Holocaust denier running for Congress

Like most candidates running for Congress, Arthur Jones has a campaign website.

It outlines the Republican candidate’s education background, his stance on issues and how to donate to his campaign to represent the Illinois’ Third Congressional District.

It also lays out Jones’ unapologetically racist and anti-Semitic views.

In a section called “Holocaust?” Jones describes the atrocities as a “racket” and “the biggest, blackest, lie in history.” Under another tab titled “Flags of Conflict,” he lists the Confederate flag first and describes it as “a symbol of White pride and White resistance” and “the flag of a White counter revolution.”

And in his most recent blog post — dated Aug. 24, 2017 — Jones railed against “Radical Leftists” and blamed them for starting racial violence in Charlottesville, Va., about two weeks before. Heather Heyer, 32, who had been there to protest white supremacists, died after a self-professed neoNazi drove a car into a crowd of demonstrators. He was charged with second-degree murder. Jones painted the death as an accident.

Despite his views, Jones is all but certain to become the GOP nominee for one of Illinois’s most prominent congressional districts, one that includes parts of Chicago and several suburbs to the west and southwest. Jones is running unopposed in the Republican primary — and the deadline to file to run against him was in early December.

His chances of winning the seat are extremely slim. The district is rated “safely Democratic,” according to Ballotpedia, and two Democrats are facing off against each other: Daniel Lipinski, the incumbent, and Marie Newman.

Representatives from the Illinois Republican Party and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports conservative candidates, did not respond to questions sent by email Sunday. But Tim Schneider, the chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, told the Sun-Times that the party denounced Jones.

“The Illinois Republican Party and our country have no place for Nazis like Arthur Jones,” Schneider said.