#1286: Tony Zirkle

A.k.a. Frederick von Ness (apparently original name)

Tony Zirkle got some attention when he was a candidate in the Republican primary for Congress in Indiana’s 2. district in 2008. He had tried to run before for as well, in 2006, when he won 30% of the vote (and said he was going to run again in 2010, but after he was disbarred that didn’t really pan out; his license to practice law was suspended for multiple instances and types of misconduct). Policy-wise, Zirkle is probably most familiar for his plan to separate African-Americans and white Americans into different states within the Union, but he also received some attention for his campaigns against “Jewish-run pornography.” According to Zirkle, “[w]e now have a small army of male black porn stars that are sifting through five, ten, fifteen thousand women ... One man can now genocide the wombs of thousands of women,” infecting them with sexually transmitted diseases that leave them barren (STDs are, in fact, a Jewish conspiracy to carry out genocide against white women). This, by the way, is just scratching the surface of the crazy in his campaign.

He suddenly received national attention in 2008 whenhe addressed a party in Chicago that had been convened to celebrate the 119. anniversary of Hitler’s birthday, where he was photographed in front of a giant picture of Hitler, flanked by swastikas, and with a “Happy Birthday” sign on the front of the table. Zirkle did indeed try to defend himself afterwards, first by claiming that the participants were not Nazis, but in fact National Socialists. After someone pointed out that there was a problem with this line of defense, he rather tried arguing that he was just “bringing the Gospel to them,” and that people should praise him for trying to educate the hate out of them. But darn if that defense turned out to be rather unsuccessful as well.

Diagnosis: After being caught at that Hitler event, Zirkle’s popularity took a hit. He got 16% of the vote in the 2008 Republican Congressional primary.