Arthur Jones, the GOP candidate running for Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District, on Thursday claimed that he’s not a Nazi but defended his belief that the Holocaust is “an international extortion racket by the Jews to bleed, blackmail, distort and terrorize our enemies.”
“Well, I do not belong to any formal national socialist organization anymore and I haven’t belonged to one since about 1990. Okay?” Jones, who has been denounced by both the state and national Republican party, said on CNN’s “New Day” during an interview with Alisyn Camerota.
Camerota argued that Jones could “call it whatever you want” but his actions speak for themselves.
“You’ve been part of anti-Semitic groups since the 1970s, you go to neo-Nazi rallies, we have pictures of you there,” she said. “You were part of the White People’s Party, you dress in Nazi garb and you celebrate Hitler’s birthday. You’re a Nazi.”
She also told Jones that his website, which also features Holocaust denials, was filled with the most “vile, rancid rhetoric I think I’ve ever seen.”
Jones pushed back throughout the interview, saying he shouldn’t be blamed that other people don’t know the “truth.”
“You Jews media, you’ve gone absolutely nuts. You think that Adolf Hitler’s revived from the grave or something,” he said. “It’s one man, myself, that is standing for the truth and the news media can’t stand that. The Democrats and Republicans, it is a cursed two-party, Jew-party, queer-party system and I can’t stand it.”
Jones is the only Republican running a primary campaign for Illinois’ third congressional district, which is heavily Democratic and stretches from Chicago’s southwest side to the suburbs of LaGrange.
Watch the interview with CNN below:
