Nazi Seeking Office in Illinois Congress Denies Holocaust on CNN

7,000 people Jews live in the district Arthur Jones wants to represent.

View this video on YouTube

youtu.be

There’s really no way to introduce this, so here goes: a literal Nazi is running for Congress in Illinois’s third district as a Republican. Arthur Jones is the only Republican running, so he is poised to automatically make it though the primary stage of the election process. On Wednesday, Jones was interviewed on CNN by Alisyn Camerota. His demeanor became increasingly defensive and aggressive as the interview wore on; he constantly spoke over Camerota to assert his deeply offensive conspiracy theories, one of which is that the Holocaust never happened.

“Are you a Nazi?” Camerota asks bluntly at the top of the interview.

“For the past 15 to 20 years I have not had anything to do with any national organization on a formal basis,” Jones answered. “I don’t call myself a Nazi, I call myself an American patriot and statesmen.”

Jones has been part of anti-semitic groups since the 1970s, goes to neo-Nazi rallies, was part of the so-called White People’s Party, dresses in Nazi garb, and celebrates Hitler’s birthday. But he says he’s has belonged to a Nazi political party, or any party for that matter, since 1990. All that means is that he’s a Nazi, just not politically. Cool.

“The only organization I belong to is my own organization, and that’s the America First Committee, okay?” he said. Note that the name of his committee eerily echoes one of President Trump’s favorite lines: “America first.”

Camerota then brings up his website as a way to confirm that he does hold Nazi views. “I disagree with you,” he said, starting to turn angry. “It’s not vile and rancid, it’s the truth. There’s nothing on that website that’s not true.” He then takes personal responsibility for putting all the “stuff” and “articles” on the website. “I can’t help it if you don’t want to accept the truth,” he retorts.

Jones’s website (which I will not link to in an attempt to give him a bigger platform than he already has) professes to some of the most predictable crockpot right-wing Republican policies: he’s anti-same sex marriage, anti-sanctuary cities, and pro making English the official language.

He also has a section titled “Flags of Conflict.” The first flag listed is the Confederate flag, which “represents… a symbol of White pride and White resistance. It is the flag of a White counter rebellion.” There is also a flag for the “Republic of New Africa,” which symbolizes bloodshed, taking land away from Southerners and establishing a new “nation for the Negro race.” Mexico is a “nation whose leaders believe they can reconquer the American southwest by flooding our country with millions of illegal aliens.”

On a separate page, he calls Jews “blood-thirsty criminal vampires” and claims there is “no evidence” of the Holocaust. There are several photos of him at Pro-Trump rallies wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

“Democrats and Republicans, this cursed two-party, Jew-party system can’t stand it [that I am telling the truth],” Jones said in his CNN interview.

“Yes, I deny the Holocaust,” Jones stated. “It’s an extortion racket, pure and simple.”

“If you did an honest investigation of the Holocaust, you’d realize that it is nothing but an international extortion racket by the Jews, to bleed, blackmail, and extort their enemies, and to suck us into one war after another in the Middle East,” Jones continued.

Camerota counters by saying he is entitled to his own conspiracy theories, but not his own facts. Hitler did conduct a genocidal regime, Auschwitz did exist, and the Nuremberg trials did happen. Jones’s response? “That’s poppycock. It’s a scam!”

Of 700,000 people in the district in which he says he wants to represent, 7,000 of them are Jews, Camerota says. He does not mention how he will represent them, and instead counters with: “The overall majority of them are White Christian patriots. And I might add black Christian patriots, Latino Christian patriots.”

The Illinois Republican Party has disavowed Jones. Tom Schneider, the Illinois Republican Party Chairman, called him a Nazi and further said his party “strongly opposes[s][Arthur Jones’s] views and his candidacy for any public office.” The National Republican Party has also condemned Jones and his rhetoric. 

Tune in tomorrow to see what fresh, racist horrors ooze out of the lifeless and mangled corpse of the Republican Party next!

Latest in Life