Arthur Jones, a Republican candidate for Congress from Chicago. Image by YouTube

Republican congressional candidate Arthur Jones says he has much more to offer his district than just neo-Nazi rhetoric.

“There’s more to me than being a denier of the Holocaust,” he said in a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune. “I’m an American patriot.”

Jones, a former leader of the American Nazi Party, ran unopposed in the Republican primary for Illinois’ heavily-Democratic Third District outside Chicago. He is known in the area for a long history spewing conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, asserting that it was depicted inaccurately in the media and that it was impossible for Nazis to have killed six million Jews.

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“If I really believed the Holocaust had taken place, I wouldn’t have joined the Nazi Party,” he told the Tribune. Jones said he believes Jews detained in concentration camps died because of a typhus epidemic — not gas chambers.

Jones brought several books to the interview to prove his point. Yet, he said he doesn’t appreciate being narrowly depicted as a Nazi by Republicans and in the media, as he hasn’t “been a member of any Nazi group since 1980.”

He heads a group called the America First Committee, which the Anti-Defamation League said is affiliated with the white supremacist organization Nationalist Front.

Jones criticized Republican Party leaders who denounced his candidacy. Some GOP members, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, have encouraged people to vote for Jones’ opponent, incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski.

“I’ve got a winning platform,” Jones said. “If (the GOP) would get behind me we would beat Lipinski.”

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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