Outspoken Nazi Set to Win Republican Nomination in Illinois Congressional Race

By Molly Olmstead, Slate

07 February 18

 

n outspoken neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier is set to become the Republican nominee for an Illinois congressional seat.

Arthur Jones, a 70-year-old retired insurance agent, told the Chicago Sun-Times he once led the American Nazi Party and heads up a group called the America First Committee, which excludes Jewish members. On Jones’ campaign website, under a section titled, “The ‘Holocaust’ racket,” he insists the murder of 6 million Jews was the “biggest blackest lie in history” and that the Holocaust amounted to “propaganda, whose purpose is designed to bleed, blackmail, extort and terrorize, the enemies of organized world Jewry.”

Jones is running unopposed in a highly Democratic district that includes a part of Chicago and is expected to be easily defeated in the general election.

According to his website, Jones is campaigning to, among other things, “bring our troops home NOW to defend our borders”; to end “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants and sanctuary cities; to make English the official language; and to fight an agenda he believes, that the federal government has to “change” neighborhoods “found to be too White, too Christian, or too straight.”

The Chicago Tribune reported that he opposes interracial marriage and school integration and was unsure when asked whether black people or Latinos should have the right to vote.

According to the Sun-Times, Jones protested the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in 2009. Another time, when he spoke to a group of white supremacists, he said he regretted voting for Trump because the president “surrounded himself with hordes of Jews,” according to the Sun-Times. He told the Tribune he appeared in TV commercials dressed as a storm trooper and presented himself as “the White People’s Candidate” in 1976. In another election attempt, he advertised in the newspaper with swastikas, according to the Tribune. “I don’t believe in equality,” he told the paper.

Jones has run repeatedly for office through the past four decades, first seeking Milwaukee’s mayoral seat in 1976. He has attempted to win the GOP 3rd Congressional District primary seven times, according to the Sun-Times. In 2016 he also ran unopposed, but he was removed from the ballot by the Illinois Republican Party because of issues with his paperwork.

Leaders of the Illinois Republican party have distanced themselves from Jones. He will face the Democratic candidate for the 3rd District in the general election in November.