Confronted on CNN, GOP House candidate calls Holocaust ‘poppycock’
‘You Jews media, you’ve gone absolutely nuts,’ former American Nazi Party chair Arthur Jones says. ‘You think that Adolf Hitler has revived from the grave or something’
WASHINGTON — An outspoken Holocaust denier and anti-Semite poised to become the Republican nominee for a US House seat reiterated his vitriolic views on Thursday, when he was confronted by on CNN.
In a six-minute segment with Alisyn Camerota during the news network’s morning program, Arthur Jones, a former chair of the American Nazi Party, dismissed the Holocaust as “poppycock” and a “scam,” blamed the pro-Israel lobby for miring America in endless Middle East wars, and said the Jews controlled the nation’s government, its economy and the media.
“It is shocking to hear how vocally and unapologetically racist you are,” Camerota began the segment, after airing remarks he made at a neo-Nazi rally last April. “Are you a Nazi?”
After saying that he had not had any affiliation with a “national socialist organization” for 15-20 years, Jones answered: “I don’t call myself a Nazi. I call myself an American patriot and statesman.”
He did, however, stress that he only belonged to one organization — his own, the America First Committee.
The group’s name is an homage to the Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist Charles Lindbergh, a spokesman for the original America First Committee, which advocated against US entry into World War II.
“You can call it whatever you want, Mr. Jones, but your website is filled with the most vile, rancid rhetoric I think I’ve ever read,” Camerota shot back.
(His campaign website, indeed, has a page devoted to “The Holocaust Racket,” espousing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and calling Jews “blood-thirsty criminal vampires.”)
Jones, for his part, took exception to Camerota’s characterization of his views.
“It’s not vile and rancid. It’s the truth,” he said. “There’s nothing on that website that’s not true. I personally put that stuff on there. I personally picked out the articles on there, because they’re true. Now I can’t help that you don’t want to accept the truth. You Jews media, you’ve gone absolutely nuts. You think that Adolf Hitler has revived from the grave or something. It’s one man, one man, myself, that’s standing for the truth. And the news media can’t stand that. The Democrats and the Republicans. The cursed two-party, Jew-party system can’t stand it.”
Since the 1990s, Jones has been a perennial candidate for Illinois’ 3rd Congressional district, which represents Chicago and its nearby southwestern suburbs.
He has never before come close to being a serious contender, but this year he’s the only GOP candidate on the ballot, leaving him poised to clinch the nomination on March 20.
When pressed Thursday on his notorious, decades-long history of Holocaust denial, Jones reverted to his oft-repeated theory that the German genocide was a Jewish invention to make money.
“Yes, I deny the Holocaust,” he said. “It was an extortion racket. Pure and simple. If you did any investigation, if you did any honest investigation of the Holocaust, you’d realize that it is nothing but an international extortion racket by the Jews to bleed, blackmail, extort and terrorize their enemies. And to suck us into one war after another in Mideast.”
Cameron then cited facts from the Holocaust. “I don’t want to quote you, but here’s the deal,” she said. “You can have your own conspiracy theories, but you can’t have your own facts.”
“Not conspiracy theories, it’s the facts,” Jones screamed back. “The Jews control basically the country, the Congress, the economy, the media — ”
“Hitler perpetrated a genocide. The Auschwitz death camp existed. And the Nuremberg trial existed.”
“Poppycock! It’s poppycock! It’s a scam!”
From there, the 70-year-old retired insurance salesman held up a paper that he claimed were forged records of Holocaust survivors getting special social security benefits.
Jones’ candidacy has elicited widespread denunciation from his own party, both nationally and locally.
“We condemn this candidate and his hateful rhetoric in the strongest possible terms,” RNC spokesman Michael Ahrens told The Times of Israel in an email on Tuesday.
The Illinois Republican Party, meanwhile, has also spoken out against Jones. Its chairman Tim Schneider told the Sun-Times his party and “our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones. We strongly oppose his racist views and his candidacy for any public office, including the 3rd Congressional District.”
US President Donald Trump — whom Jones called a “Jew-loving fool” — and the White House have not yet made a public statement on the candidate.
On Thursday, Camerota asked Jones how, given his hateful positions, he could represent his constituents, when his district of 700,000 included roughly 7,000 Jews.
“A handful of them are Jew Zionists, but the overall majority are white Christian patriots,” he said. “And I might add black Cristian patriots and Latino Christian patriots. And they don’t want any more wars in the Middle East. And the Israeli lobby controls the Congress of the United States and has sucked us into one war after another — and that’s what I’m running against. Not the Holocaust. I’m running against trying to prevent a Holocaust in the Middle East.”
Camerota closed the interview by mentioning his history as a failed candidate and predicted that, despite his likelihood to capture his party’s nomination because he has no opponent in the primary, this election cycle would again not see him win office.
“You have a long track record of losing,” she told him. “You lose virtually everything that you run for. You’ve run for Congress and you’ve lost — for mayor and alderman. We’re not in the business of predicting the news. But I can say that you will lose this race. You couldn’t win dog catcher.”
