Demand That White Supremacist Wendy Rogers Resign From Office, Or Recall Her

Above: Sen. Wendy Rogers speaking to the Cottonwood Oathkeepers in March 2021. Photo via Twitter/@WendyRogersAZ.

If you had to pick the worst member of the Arizona legislature, you would be hard pressed to decide on just one. There are so many who are equally qualifying and unfit to serve in any political office.

Making everyone’s “final cut” list, however, would be freshman senator Wendy Rogers. Oh my God is this woman totally nuts and unfit to serve in any political office. She had been a perennial candidate for office and always lost, multiple times, because voters could tell that she was nuts and unfit to serve in any political office.

But then the ice cream man hired by Koch industries to run their Southwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Arizona, Doug Ducey, and his corporate funded PAC supported Wendy Rogers’ last campaign, and voilà! This insult to human decency was elected to office. I thought you should know who was responsible for this MAGA/QAnon white supremacist being in office. Way to go, Douchie!

REMINDER: AZ Gov Doug Ducey’s PAC spent over $500k to get this radical elected. That IE is why she finally won after years of falling short. #duceypac is funded by @AZChamber @SWGas @apsFYI @CoxComm plus the owners of @suns @dbacks @AZCardinals @Angels and other rich Arizonans. pic.twitter.com/rmW2YlIUd4

— Tony Cani (@tcani) July 15, 2021

During her Republican primary, Wendy Rogers attacked the equally nutty and unfit to serve in public office, Sylvia Allen, for being a racist. Takes one to know one, birds of a feather, etc.

For posterity, here it is https://t.co/BCxdxS1xOn

— Jim Small (@JimSmall) July 20, 2021

The Arizona Republic reports, Arizona Jewish organization criticizes state senator for ‘thinly veiled hate speech’:

An Arizona Jewish organization has criticized a social media post from a state senator, calling it “thinly veiled hate speech.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix responded to a Twitter post from Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, who commented on Saturday on a report of thousands of migrants apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We are being replaced and invaded,” Rogers wrote on Twitter. The language prompted a response from the Jewish organization, which saw the post as rooted in an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

See: Anti-Defamation League Explainer: “The Great Replacement”.

“The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix is deeply concerned with Sen. Rogers’ use of extremist terms that have inspired some of the worst atrocities in recent history,” Paul Rockower, the organization’s executive director, wrote in a prepared statement.

“Given the uptick of antisemitism and extremism in our state, and across the country, Rogers’ use of thinly-veiled hate speech is dangerous and has no place in the rhetoric of Arizona’s elected officials.”

Rogers’ post echoed sentiments of the “great replacement,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory that claims white people around the world are being systematically replaced by people of color. Moreover, many white supremacists believe that Jews are behind this supposed replacement.

During the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, chants of “Jews will not replace us” echoed through the almost entirely white crowd.

A year later, eleven people were killed when a gunman opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018. The massacre occurred after the gunman made a post on a social media site favored by extremists wherein he complained about a Jewish nonprofit that works to resettle refugees in the United States.

Before a white supremacist killed dozens of worshipers at a pair of New Zealand mosques, in March 2019, the shooter posted an online manifesto titled “The Great Replacement,” in which he linked immigration to white genocide.

And just months after that shooting, a white supremacist cited that manifesto before killing more than a dozen people, many of them Latino, at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in what he called a “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

This is not the first time Rogers has used extreme rhetoric on social media since taking office in November.

Rogers’ previous statements

Rogers has repeatedly referenced her membership in the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia [domestic terrorist] group whose members were involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an event that she has since falsely blamed on anti-fascist leftists. In the months since, nearly 20 alleged Oath Keepers are facing charges for their actions at the capitol that day, according to CNN. 

More background: Oath Keeper militants planned out their attack at the Capitol, even holding trainings in the weeks before, and looked to Trump for direction, and 9 Oath Keepers charged with sweeping conspiracy for role in Capitol insurrection, and DOJ arrests four more Oath Keepers in connection with Jan. 6, and DOJ seeks to build large conspiracy case against Oath Keepers for Jan. 6 riot.

Many of her posts revolve around pro-Trump conspiracies but she was recently linked to more separatist ideas, including granting an interview to an antisemitic news outlet whose founder claims that the country has been “taken over by a Jewish cabal.”

Rogers’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but she did take to Twitter to expound on her statement.

