Republican candidates on both coasts have made appearances on white supremacist podcasts in recent weeks.
On Thursday, Russell Walker, the Republican primary winner in a North Carolina statehouse race, appeared on the white supremacist Stormfront Action podcast, where he boasted of advising Arthur Jones, a neo-Nazi candidate who won the primary election for a congressional seat in Illinois. In late June, congressional candidate John Fitzgerald appeared on two neo-Nazi podcasts, Media Matters first reported. Fitzgerald, a Holocaust denier running on an anti-Semitic platform, advanced through the Republican primaries in California’s 11th Congressional District, and is on the ballot in the general election.
A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee said the party condemns all three candidates.
ADVERTISEMENT
“While they have no chance of winning, we nonetheless condemn these candidates and their hateful, racist views in the strongest possible terms,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “There’s no place for them in the Republican Party.”
Russell Walker is running against an African American minister for a state-level seat in North Carolina. Walker has also lost the backing of local and national Republican groups after he was discovered to run a racist website.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH BEING A WHITE SUPREMACIST?” reads a header on Walker’s website, which hosts extreme racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic views. “GOD IS A RACIST and a WHITE SUPREMACIST.”
During Walker’s Thursday appearance on the white supremacist Stormfront Action podcast, a host introduced him as someone who’s “right there with us on who our enemy is.”
Walker, who called Abraham Lincoln “evil: a mixed-race hybrid” managed to be too racist for the Stormfront podcast.
“We’ve got to keep the language clean,” a host rebuked him after he described “n----rs” in his district. “We can’t say the n-word with ‘er’ on the end. ‘Nigra’ is probably okay.”
Walker also claimed to have helped Arthur Jones, a neo-Nazi candidate who won the Republican primary for a congressional race outside Chicago.
“I’ve given him what I think is political help,” he said, although he criticized Jones for being Catholic. “Jones, they’ve all been against him. Even Ted Cruz has come out and become a complete and utter whore. Cruz says you shouldn’t vote for Jones. Jones is for real. He has strong ideas about Naziism.”
At one point, the podcast hosts mentioned Stormfront founder Don Black, and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, both of whom are associated with the podcast. Walker claimed not to have heard of the pair, who are among America’s most prominent racists.
The podcast host said he’d leave Walker to look them up later. “We’re white nationalists and this part of the program is more free speech and free activities,” the host clarified.“Ok,” Walker said, and continued talking about his campaign.
Last month, one of his fellow Republican candidates appeared on two neo-Nazi podcasts.
John Fitzgerald placed second in his district’s Republican primary, which allows the two top-ranking candidates to proceed to the general election, where they will face off against incumbent Democrat Rep. Mark DeSaulnier. The rule allows Fitzgerald to continue running on an anti-Semitic platform. On his website, he accuses Jews of being behind the 9/11 attacks. Elsewhere on his campaign website, he blasts “race-mixing” and accuses Jews of “promoting multiculturalism, diversity and inclusiveness ... to destroy our distinct and unique cultures, heritage and traditions that define all of us.”
On June 23 and 28, he appeared on a pair of podcasts hosted by neo-Nazis. On the first podcast, hosted by a neo-Nazi who calls Adolf Hitler “the greatest thing that's happened to Western civilization,” Fitzgerald complained about “Jewish supremacy” and claimed the Holocaust did not happen, Media Matters reported. He doubled down on the Holocaust denialism on the second podcast, and admitted that one of the main goals of his campaign was “exposing this lie.”
Fitzgerald won 23 percent of the Republican vote during his primary.
