Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins (R-3rd District), a former Sheriff’s captain often flatteringly referred to as the “Cajun John Wayne,” recently urged the United States to “identity” [sic] and extrajudicially murder every “radicalized Islamic suspect.” In other news, the Islamic State’s campaign for a global holy war seems to be coming along nicely.
Here’s what Higgins wrote, in a Facebook post that he clearly would have vastly preferred be delivered orally 900 years ago to a group of bleeding knights in a ditch outside Jerusalem:
The free world... all of Christendom... is at war with Islamic horror. Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.
-Captain Clay Higgins
Higgins resigned from his post as St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Captain in February 2016, claiming, in typically extravagant prose, that “I would die rather than sacrifice my principles.” Higgins had recently published an alarming video that seemed to threaten the lives of suspected gang members and referred to them as as “heathens who have terrorized your community,” drawing rebukes from family members and the ACLU.
“I would leave my wife without a husband, my children without a daddy, rather than kneel to the very forces of evil that I have so long stood against,” he said in his announcement. St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby J. Guidroz said in response to Higgins’ resignation that while he in fact agreed with the video in question, Higgins had been having a difficult time following orders. “I repeatedly told him to stop saying things like, ‘you have no brain cells,’ or making comments that were totally disrespectful and demeaning. Second; Clay Higgins appeared on the cover of a local magazine in full dress uniform without my approval and permission.” He’d also been selling “mugs, t-shirts and other trinkets using the department badge and uniform” against department policy.
“I will not kneel, to violent street gangs... I will not kneel, to murderers... or the parents that raised them,” Higgins said in his resignation. “I will not kneel, to a discredited wanna-be black activist, that doesn’t really have the best interest of his people in mind, he just wants to make a profit... and I will not kneel, to bureaucrats or politicians, in Washington or Baton Rouge, who have forgotten why they wear a badge, and who they serve.”
Naturally, he immediately opted to run for Congress.
Since winning his seat, Higgins has (not surprisingly) voted in line with Trump 100 percent of the time, and has spoken out in favor of the AHCA. His Irish ancestor was born into indentured servitude, he explained ahead of the vote, and came to the U.S. so he could “keep the toil of his labor.”
“The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, is 8,000 pages of regulation and taxation,” he yelled. “There is not a man nor a woman amongst us from sea to shining sea that believes this body can produce 8,000 pages of freedom!”
Rep. Higgins has also continued to publish videos, a hobby that he ought to have mastered by now, and yet:
We have reached out to Rep. Higgins’s office for comment and will update the post if we receive a response.
Update (12:30 p.m. EST): In an email to Jezebel, a spokesperson for Rep. Higgins said, “Rep. Higgins is referring to terrorists. He’s advocating for hunting down and killing all of the terrorists. This is an idea all of America & Britain should be united behind.”
DISCUSSION
Isn’t that a crime? Genuinely curious if he can be arrested for inciting violence.