I suppose when you're a fringe candidate you'll do and say almost anything to get some attention. State Sen. Bill Eigel is way back of Jay Ashcroft and is not expected to garner much support in the Republican primary, mostly because he's a complete lunatic.
Source: Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — 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.
Thank you for the historical context, Kansas City Star.
