Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen has grown closer to white nationalist leaders and thinkers in recent months. Image by Twitter

By Aiden Pink February 13, 2018

Paul Nehlen, the “alt-right” congressional candidate who was permanently banned from Twitter on Sunday after a series of racist and anti-Semitic tweets, has been dumped by the state Republican Party.

Wisconsin Republican Party spokesman Alec Zimmerman said Tuesday that Nehlen’s membership dues paid to county parties were being refunded or donated to charity.

“Paul Nehlen is not a member of the Republican Party of Wisconsin,” Zimmerman said. “Nehlen and his ideas have no place in the Republican Party.”

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It is unclear why the Republican Party is only making a stand now, considering the increasingly hateful tenor of Nehlen’s statements over the last year. Nehlen has appeared in media with anti-Semitic figures like David Duke, blamed “Jewish media” for unfair press coverage and published an enemies list of Jewish journalists.

The last controversial tweet before his suspension included a photo superimposing the head of “Cheddar Man,” a dark-skinned 9,000-year-old Mesolithic man “rebuilt” from the DNA of a skeleton in southwest England, on the body of Meghan Markle, the biracial fiancee of Great Britain’s Prince Harry.

In neighboring Illinois, the state Republican Party immediately mobilized to condemn a Holocaust-denying primary candidate who was running unopposed in a Republican primary and pledged to explore “all options” to defeat him after admitting they could not sue to remove him as a candidate.

Nehlen is running in the Republican primary to unseat Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Nehlen previously ran against Ryan in 2016 and lost 84%-16%.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected]

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