Real Illinois Nazis - Arthur Jones' Congressional Run

Arthur Jones, Republican congressional candidate
for Illinois 3rd District sporting his MAGA hat 

Read an interesting post on Twitter the other night from Nick Lowles, an anti-fascist who works with a British organization called Hope Not Hate.

He posted a link to a Peterborough Telegraph article about Alan Bull, a Labour Party candidate running for a local city council seat in Peterborough - a city in eastern England about 73 miles north of London.

Bull faces troubling allegations about sharing anti-Semitic posts on his Facebook page.

Those alleged posts include a shared link to an article questioning the Holocaust, which instantly reminded me of the long-time Holocaust denier Arthur Jones (pictured above).

Now of course the First Amendment protects the right of free speech in this country, so it's the right of Arthur Jones (or any other American) to say or believe any kind of nonsense he wants to.

Especially given that he's a Vietnam veteran who served his country.

But Jones is also the Republican Party candidate running for Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of the south side of Chicago and suburban areas just southwest of the city.

Local, state and national Republican Party organizations have disavowed Jones, publicly at least; thanks to the Citizens United SCOTUS decision in 2010, dark money is basically untraceable.

Jake and Elwood Blues prepare to run Illinois Nazis
off a bridge in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers 

So who really knows which members of the Republican establishment are actually funneling money to this guy.

But it's enough that Jones won more than 20,000 votes to earn the right to be the Republican candidate for the 3rd District this November.

Now I don't know a whole lot about this district, but like a lot of other people I can't help but wonder; are there 20,000 politically-active Illinois Nazis?

In the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, when brothers Jake and Elwood Blues come upon a rally of neo-nazis in a park, Jake (played by John Belushi) famously sneers, "I hate Illinois Nazis!" before Elwood guns the accelerator of the Bluesmobile, forcing the swastika-garbed goons to dive off the bridge into the water to avoid being run over.

The subsequent cheers of the gathered anti-Nazi demonstrators makes it clear the Illinois Nazi's are vastly outnumbered.

Now obviously that was a scene in a fictional film, but it made an important cultural statement back in 1980, and Arthur Jones getting 20,000-plus votes 38 years later - when he's a known neo-nazi -  makes one wonder what's going on the mind of conservative voters in the 3rd District of Illinois.

Is it Trump, or something else?

According to Wikipedia, the Illinois 3rd is about 73% white, 33% Hispanic and 5% African-American, it's been a Democratic congressional seat since 1993 and is currently held by Dan Lipinski - so perhaps the GOP just figured the seat isn't worth spending money on to fight for this fall since the district will most likely swing Democratic.

George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American
Nazi Party at a rally in the 1960's

It's also important to note that Arthur Jones isn't just some kooky garden-variety Holocaust denier who thinks one of the worst mass exterminations in human history was a "racket" that never happened.

He's a former head of the American Nazi Party who's spoken at numerous neo-nazi and white supremacists events and rally around the country.

The ANP was founded back in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell.

As the photo at the top of this page shows, Arthur Jones was (not surprisingly) a Trump supporter at one point, as evidenced by his sprightly red MAGA cap.

But once Cadet Bonespurs won the election and tapped his son-in-law Jared Kushner (who is Jewish) to be one of his top advisers, Jones, and many other white supremacists quickly turned on Trump.

For example, as Al Jazeera noted in an article on Wednesday, at a National Socialist Movement conference held in Pikesville, Kentucky in 2017, Jones told a crowd:

"Now President Trump - he has surrounded himself with hordes of Jews, including a Jew in his own family." 

After reading Nick Lowles' Twitter post about Alan Bull, I sent him a message about Arthur Jones, because if he hadn't already read about Arthur Jones, I wanted to be sure that Hope Not Hate was aware that neo-nazis like Jones are trying to infiltrate American politics too.

According to their Website, Hope Not Hate was founded in 2004 in response to the disturbing rise of far-right, anti-immigrant political parties like the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL).

Republican congressional candidate Paul Nehlen

Like far-right political parties in other parts of Europe, the BNP and EDL are organizations which were gaining ground in local elections by exploiting anger, bigotry and frustration over economic stagnation to scapegoat and vilify immigrants and people of color.

