Republican candidate for Missouri governor vows to burn books after viral flamethrower video

A Republican candidate for Missouri governor on Monday vowed to burn books if elected after he was criticized for a video showing him burning cardboard boxes with a flamethrower.

The video, which has gone viral on social media, shows state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican who is running for governor in 2024, and state Sen. Nick Schroer, a St. Charles Republican, using flamethrowers to torch a stack of boxes at a fundraising event in Defiance in St. Charles County on Friday.

“In the video, I am taking a flame thrower to cardboard boxes representing what I am going to do to the leftist policies and RINO corruption of the Jeff City swamp,” Eigel said in a statement to The Star on Monday. “But let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too - on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Eigel’s remarkable comment promising to burn books comes as he embarks on a campaign for governor attempting to appeal to the staunch right wing of the Missouri Republican Party. Public book burnings typically illustrate extreme censorship related to political, cultural and religious materials. They often invoke historic atrocities such as burning of Jewish texts in Nazi Germany or racist bonfires by the Ku Klux Klan.

Eigel will face a primary that features two of the state’s top Republicans, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

Photos and video of Eigel and Schroer using the flamethrowers have been shared hundreds of times on social media over the past two days.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat who is running for governor, in a statement criticized Eigel saying that he and his “extremist allies’ idea of campaigning for governor is using a flamethrower to burn whatever he doesn’t agree with.”

“Watching lawmakers use flamethrowers to intimidate folks they disagree with is a jarring reminder of how they view their jobs as a joke, while real people suffer from their cruelty,” Quade said. “We deserve a government that’s going to work to solve real problems, not make political stunts.”

Schroer, reached by phone on Monday, said the video was taken during an event called Freedom Fest hosted by the St. Charles County Republican Central Committee. He and Eigel were burning empty boxes to help the committee raffle off a flamethrower, he said.

The Republican state senator criticized those who said he was burning books, saying that they were spreading false information. Schroer on Friday shared a photo of himself using the flamethrower, saying he was “Burning down the swamp!”

Democrats and liberal activists on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, also quickly condemned the video, accusing the Republicans of simulating the burning of books. Some incorrectly said the two lawmakers were actively burning books.

“Next time, don’t forget your hoods…inhaling fumes from burning books and crosses is noxious business,” Jess Piper, the executive director of Blue Missouri, a group that fundraises for Democrats, wrote in response to one of the videos, drawing a comparison to burnings by the Ku Klux Klan.

Debbie McFarland, a committee member and organizer of the event, told The Star that the two Republican senators were burning empty boxes, including trash and empty wine boxes. She painted criticism of the video as a “liberal leftist narrative.”

While the boxes that Eigel and Schroer burned were empty, criticism of the video comes as some Missouri Republicans have targeted book content. This year, House Republicans agreed to cut from the state budget $4.5 million for libraries in retaliation for a lawsuit on behalf of two library groups challenging a new state law that bans certain materials in school libraries.

Those funds were later restored in the Senate this year.

Eigel on Monday posted another angle of the video on social media, calling on people to visit his campaign’s website “to fight back against these woke radicals.”