“Apparently the #FakeNews is triggered because I said we are being replaced,” she wrote.

“We Americans who love this country are being replaced by people who do not love this country. I will not back down from this statement. Communists & our enemies are using mass immigration, education, big tech, big corporations & other strategies to accomplish this. The groups who are doing this undermine our families, our history, our faith and our rights. We need more people who love America, not less.”

Excuse me? You are proudly a member of a far-right domestic terrorist group whose members acted as a private militia for Donald Trump on Jan. 6 in a violent seditious insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Had their coup d’etat succeeded, they would have executed the Vice President and members of Congress. You are no patriot, and you do not love America. You are a member of a domestic terrorist group that sought to overthrow American constitutional democracy. You have violated the oath of office you took as a military officer (and state legislator), and disgraced the uniform you once wore. You are a pathetic excuse for a human being. Resign from office.

While her legislative achievements are limited so far, her propensity for making headlines has carried through her time in office. Earlier this year, Rogers was investigated and ultimately cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee following reports that she created a hostile work environment.

The former staffer who made the complaint later filed a $500,000 notice of claim against the state, alleging wrongful termination from her office. The aide claimed Rogers berated and cursed at him during a tirade, made comments about his weight, asked him to do political work on state time and to work while he was out sick recovering from COVID-19, among other claims.

The Arizona Mirror adds, GOP Sen. Wendy Rogers defends her promotion of racist ‘great replacement’ ideology:

After a media report highlighting her use of language mirroring a racist conspiracy theory that was cited by white supremacist mass shooters, Flagstaff Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers doubled- and tripled-down on her assertion that immigrants are “replacing” white Americans and destroying “western civilization.”

Rogers on Saturday retweeted an article by far-right outlet Breitbart Texas about migrant apprehensions, along with the comment that “we are being replaced and invaded.” The language is the same used by those who promote the “Great Replacement Theory.”

* * *

Rogers’s use of “great replacement” ideology caught the attention of journalist Nick Martin, who covers far-right racist extremism in America. Martin wrote that Rogers “echoed white supremacist rhetoric” and was being condemned by a local Jewish organization.

On Tuesday, Rogers addressed Martin’s coverage and the criticism she was facing by saying that Americans are being replaced and that it was the work of “communists & our enemies.”

“I will not back down from this statement. Communists & our enemies are using mass immigration, education, big tech, big corporations & other strategies to accomplish this,” Rogers said in another tweet.

Rogers also echoed another white nationalist talking point by later tweeting out “MAKE WESTERN CIVILIZATION GREAT AGAIN.”

Some white supremacist and extremist groups have focused their messaging on a crusade to save “western civilization,” linking their identities to ancient Greece and Rome as an attempt to turn “western civilization” into code for “white culture.”

Famously, former Congressman Steve King, who was deemed the most openly affiliated Congressman with white nationalism by the Washington Post, defended his views by saying he was defending “western civilization.”

“Senator Rogers’ statements are completely in line with the kind of bigoted dehumanzing rhetoric being used by white nationalists,” Lindsay Schubiner, program director at Western States Center said in a statement to Arizona Mirror. “Elected officials have a responsibility to stand up against bigotry and violence, and Sen. Rogers’ colleagues have an obligation to denounce her rhetoric if they do not wish to be implicated by it.”

Schubiner said Rogers should recognize the violence that comments like hers have inspired.

“The ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory has inspired a wave of white nationalist violence both in the U.S. and abroad,” she said. “At a time when anti-immigrant bigotry and violence in America is on the rise, Senator Rogers’ comments are dangerous.”

And local Jewish groups are speaking out against Rogers’s comments.

“The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix is deeply concerned with Sen. Rogers’s use of extremist terms that have inspired some of the worst atrocities in recent history,” Paul Rockower, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, told the Arizona Mirror. “Given the uptick of antisemitism and extremism in our state, and across the country, Rogers’ use of thinly-veiled hate speech is dangerous and has no place in the rhetoric of Arizona’s elected officials.”

“In the issue of migration, the additive ingredients needed are compassion and respect for human dignity,” Carlos Galindo-Elvira, Director of Community Engagement for Chicanos Por La Causa said to the Mirror. “What needs to be removed are xenophobic politics.”

What needs to be removed is Wendy Rogers removed from office. Demand that she resign from office, or face a recall campaign.