He's a Holocaust denier, he's a white supremacist and he's set to get the Republican nomination for a major congressional seat in Illinois.
Arthur Jones, a Prairie State anti-Semite who has been unsuccessfully running for office for decades, is poised to get closer than ever to office this year after emerging as the only GOP candidate for a congressional spot representing parts of Chicago and its suburbs.
Jones has made no secret of his view that the Holocaust is a "racket," and he has even made that a prominent part of his latest bid for public office. His campaign website features a page called "Holocaust?" that includes a typed note calling the murder of 6 million Jews by Nazis "the biggest, blackest, lie in history" and falsely claiming there is no proof of the Holocaust beyond "a few professional concentration camp survivors." The website also features a page calling the Confederate flag "a symbol of White pride and White resistance" and the LGBT rainbow flag "an attack on traditional Christian morality and religious freedom."
And here we are, folks: Former head of the American Nazi Party Arthur Jones—unrepentant white supremacist and Holocaust denier—will be the @GOP nominee for Congress in IL-3.
— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) February 4, 2018
An actual Nazi is a GOP candidate. And party line GOP voters will vote for him.https://t.co/tqZGkUIGaJ
Jones's campaign includes the slogan "It's time to put America First!" likely referencing President Donald Trump's "America First" campaign. Trump's slogan itself is taken from the America First Committee, an anti-Semitic and non-interventionist group from World War II. Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League asked Trump to stop using the phrase during his presidential campaign because of its anti-Semitic origins.
Jones last ran for office in 2016, when he expressed his support for Trump's candidacy, noting that his only concern was that Trump's daughter Ivanka is married to a Jew, Jared Kushner. (He has since said he regrets voting for Trump because the president has "surrounded himself with hoards of Jews.") But Jones was kicked off the ballot before that election.
This time, though, there appears to be nothing in his way, as the district failed to produce any other challengers for the Republican ticket.
"Given the fact that I've got no opposition in the primary, OK, I win that one by default all right," Jones told the Chicago Sun-Times in a Sunday profile.
Jones is all but guaranteed to lose in November to one of the Democratic candidates—incumbent Representative Dan Lipinski or challenger Marie Newman—since the 3rd Congressional District leans heavily to the left.
The Illinois Republican Party is unable to boot Jones from the ballot this time, since he avoided mistakes with his petitions that invalidated his run in 2016. But the party made clear it has no support for the man who seems destined to represent it this year.
"The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones," party chairman Tim Schneier said in a statement to the Sun-Times. "We strongly oppose his racist views and his candidacy for any public office, including the 3rd Congressional District."
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