GOP congressional candidate uses Twitter to coordinate attacks on 'Jewish media,' vowing to 'decimate them all'

(Image credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images)

published 12 January 2018

GOP congressional candidate Paul Nehlen has drawn on anti-Semitic sympathy to rally support for his fledgling campaign, BuzzFeed News reported Friday.

Nehlen — who is running against House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in a Republican primary this summer — ran a Twitter group chat where he rallied white nationalists to attack his opponents, BuzzFeed News reported. One of Nehlen's stated adversaries was the "Jewish media," who he believed had "coordinated" to smear him after he lost the support of Breitbart News for sending tweets about white pride.

Nehlen's list of targets included conservative personality John Cardillo, author Kurt Schlichter, and former Boston Red Sox pitcher turned Breitbart radio host Curt Schilling. All three men, BuzzFeed News notes, are conservatives who distanced themselves from Nehlen. The candidate turned to his Twitter group to ask for some backup, writing, "Cardillo and others like him are working for Jewish media. Then, there are the fake conservatives who happen to be Jewish."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sources who spoke to BuzzFeed News said that "such requests were common" from Nehlen. One of the group chat's most notable participants is Richard Spencer ally Eli Mosley, who heads a white nationalist group of his own called Identify Evropa, BuzzFeed News points out. Mosley is a polarizing figure even among white nationalists, as many reportedly think he sparked the violence at last year's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman was killed by a white nationalist.

Explore More

Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.