I’m So Much More Than A Neo-Nazi, GOP Candidate Says
Arthur Jones, a Republican candidate for Congress from Chicago. Image by YouTube
Republican congressional candidate Arthur Jones says he has much more to offer his district than just neo-Nazi rhetoric.
“There’s more to me than being a denier of the Holocaust,” he said in a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune. “I’m an American patriot.”
Jones, a former leader of the American Nazi Party, ran unopposed in the Republican primary for Illinois’ heavily-Democratic Third District outside Chicago. He is known in the area for a long history spewing conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, asserting that it was depicted inaccurately in the media and that it was impossible for Nazis to have killed six million Jews.
“If I really believed the Holocaust had taken place, I wouldn’t have joined the Nazi Party,” he told the Tribune. Jones said he believes Jews detained in concentration camps died because of a typhus epidemic — not gas chambers.
Jones brought several books to the interview to prove his point. Yet, he said he doesn’t appreciate being narrowly depicted as a Nazi by Republicans and in the media, as he hasn’t “been a member of any Nazi group since 1980.”
He heads a group called the America First Committee, which the Anti-Defamation League said is affiliated with the white supremacist organization Nationalist Front.
Jones criticized Republican Party leaders who denounced his candidacy. Some GOP members, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, have encouraged people to vote for Jones’ opponent, incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski.
“I’ve got a winning platform,” Jones said. “If (the GOP) would get behind me we would beat Lipinski.”
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
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
