GOP senator Tim Scott says ‘woke supremacy’ as bad as white supremacy

Republican Senator Tim Scott has claimed that "woke supremacy" is just as bad as white supremacy in the United States, and the country needed to take it "seriously".

His comments came during an interview with Fox News after the FBI director Christopher Wray announced there was a serious threat with white supremacist groups in the US, specifically after the US Capitol riots that took place on 6 January.

"Woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy. We need to take that seriously," Mr Scott said on Fox News.

The South Carolina senator made the statement also in response to MSNBC's Joy Reid, who called Mr Scott "the patina of diversity" for the GOP after he appeared at a recent press conference. Mr Scott is the only Black Republican senator in office currently.

"You've got to love Tim Scott standing there to provide the patina of diversity over that round of words, that basket full of words," Ms Reid said at the time about the senator's attendance.

Following the MSNBC segment, Mr Scott's press secretary was quick to defend the senator, stating he was "not a prop" for the GOP.

"Unsurprising that someone like Joy would stoop that low – I guess that's what you do in the absence of a substantive policy critique. The senator has been leading the fight against the misguided Dem wage hike for weeks," Caroline Anderegg wrote in a tweet on 2 March.

Mr Scott's comments about political wokeness come at a time when the Republican party has zeroed in on "cancel culture" and how it has impacted daily society.

Dr Seuss was the latest focus for conservatives after it was revealed that six books in the author's collection would no longer be published due to racist imagery.

Conservatives have slammed this decision, calling it cancel culture and encouraging the public to purchase popular titles from Dr Seuss. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy even posted a video of himself reading Green Eggs and Ham, despite it not being one of the titles removed due to racist imagery.

Meanwhile members of the far-right have denied the growing threat of white supremacy in the country. Fox News host Tucker Carlson was one of them, and he went as far as to make the false claim in February that there was no evidence white supremacist and militia groups were involved in the riots that public witnessed at the US Capitol on 6 January.

"There's no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. That's a lie," Mr Carlson said on his show.

Instead Mr Carlson, among others, has claimed that members of antifa were responsible for some of the actions seen during the deadly riots.

FBI Director Christian Wray said the federal agency had "no evidence" antifa was involved in the 6 January riots when speaking in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

"We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to antifa in connection with the 6th," Mr Wray said. "That doesn't mean we're not looking, and we'll continue to look. But at the moment, we have not seen that."

But what the agency did find was that there was a percentage of people involved who associated themselves with white supremacist or far-right militia groups.

"Although I don't have the percentage for you, the attackers on January 6th included a number – and the number keeps growing as we build out our investigations – of what we would call militia violent extremism," Mr Wray said. "And we have had some already arrested who we would put in the category of racially motivated violent extremism, white as well. Those would be the categories so far that we're seeing as far as 6 January."

He added that the US was seeing a growing threat of violent activity among these extremist groups in everyday life.

“I would certainly say, as I think I’ve said consistently in the past, that racially motivated violent extremism, specifically of the sort that advocates for the superiority of the white race, is a persistent, evolving threat,” Mr Wray said. “It’s the biggest chunk of our racially motivated violent extremism cases for sure. And racially motivated violent extremism is the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio, if you will, overall.”