Allen West (politician)

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Allen West

Allen West (* 7. February 1961 in Atlanta , Georgia ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . Between 2011 and 2013 he represented the state of Florida in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Military time

Allen West studied arts at the University of Tennessee and political science at Kansas State University . He then served in the US Army between 1983 and 2004 , where he rose to lieutenant colonel. In 1990 he took part in the Gulf War. In 2004 he was stationed in Iraq , where he attracted attention and was charged with his actions against suspects. He was fined $ 5,000 for mistreating people. West had a prisoner beaten and carried out a mock execution . He defended himself with the argument that he had to protect his soldiers and resigned from military service. He received moral support for his offense from the population and from 95 members of Congress .

Political career

After serving in the military, West taught as a high school teacher in Florida for a year. He was also a military advisor to the army in Afghanistan . There he also worked for Military Professional Resource Inc , a company that supports military logistics. Politically, West joined the Republican Party. In the 2010 congressional elections , he was elected in the 22nd  constituency of Florida with 54.3 percent of the vote in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , where he succeeded the defeated Democrat Ron Klein on January 3, 2011 . Two years earlier, West had lost to Klein.

West was the first Republican African American Congressman from Florida since 1876. He sat on the Armed Forces Committee and the Committee on Small Business, and three subcommittees. Within his party, West belonged to the Tea Party Caucus , the union of sympathizers of the Tea Party movement . He was also a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee . His name was at times associated with the 2012 presidential election ; in January 2011, however, West stated that he was not interested in running. In 2012 he was defeated by his Democratic competitor Patrick Murphy ; West refused to recognize the result and fought legal action, including a recount of the votes. After this was done and he was still well behind Murphy, West admitted his defeat on November 20. Murphy took office on January 3, 2013.

Commitment to FOX News

On May 16, 2013, the conservative broadcaster Fox News announced that Allen West would work for the station. Fox News Assistant Program Director Bill Shine said, "West's political and military experience, coupled with his fearless way of bringing up important issues, is of great value to FOX News."

rhetoric

West is known for his fiery and polarizing rhetoric, which he used to distinguish himself within the Republican Party during his tenure as Congressman. West's rhetoric met with sharp criticism from the American left, but earned him widespread sympathy within the American right and the Republican Party. He was described by the latter as a conservative “torchbearer” and a “conservative icon”, and both Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent proposed him as a vice-presidential candidate. In January 2013, Congressmen Paul Broun and Louie Gohmert voted Allen West as Speaker of the House of Representatives, even though he was no longer a congressman by then. His statements included, among other things, the demand that Democratic and pro-Palestinian demonstrators should "kindly disappear" from the USA, the designation of people with pro- Obama stickers as "a danger to the gene pool" and the statement that African-American Democrats wanted to "send the blacks back to the plantations". On the basis of such statements, the left-wing magazine Mother Jones judged in a critical article about West's rhetoric that for West "every sentence is a proxy war within the larger struggle between patriots and 'the people of this world who simply have to be kicked in the ass'' ".

In December 2016, he posted on Facebook a picture included the designated US Defense Mattis, the following sentence: ". Fired by Obama to please the muslims Hired by Trump to exterminate them" ( released by Obama to Muslims to calm From Trump. hired to exterminate them )

Controversy

He described Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison as "someone who is truly an antithesis of the principles on which [the US] is built." In 2012, speaking to a bystander at a council meeting, he said that 78 to 81 of the Democratic MPs in the US Parliament were members of the Communist Party . West announced that it would take black votes from Democratic voters and compared himself to Harriet Tubman . In September 2013, West left his position as program director at Next Generation.TV, a subsidiary of Pajamas Media . He was accused of having sexist and anti-Semitic insults to an employee. West admitted there had been an argument, but remained silent on the allegations. He left the company voluntarily.

Private life

Allen West has been married since 1989 and has two daughters.

Web links

Commons : Allen West  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Allen West  Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CNN.com ( Memento December 11, 2007 on the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Report on Allen's deeds ( Memento from December 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Jim Geraghty: Allen West: No Interest in Being on 2012 GOP Ticket. In: National Review . January 31, 2011, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Nick Wing: Allen West: Patrick Murphy Had To 'Cheat To Beat Me'. In: The Huffington Post . December 10, 2012, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  5. ^ Warner Todd Huston: Fox News Hires Former US Rep Allen West. In: Breitbart News . May 16, 2013, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  6. ^ A b Tim Murphy: Allen West's Rise From the Florida Fever Swamps: A Short, Strange Trip into the Belly of the Anti-Shariah Beast In: Mother Jones , July / August 2012.
  7. ↑ Nick Wing: Allen West Pulls Votes For Speaker Of The House, Despite No Longer Serving In Congress. In: The Huffington Post . January 3, 2013, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Asawin Suebsaeng: Shit Rep. Allen West Says ": The Epic Video Anthology. In: Mother Jones . August 6, 2012, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Chris Tognotti: Allen West Facebook meme hails a coming genocide against Muslims. In: The Daily Dot. December 11, 2016, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  10. ^ Shehab Khan: Donald Trump ally deletes Facebook post calling for Muslim extermination. In: The Independent . December 12, 2016, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Jeremy Herb: Rep. West: Ellison "antithesis" of country's founding principles . In: Minneapolis Star Tribune . January 24, 2011. Retrieved February 2, 2011.
  12. ^ Florida Rep. Labels Congressional Democrats as Communists. In: CNN . April 11, 2012, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Article in the Blaze
  14. ↑ Rosie Gray, Kate Nocera: Allen West Out At PJ Media. In: BuzzFeed . September 26, 2013, accessed November 21, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Cord Jefferson: Allen West Is Gone from Another Job Following Alleged Anti-Semitism. In: Gawker. September 26, 2013, accessed November 21, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME West, Allen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Atlanta , Georgia