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| “ | Here's what we should be doing. We should be monitoring every mosque. We should be monitoring social media. We've got about three million Muslims in the United States. | „ |
| ~ Paul Nehlen |
Paul Nehlen (born May 9, 1969) is an American white supremacist and political candidate who ran in the Republican primary for U.S. Representative from Wisconsin's 1st congressional district in 2016 and 2018. He was unsuccessful during both attempts at running for the office, losing to incumbent Representative Paul Ryan in 2016 and then-future Representative Bryan Steil in 2018. An April 2018 article from The Daily Beast declared that Nehlen was becoming one of the most high-profile white nationalists in America. He is also a strong supporter of the Alt-Right movement.
Nehlen holds alt-right, white nationalist, and antisemitic views. He has used white nationalist memes to spread his message. Nehlen frequently uses the slogan: "It's OK to be white." He was originally backed by Steve Bannon.
Nehlen endorsed Republican Roy Moore in the 2017 Alabama U.S. Senate special election. A few have said his views and actions show he has neo-Nazi ideology and he has been endorsed by neo-Nazis.
On Twitter, he suggested Ari Cohn convert to Christianity to "fill a Jesus-shaped hole" inside of him. Nehlen said he was reading The Culture of Critique (1998) by Kevin B. MacDonald and described it as "outstanding so far". He called John Cardillo and Kurt Schlichter "shekels-for-hire" and posted a tweet with the antisemitic catchphrase "The goyim know" (referencing a popular theory about an alleged Jewish conspiracy). In a text message he sent to The Washington Post Nehlen claimed, "I reject being called a White Supremacist, because clearly Pro-White isn't White Supremacy unless Pro-Jewish is Jewish Supremacy."
Nehlen also posted on Twitter a picture of Paul Ryan and Randy Bryce being dropped out of a helicopter, a reference to death flights, a method of executing political opponents. Responses to this message included death flight memes of former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet (whose regime killed more than 100 people by this method) and Pepe the Frog.
He is a critic of the presidency of Donald Trump, calling him a "cuck" and a failure. Initially Nehlen, when he was running against Paul Ryan in 2016, was supportive of Trump's presidential campaign.
On February 9, 2018, in response to claims that prehistoric Britons probably had dark skin, Nehlen tweeted a picture of Prince Harry with a reconstruction of a prehistoric dark-skinned Briton superimposed over his biracial fiance Meghan Markle, with the words "Honey, does this tie make my face look pale?" Nehlen was subsequently suspended from Twitter, which Nehlen described as a violation of his free speech.
In late February 2018, he was a guest on former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's radio show, and stated that Trump's proposed border wall should include automatic turrets. Nehlen stated that any Mexican immigrant who approaches the American border should "be treated as an enemy combatant. Man, woman or child."