Republicans To Field More Than 100 Far-Right Candidates This Year
- The Guardian, Feb. 2, 2022. Ed. - Anti-Defamation League list includes at least a dozen with links to white supremacists, anti-government extremists and Proud Boys. -
More than 100 far-right candidates are running for political office across the country as Republicans this year according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a non-profit that monitors hate groups. Aside from those expressing extremist rhetoric and far-right views, the ADL has found at least a dozen of the candidates had explicit connections to ‘“white supremacists, anti-government extremists and members of the far-right Proud Boys”. It includes primary challengers running to the right of some sitting Republicans.
In Arkansas’s third district Neil Kumar, who the ADL found has written for white supremacist publications, is challenging the incumbent congressman, Steve Womack, who broke with Republicans in voting in favor of creating the January 6 commission to investigate the Capitol attack. The openly racist views of Kumar prompted the Arkansas state Republican party to take the unusual step of declaring him a “non-recommended candidate” in the upcoming primary.
The wave of far-right candidates includes sitting legislators like the Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers, who has admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia with 11 members currently under federal indictment for seditious conspiracy. Other militia groups have candidates running or already in local office. The Washington Three Percent militia claims members in dozens of elected offices throughout the Pacific north-west, the Washington Post found, “including a mayor, a county commissioner and at least 5 school board seats”.
In Idaho the far-right anti-govt. activist Ammon Bundy – who led an armed standoff against federal agents at Malheur wildlife refuge in 2014 – is running for the governor’s office.
Bundy’s group, the People’s Rights network, has now increased its national membership to 33,000 members and has at least 398 activists in 39 states, according to a report by Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights. Many far-right candidates have no direct links to violent extremist groups, but do support a range of far-right views. The ADL tracked at least 45 candidates running for office this year that have “lent credence in some way” to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. Many more hold on to Donald Trump’s “big lie” – the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/02/republicans-100-far-right-candidates-2022
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