Likely Republican Congressional Candidate Calls the Holocaust “An International Extortion Racket”

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A Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, white supremacist and former American Nazi Party leader is running unopposed for Republican congressional primary in Illinois.

The seventy year old Arthur Jones, a retired insurance agent, has been steadily moving through the Republican Party’s ranks since the 1970’s according to reporting by Lynn Sweet and Frank Main of the Chicago Sun Times.

Jones, 70, a retired insurance agent who lives in suburban Lyons, has unsuccessfully run for elected offices in the Chicago area and Milwaukee since the 1970s.

He ran for Milwaukee mayor in 1976 and 13th Ward alderman on Chicago’s Southwest Side in 1987.
Since the 1990s to 2016, Jones has jumped in the GOP 3rd Congressional District primary seven times, never even close to becoming a viable contender.

The outcome will be different for Jones in the Illinois primary on March 20, 2018.

To Jones’ own amazement, he is the only one on the Republican ballot.

Jones’ Holocaust denial is on full display for anyone who has the moral decency to look. The website for his latest congressional run includes a section called “The Holocaust Racket,” which details his denial of the Holocaust.

“Well first of all, I’m running for Congress not the chancellor of Germany. All right. To me the Holocaust is what I said it is: It’s an international extortion racket,” Jones told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Let’s consider what having such flawed views says about this man’s judgement because ultimately that is what is important. Flawed thinking isn’t about being on the other side of the aisle. It’s about lacking the capacity to process information accurately.

We have seen people who have different beliefs, yet when they look at the same information draw similar conclusions. A case on point lies in the fact that Trey Gowdy drew the same conclusions about the Nunes memo as Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler did. All three read the relevant materials. One is a Republican, the other two are Democrats. All three are lawyers and all three agreed that the Nunes memo doesn’t come near making the case against the Mueller investigation.

By espousing the thoughts he has about the Holocaust, Jones demonstrates poor judgement on a level that must preclude him from getting anywhere near making the most basic decisions that affect people’s lives.

As important as judgement is, or in Jones’ case, the obvious lack of it, denying the Holocaust illustrates that the man lacks a moral compass, on the level of someone like Donald Trump.

Is there really no Republican in Jones’ district, which includes part of Chicago and nearby suburbs who has the decency to take him on?

The Holocaust happened, as was documented with photographs, artifacts, transcripts of the Nuremberg trials, and the living testimony of people who survived it.

I won’t pretend to be the most objective person on this topic. Given that my mother was a Holocaust survivor, I hardly come at this without passions. My passions, as they are, don’t change the facts, nor do they distort Jones’ words, or the content of his website.

While the chairman of the Illinois Republican Party says he strongly opposes Jones’ racist ideas, it’s difficult to understand how any Republican in Jones’ district can just hand their party’s nomination to this man unless he does, in fact, represent their views.

The headline that a Holocaust denier is likely to be a Republican candidate is jaw dropping, but the man is very much at home in Trump’s Republican Party.