In a rambling speech before a Mobile Republican club, U.S. Senate candidate Mo Brooks said Alabama Republican legislators weren’t real Republicans, called 90 percent of Chinese citizens slaves and cautioned that another civil war could be on the horizon.
Brooks’ comments, made to the Azalea City Republican Women’s club, were recorded by an attendee at the club event and shared with APR. His brief speech, which didn’t touch on his senate race, was filled with dire, black-cloud warnings about the march of “socialism” and GOP voters’ duty to elect “real Republicans.”
“You have two battles,” Brooks told the crowd, some of whom appeared to be laughing at times at his dire warnings. “The first battle is making sure that the Republicans you elect are really Republicans. How many times have you seen candidates parrot back to you what you want to hear, and you go ‘oh, yeah, that’s a good conservative,’ and then they get elected and you scratch your head and go, ‘who is that person?’”
Brooks then attacked state Republican legislators for being those phony sort of Republicans.
“You have to win that first battle, or you get, by way of example, what we just saw in the legislature,” Brooks said. “This is a Republican legislature but you wouldn’t know it from the way they acted on many different issues (in the 2021 legislative session).”
Brooks didn’t explain his comments, so it’s unclear why GOP voters would be upset with their Republican lawmakers. The only controversial bill passed in the 2021 session dealt with the legalization of medical marijuana. That bill was sponsored by a Republican senator and polling showed that an overwhelming majority of Republican voters supported its passage.
Regardless, Brooks promised dire consequences if voters didn’t heed his warnings.
“These two elections are the most important in the history of this nation, with the possible exception of the election of 1860,” Brooks said. “And you know what followed that.”
The election of 1860 was largely a referendum on slavery. Following the election of Abraham Lincoln, seven southern states, including Alabama, seceded from the union before his inauguration. The Civil War began a month later.
Brooks asked the GOP voters to make similar sacrifices.
“This is my challenge — sacrifice the way our ancestors have sacrificed to make us the greatest nation in world history,” Brooks told the crowd. “Sacrifice your time. Sacrifice your money. So we can say that we fought as hard as the people before us fought. And to give you an idea of the measure of devotion so many have had to our country — we’ve had over a million Americans die fighting for the liberty that we enjoy today.”
The war casualty figure used by Brooks would include deaths in the Civil War.
If Republican voters don’t come through in 2022 and 2024, however, Brooks predicted crushing consequences that could leave the United States overrun by “socialists,” — the best example of which, he said, could be found in “communist China.”
“Socialism is dictatorial. Socialism is telling you what you can and cannot do with your God-given talents. And each time you’re ordered to do something, that is less freedom,” Brooks said. “Probably the biggest example of this right now is communist China. You’ve got a ruling class of 10 percent and the other 90 percent are slaves. The NBA ought to be ashamed, because this other 90 percent is slaves. They have to do whatever the 10 percent orders them to do or they could be executed. That’s slavery.”
This, of course, is not true. China has many issues, and its human rights abuses over the years have been well documented, but the notion that 90 percent of the country lives in anything close to slave conditions is preposterous. China had the world’s fastest growing economy over the last 10 years and, according to the Brookings Institute, had the fastest growing middle class in that span.
