During a panel discussion on MSNBC on Monday evening, Representative Steve King of Iowa said that white people contributed more to civilization than any other categories or “subgroup of people,” causing a live segment to devolve into on-air chaos.

As the show broadcast from Cleveland, where much of the conservative establishment has gathered for the Republican National Convention, King responded to comments made by ​Esquire​ writer Charles Pierce as the panel discussed Monday’s upheaval on the convention floor.

“If you’re really optimistic, you can say that this is the last time that old white people will command the Republican Party’s attention, its platform, and its public face,” Pierce said. “Of course, I thought this was going to happen after 2012, but thanks for the good work of Congressman King, I was disappointed . . . But I’ll tell you what, in that hall today, that hall is wired. It’s wired by unhappy, dissatisfied white people.”

“This whole ‘white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie,” King said. “I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where have these contributions been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”

“Than white people?” host Chris Hayes asked.

“Than—than Western civilization itself, that’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the United States of America, and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world,” King said. “That’s all of Western civilization.”

At that point, the panel erupted in chaos, and Hayes pleaded for calm. “We are not going to debate Western civilization,” he said.

Calls and e-mails to King’s office were not immediately returned.

Hayes tweeted after the incident that he was “pretty taken aback” by King’s comments. “I probably should’ve blown through [break] and let [American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent] April Ryan respond. But the entire notion of debating which race/civilization/‘sub group’ contributed more or is best is as odious as it is preposterous. Which is why I said, ‘we’re not debating this here.’ But I hear people who think I made the wrong call in the moment. Maybe I did.”

“Let me tell something for real: you know I laugh and play a lot,” Ryan said in an emotional discussion captured on Periscope after the segment. “I’m kind of shaken from that. Because that was just in-my-face racism.”