GOP Senate candidate in Delaware campaigned on a site tied to white supremacists
The Legislative Hall in Dover, Delaware. Image by Harvey Meston/Getty Images
(JTA) — The Republican nominee in Delaware’s Senate race called for an “immigration moratorium” during an interview on a website with ties to white supremacists.
Lauren Witzke is running against incumbent Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat, on a platform calling for a drastic reduction in immigration to the United States. And most recently, she aired those views in an interview with VDARE, an anti-immigrant site that the Anti-Defamation League says is a “xenophobic website” that “regularly publishes articles from white supremacists and anti-Semites.”
Witzke blamed immigrants for drug addiction and job loss in the United States, and said “our country is being dismantled.” Using a term that has been wielded as an anti-Semitic dog whistle, she said most politicians do not share her views because they are beholden to large donors.
“Talking about this matters, and that is worth far more to me than $6 million in the bank from a globalist donor class,” she said. “People are so worried about being labeled a white supremacist when we are giving our country away to foreigners. They are dismantling our culture. They’re taking down our historical monuments. They’re voting against our interests.”
Witzke, 32, is seen as part of the Republican Party’s far-right fringe and as unlikely to mount a serious challenge to Coons, who has represented Delaware since 2010. She has been photographed wearing a shirt endorsing QAnon, the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, though more recently she distanced herself from the theory, and one of her advisors has previously worked with openly anti-Semitic candidates.
The VDARE interview, conducted by editor Peter Brimelow, a British immigrant who has argued that immigration by nonwhites is hurting America, was published Sunday and first reported by the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate, considers Brimelow a white supremacist.
Witzke tweeted out the interview, writing that, “In order to preserve America, we must first preserve American families, our values, and our culture.” In an email response to an inquiry from Media Matters, she wrote, “America is tired of Communist media outlets like CNN and the rest absurdly smearing Americans who want to limit immigration — including African Americans, Cubans, and Jews — as white nationalists or somehow fringe.”
The post Lauren Witzke, Delaware’s GOP Senate candidate, appears on site with ties to white supremacists appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
