Corey Stewart, the GOP candidate in Virginia’s Senate race, called white nationalist Paul Nehlen “one of my personal heroes” on-camera and praised an apparent neo-Nazi his campaign’s official “volunteer of the week.”

Stewart, an ardently pro-Trump candidate, won the June 12 Republican primary against two challengers on an anti-immigration platform. He will face off against Democratic incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine.

“One of my personal heroes, not from Virginia, but from the great state of Wisconsin, there is Paul Nehlen, who had a lot of courage and took on Speaker Ryan,” Stewart said of Nehlen in the clip taken on the night of President Donald Trump’s inauguration and posted on his YouTube page. “And I can’t tell you how much I was inspired by you.”

Although Stewart is known for his love of the Confederate statues — even comparing their removal to ISIS terror attacks — he doesn’t have nearly the same notoriety as Nehlen, who expressed white supremacist and anti-semitic views during his campaign to win House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin congressional seat. Nehlen calls himself a “pro-White” Christian American candidate,” was banned from Twitter for posting a racist meme attacking Prince Harry’s biracial wife Meghan Markle, and helped spread the alt-right “it’s OK to be white” 4chan meme.

Nehlen also makes the Jewish community one of his main targets in call-out campaigns. Last year, Nehlen created a list of 81 Twitter accounts — of which he claimed “74 are Jews” — and blamed them for helping to sink his campaign against Ryan because of their hatred for “#AmericaFirst positions.”

His other greatest hits include using Stars of David to “identify” apparently Jewish NBC staffers, retweeting endorsements of the Charlottesville, Virginia Unite The Right rally — a white supremacist event that ended with the murder of an anti-racist protester — and peddling the absurd #Pizzagate conspiracy.

While Nehlen was previously a favorite of Breitbart News for his anti-establishment rhetoric and opposition to Ryan, he became too toxic for even that website, and editor Joel Pollock wrote the candidate went “off the deep end,” adding that they “don’t support him.” His toxicity led ex-White House official Steve Bannon to disavow him in a statement that claimed “Nehlen is dead to us.”

As for Stewart, his praise for the white nationalist Nehlen is not the extent of his ties to racists.

In one picture from a right-wing Charlottesville rally that occurred before the Unite The Right event, Stewart can be seen speaking on a megaphone to a crowd. Alt-right activist and white supremacist Jason Kessler, who was the organizer of the deadly rally in Charlottesville, can be spotted in the background holding a handmade poster of Pepe the Frog — a 4chan meme that was turned into a key symbol of Internet savvy white supremacists.

Kessler has also expressed his support for Stewart. The white supremacist tweeted a Confederate-themed endorsement during the Senate candidate’s failed gubernatorial campaign:

If you live in Virginia you have to Vote for Corey Stewart today. Then bring out all your friends to vote for him too. #VAPrimary pic.twitter.com/05RVDGKWhI — Jason Kessler (@TheMadDimension) June 13, 2017

Predictably, Stewart’s ties to racists trickle down to his campaign. A recent email sent out by the Republican’s team praised apparent neo-Nazi Ian Phil MacDonald as their “volunteer of the week.”

“Congratulations to this week’s volunteers of the week, Ian Phil MacDonald and Dona Danzincer!” Read the email. “Ian and Dona have helped organize events, make calls, and put up large signs all over the Eastern Shore and Hampton Roads region.”

In the email, MacDonald can be seen posing with a Trump campaign T-shirt and his thump up next to Stewart.

MacDonald is no typical conservative activist, however. A scan of his Facebook page revealed that the Stewart campaign volunteer identifies politically with late-white supremacist and founder of the American Nazi Party George Lincoln Rockwell.

When MacDonald presumabely learned that his affinity for the neo-Nazi Rockwell was being publicized on Twitter, he posted the following on Facebook in response: “Now that I know every one of my posts is a swamp target, just want to say, hey! How ya doing? Glad I’m so important that I take up space in your head.”

With the Washington Post reporting that Stewart is seen as the frontrunner in his battle against state Delegate Nick Freitas and pastor E.W. Jackson, it appears he will win the GOP nomination in Virginia’s Senate race with his racially-charged campaign focused on crime perpetuated by Hispanic gangs.

To recap: Corey Stewart once regarded white nationalist Paul Nehlen, a man who was too much of a white supremacist for Breitbart, as his “personal hero.” His campaign considers a volunteer who idolizes the founder of the American Nazi Party as a model one. He attended a rally with the organizer of the deadly white nationalist event in Charlottesville. And he’s the GOP candidate in the Virginia Senate race.

However, former vice president Tim Kaine has a sizable lead in early polls.

Stewart is not the only candidate running in 2018 who has ties to racial extremists, as a report from MSNBC and the Southern Poverty Law Center found that eight white nationalists are currently campaigning for public office — a number of which are also running as Republicans.

UPDATE: Corey Stewart responded to reports on his relationship with Paul Nehlen by denouncing the white nationalist figure. His campaign has not disavowed their neo-Nazi “volunteer of the week,” however. This post has also been updated to note that Stewart won the Republican primary in the Virginia Senate race.

Watch above, via YouTube.

[image via screengrab]

Follow the author on Twitter (@calebecarma).

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