officials than ever in the central bank’s 109-year history. In response, Masters implied that those candidates got to the top of their field not because they were qualified, but because of their identity.

• He followed up in a video saying he doesn’t “care if every single employee at the Fed is a Black lesbian, as long as they’re hired for their competence and not because of what they look like or who they sleep with.” He apparently never questioned whether any other Fed official, such as every one of the 16 chairs who was white, was qualified.

• Masters didn’t stop there, going even further to slam what he claims was affirmative action, saying there is no “single policy since the end of Jim Crow that’s been worse or more divisive for race relations in this country.”

• Then he pointed to Vice-President Kamala Harris as an example. “If you want to see the affirmative-action regime on display, just look at Biden’s White House,” he continued. “Biden promised that he would choose a woman for his VP, then of course he chose Kamala Harris — so incompetent she can’t even get a sentence out. But I’ve never spoken to anyone who can say with a straight face that Kamala was somehow the most qualified candidate for that job.”

• In an April podcast appearance, Masters said that “we do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence. It’s gangs. It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly. ”

• Last year, Masters said that “what the left really wants to do is change the demographics of this country” by increasing immigration from non-white countries. In an interview in May, he added that Democrats are “trying to manufacture and import” a new voting base.

• In so many words, the idea Masters is suggesting is the replacement theory, a tenet of white nationalism cited by racist mass shooters across the country, most recently in Buffalo. In a statement to the New York Times, Masters doubled down, saying, “It is obvious to everyone that Democrats see illegal immigrants as future voters. No ‘theory’ is needed to observe that.”

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