We Don’t Like Nazis — That’s Why We Keep Writing About Art Jones

ORLAND PARK, IL — Holocaust denier Art Jones, who’s been on the comeback trail in recent years as a perennial Republican congressional candidate, stood across the street from an Orland Park church on Saturday morning, hectoring the progressive Democratic challenger Marie Newman. Both are vying for their respective party’s nomination in the Illinois 3rd Congressional District race.

This is Jones’ fifth run for the IL-03 seat, currently held by Democrat Dan Lipinski, who recently joined 200 Republicans in signing an amicus brief to repeal Roe vs. Wade. A once prominent member of the National Socialist White People's Party, Jones was at the peak of his notoriety two years ago when by some fluke or oversight by the Illinois GOP, he managed to be the sole Republican contender in the 2018 midterm election.

Flanking Jones are members of his Art Jones For Congress 2020 team, five old white guys holding cardboard signs flapping in the raw January wind accusing Newman of attacking "White America. Newman was inside Hope Covenant Church leading an interfaith peace forum for youth.

Jones claims that his campaign volunteers aren’t Nazis but belong to his American First Committee of Lyons, which shows up regularly as a dot on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual hate map. For the moment, the Art Jones for Congress volunteers are engaged in a shouting match with three counter protesters on the Hope Covenant side of the street, while Jones hands out his manifesto, “The Case For White America,” to passers-by who stop to yell at him. The 71-year-old Jones challenges one of them to a fight.

“I’m not a white supremacist, I’m a white racialist, a person who knows the facts of race,” Jones explains in a sideline interview, unfazed by a man driving by screaming through his open car window “get the f--- out of Orland Park.”

According to Jones’ manifesto, a diatribe against immigrants, Jews, blacks, Asians and Latinos, “each race has a personality…. Yet despite all [that white people] have done to advance the non-White peoples, they, by their actions have shown they are without gratitude for what we have done for them over the centuries.”

Two years ago, when Patch ran a story after the 2018 election, “Who Voted For The Nazi In The 3rd Congressional District Race,” we received angry emails from readers horrified that they had voted for a neo-Nazi. If even a smidgen of Jones’ Aryan arguments sound reasonable about how white men are becoming increasingly marginalized, they are not.

Jones has told Patch in past interviews that while he is not currently a member of the neo-Nazi party, he doesn’t eschew his Nazi past. He’s called the Holocaust “an international extortion racket by the Jews,” and “the blackest lie in history.”

So as long Art Jones continues to dupe people into signing his nominating petitions when he shows up on their doorstep, we’ll keep writing about him. Patch wants you to know about Jones’ past before you unknowingly help him win the Republican congressional nomination in the upcoming primary. Again.

Art Jones Standoff At Marie Newman's peace forum. (Warning: Graphic Language)

Patch Editor Tim Moran contributed to this report.