No biggie anymore for Rep. Andy Biggs to hang with racists and antisemites

I’m not sure it ever much bothered Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs for others to point out his associations with white nationalists, antisemites, insurrectionists and other heavy haters, but these days he really does not seem to give a you-know-what.

When I was a boy I was lucky enough to live in a heavily ethnic, racially diverse blue-collar neighborhood where anybody’s parent was everybody’s parent and anyone’s child was everyone’s child.

A place where the universally accepted measure of character was a proverb that goes back to the 16th century and says: “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are.”

Last weekend Biggs participated in a Second Amendment rally at the Arizona Capitol that included as a sponsor the white nationalist, antisemitic College Republicans United and featured the misogynistic, Islamophobic, racist, right-wing extremist Proud Boys.

Nice friends, right?

Why does Biggs associate with Proud Boys?

Last year, members of the Proud Boys were ordered to pay a million-dollar civil judgment for destroying property at the predominantly Black campus of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.

The judge in that case wrote in part that the group has “incited and committed acts of violence against members of Black and African American communities across the country. They also have victimized women, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, and other historically marginalized people.”

Also, the former national chairman of the group, Enrique Tarrio, is serving 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Meantime, you may remember that last year College Republicans United, known for its white nationalist, antisemitic views, invited the white nationalist Nick Fuentes to an event at Arizona State University.

This is an organization that still holds to the pre-World War II antisemitism espoused by bigots like Henry Ford in “The International Jew.”

Just the type of people you’d want a member of Congress hanging out with, right?

We should have listened to Biggs' brothers

Then again, it’s not much of a surprise for Biggs.

In 2015, Biggs was at an event at which the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers, Steward Rhodes, said that then-Sen. John McCain “should be tried for treason before a jury of his peers … and then after we convict him, he should be hung by the neck until dead.”

Last year, Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Then there’s the time that Biggs and fellow Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar were among 26 members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee who refused to sign a pledge denouncing “white nationalism and white supremacy,” as well the “Great Replacement” theory.

Outside criticism does not seem to bother Biggs, however. Neither does inside criticism, like from within his own family.

In 2021 the congressman’s brothers, William Biggs and Daniel Biggs, wrote a letter to The Arizona Republic saying in part, “By attempting to cause uncertainty in the election’s outcome, Andy is at least partially to blame for the riot at the Capitol on January 6. Political ambition, peer pressure and fealty to Trump proved to be too strong a drug to resist.”

Still is, apparently.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

For more opinions content, please subscribe

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rep. Andy Biggs hangs with racists, antisemites like it's no biggie