Until groups like Hope Not Hate began organizing to confront them and counteract their message of divisiveness and hate.


A message parroted by some Republicans that reflects a dark side of the political playbook that's sadly familiar here in the U.S. in the wake of Trump's toxic 2016 presidential campaign and his tacit acceptance of white supremacists.

Take anti-Semite Paul Nehlen for instance (pictured above), a Republican challenger for the congressional seat currently held by House Speaker Paul Ryan - Wisconsin's 1st District.

Nehlen was crushed in the Republican primary by Ryan back in 2016, but he's running again.

Emboldened (in part) by Trump's victory and the support he's received from scores of followers on social media who are attracted to his open contempt for, and vilification of, Jews.

Nehlen is one of these delusional, racist crackpots who deals in the political currency of the fantasy of an "ethnocentric white state" to ignite disenfranchised conservative voters who are (sadly) easily manipulated by playing on economic fears conveniently laid at the feet of religious and ethnic minorities.

Republican Montana candidate John Abarr 

 "Others" on whom all problems can be conveniently blamed.

If you want to get a sense of who Nehlen is, check out Emma Green's Atlantic article from January.

In it she notes that, among other toxic comments, Nehlen has tweeted:

"Poop, incest and pedophilia. why are those common themes repeated so often with Jews?"  

Guys like Arthur Jones and Paul Nehlen aren't alone either, Klansman John Abarr is running for the state legislature in the 21st District in Montana too.

It's a pretty sad state of the Republican Party that people like this are openly running for national office.

It'll be interesting to see how that impacts mainstream American voters at the polls in November.

It's just too bad John Belushi is no longer here to exhort his fictional brother Elwood to run these clowns off a proverbial bridge - but I have a feeling American voters will do that at the ballot box.

NAACP & KKK Sit Down in Wyoming - Gangster Scarecrows in Detroit

James Simmons & John Abarr meet in Casper

This morning NPR's weekly news quiz show 'Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!' had a couple interesting stories I wanted to share; for those of you who were fortunate enough to NOT be at work on a slow December Saturday listening to public radio online.

About three months ago over the weekend of August 31st a historic meeting took place in a hotel in Casper, Wyoming between James Simmons, president of the local Casper chapter of the NAACP and John Abarr, an organizer for the Ku Klux Klan who was the campaign manager in 1989 for William Daniel Johnson; a white separatist who unsuccessfully ran for Dick Cheney's old House seat.

According to an article in USA Today Simmons requested the meeting in response to multiple reports of KKK literature having been handed out to residences in the Gillette, Wyoming area and of several incidences of black men seen in public with white women being physically attacked and beaten. Abarr claimed the Klan had no involvement with either the beatings or the literature. In a gesture of good will however he did pay for an NAACP membership and donated $20 as well.

The SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) has reported a significant spike in hate group membership around the nation in the wake of the 2008 election of President Obama; and specific incidents of KKK literature being handed out in Reading, PA and Danville, VA in August, 2013 as well around the same time of the reports of Klan literature (if you can call it 'literature') being handed out in Gillette, Wyoming. Kudos to James Simmons for initiating this unprecedented meeting in Wyoming to try and do something about it.

On a somewhat more humorous-but-sad note, a black Detroit homeowner frustrated by repeated break-ins and rising home insurance costs because of the abandoned homes surrounding his property, came up with an ingenious way to deter potential burglars.

In addition to installing a range of security measures on his doors and windows and getting two dogs, he also bought a couple of CPR training mannequins, dressed them up as gangsters and set them by the door on his front porch. And it apparently worked, the owner claims the presence of the two scarecrows has discouraged potential burglars from stopping by. Give this a watch.

Boy these are some rough times for the Motor City. Homeowners forced to fend for themselves because of huge cuts in city services, a diminished tax base, high unemployment, an unreliable public transportation system, vast stretches of unoccupied homes - to say nothing of the declaration of bankruptcy that was recently approved by the courts leaving pensioners who worked for the city facing a bleak future. 

And now Gangster Scarecrows?