Neo-Nazi poised to be GOP nominee in Illinois says he's not a 'single-issue candidate'

A longtime neo-Nazi poised to be a Republican nominee for Congress in Illinois says nothing would get him to give up the chance to promote “America-first” policies in Washington.

Arthur Jones, who has a long association with the American Nazi Party and related groups, was the only person to submit 603 signatures for the Republican ballot in the Chicago-area 3rd Congressional District, a Democratic stronghold.

Horror spread quickly after the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that Republicans appear unable to force Jones off the ballot.

“I condemn this man in the strongest possible terms," said Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. “The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones," said party Chairman Tim Schneider.

The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against anti-Semitism, reported that Jones attended celebrations of Adolf Hitler’s birthday between 2008 and 2011. On one occasion, there was a cake dedicated to the dictator.

Jones, a former insurance salesman and Vietnam War veteran, sidestepped questions about whether he attended Hitler birthday parties but said in an interview he’s “not a single-issue candidate."

“I’m not running as a Nazi, I’m running as a Republican,” Jones told the Washington Examiner.

That's not to say his views have evolved. “Nazi ideology is the ideology of the average American white person, but they don’t know it," he said. "Another name for it is populism ... it's a belief that white people should be running this country, not being servants for all these other minorities.”

Although denounced by the Republican Party, Jones said he still can win the general election because “Trump did pretty good in some of those areas.”

“My slogan is we need more jobs, not more wars. It’s time to put America first,” he said.

Though broadly supportive of Trump, the 70-year-old said Trump is too deferential to Israel, has too many Jewish advisers and cabinet secretaries, and “unfortunately he’s allowed Jews to come into his family and that’s compromised his own beliefs,” referring to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“I’ve never met the man, but he’s got the right idea. He has to stand up for America first and if that’s going to create some rancor in his own family, so be it,” Jones said.

Jones traces his anti-Semitism to reading books in college that expressed doubt about the number of people who died in the Holocaust and that presented Jews as leading a global communist conspiracy. He sent away for the books from the American Nazi Party, then called the National Socialist White People Party, that alleged that some races had lower IQs and contained photos of Jewish communists.

“I became an official supporter of the party, and when I left college I became what's called a sworn-in stormtrooper,” Jones said.

Jones said he ran for the mayor of Milwaukee in 1976 “as an open national socialist, complete with a swastika” under the American Nazi Party. He lost, but said he believes voter fraud may be the reason.

Although he claims he doesn’t want to talk about his denial of the Holocaust, Jones readily does so, denying the consensus among mainstream historians that the Nazi government of Germany murdered millions of Jews during World War II.

“The Holocaust is a greatly overblown event. I don’t deny that the Germans put Jews in camps, just like we put Japanese in camps,” he said. Jones said grim scenes at liberated German death camps actually were the result of typhus, and that Hitler only put radical political adversaries in concentration camps.

“Hitler said, ‘well if you're going to be that way’,” Jones said. “He rounded up these Jewish radicals and put them in camps, and some of them were released.”

Jones’ unorthodox views include a belief that large numbers of Muslims are pretending to be Mexicans and sneaking over the southern border.

“A lot of them quite frankly are Muslims disguised as Mexicans,” he said. “We could have a whole underground army of terrorists and not know it because we think they are Mexicans.”

The Anti-Defamation League reported that Jones dressed in “Nazi garb” in 1979 for an anti-integration rally and “[m]ost recently, in September 2011, Jones attended a rally in Wisconsin held by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM), the largest neo-Nazi group in the country,” the group says.

Jones said he actually spoke at a Pikeville, Ky., rally last year organized by members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Traditionalist Worker party, and the National Socialist Movement. “I said Trump was betraying us,” he said. “It looked like he was weakening on the wall.”

Now, Jones said he’s more supportive of Trump. “I think he is re-enforcing the true conservative movement,” Jones said. “I think he just expressed what’s in his heart, and a lot of people agree, myself included.”

He endorses the president’s positions on immigration, trade, and relations with Russia. He said he disagrees on Mideast policy but agrees with Trump that “very fine people” were among white nationalists involved in Charlottesville, Va., clashes last year.

Although most vocal about his prejudice toward Jews — which he says are “the greatest enemy of this country” — Jones said he also opposes same-sex marriage and is concerned that Hispanics may be planning to take over states along the Mexican border, and that “very black militants” may attempt to force white Americans out of southern states.

While passionate about his bigotry, Jones also has detailed plans to address healthcare reform, citing his work as a salesman. He wants a small tax to cover catastrophic conditions.

Jones said he collected signatures for the primary ballot while in severe pain from a tumor in one of his kidneys, taking hydrocodone as he did so. There's “no way” anyone can convince him to drop out now, he said, even with vast sums of money.

He chose to run as a Republican because appearing on the ballot required fewer signatures than an independent candidacy.

“I win the primary by default, whether I get one vote or 10 votes,” he beamed.

Then, Jones said, “I don’t buy this line that you can’t win because it's a Democratic stronghold … I have customers there who bought insurance from me.”