GOP-backed Senate candidate Lauren Witzke appeared in a video for a white nationalist website to push racist tropes

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published

Peter Brimelow and Lauren Witzke

An image used by the white nationalist site VDare to promote its interview with Lauren Witzke. 

Republican Senate candidate Lauren Witzke is continuing her outreach to white nationalists by promoting her campaign in a video interview with the white nationalist site VDare. The Delaware Republican Party has continued backing Witzke despite her appeals to far-right extremists. 

Witzke is running for the U.S. Senate in Delaware against incumbent Democratic Sen. Chris Coons. As Media Matters and others have documented, Witzke has frequently interacted with white nationalists and anti-Semites during her campaign. She has also praised the violent neo-fascist Proud Boys for helping her campaign. 

Additionally, Witzke is a supporter of QAnon, the violence-linked conspiracy theory that started on message boards and has been labeled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI. 

The Delaware Republican Party and Chair Jane Brady have been supporting her campaign. Brady told Delaware Public Media last month that Witzke has “shown great energy, she's very bright, and she's worked very hard. And she's earned the support of the party." 

One of Witzke’s main policy plans is “a full 10-year moratorium on all immigration,” a proposal that is also supported by VDare, an anti-immigrant white nationalist site. The Southern Poverty Law Center states that VDare “regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites.”

Witzke has frequently promoted the work of VDare, and she was recently interviewed by its white nationalist founder and editor Peter Brimelow for an October 4 YouTube video. According to VDare, Brimelow “has personally maxed out ($2800) donating to Lauren Witzke's campaign.” 

In August, YouTube belatedly and permanently banned VDare from its platform for violating its poorly enforced policy against “hate speech.” Witzke’s VDare interview was posted under the account “Immigration Patriot!” (VDare's post about the Witzke interview embeds the “Immigration Patriot!” video.) That account was created on August 24, two weeks after VDare’s official ban from the platform, and has only posted one video (the Witzke interview). The account also features VDare's logo. 

During the nearly 26-minute interview, Witzke and Brimelow primarily talked about immigration. She also pushed false white nationalist tropes, including stating: 

  • “We are bringing in people from Third World countries. We are bringing in cartel members and we're doing it 100% legally.”
  • “People are so worried about being called, you know, labeled a 'white supremacist' when, you know, we are giving our country away to foreigners. They are dismantling our culture, they're taking down our historical monuments. They're voting against our interests.” 
  • “We see that in [Rep.] Ilhan Omar's [D-MN] district, you know, a district of refugees, they elected, you know, a Third World dictator, is what they did. And now it looks like the Third World.”

Witzke promoted the interview on Twitter by thanking VDare and Brimelow: 

Media Matters contacted the Delaware GOP and Brady for comment but did not receive a reply from them as of posting. 

Shortly after contacting the state party and Brady, Media Matters received an email from Witzke stating: “America is tired of Communist media outlets like CNN and the rest absurdly smearing Americans who want to limit immigration -- including African Americans, Cubans, and Jews -- as white nationalists or somehow fringe. Protecting the rule of law and our southern border is as American as apple pie.”