Paul Nehlen Blames ‘Jewish Media’ For Criticism
Paul Nehlen Image by YouTube
(JTA) — A candidate for Congress in Wisconsin claimed in a private Twitter direct message group that his critics are “working for the Jewish media.”
Paul Nehlen, who is running to unseat Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in this year’s elections, also referred to the “fake conservatives who happen to be Jewish” in the Twitter direct message group called CityRevoltVoteNehlen, Buzzfeed reported Friday, publishing screenshots of the messages. “Im going to decimate them all,” he tweeted.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and Breitbart, which Bannon left last week, severed ties with Nehlen last month over his anti-Semitic comments.
“There are a list of goys attacking me, and a separate list of Jews,” Nehlen messaged the private Twitter group. “It’s pretty obviously coordinated,” he also added.
Nehlen frequently turns to the group to solicit help with trolling his critics and political opponents, BuzzFeed reported, citing two people it says have knowledge of the group.
In 2016, Breitbart and Bannon enthusiastically endorsed and supported Nehlen’s bid to unseat Ryan. Nehlen embraced many of Bannon’s positions, including a rejection of the Republican establishment, a call for a crackdown on illegal immigration and limits on legal immigration.
The effort was a monumental failure: Ryan won the 2016 primary in Wisconsin’s First District with 84 percent while Nehlen, a businessman, won 15 percent of the vote.
Nehlen has since positioned himself as pro-Israel but also has embraced anti-Jewish themes in social media.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
