Ohio House Candidate Wore SS Uniform, Participated in Nazi Re-enactments

As The Atlantic's Josh Green reported recently, the Republican slide into extremism has a notable exemplar in Ohio's 9th congressional district.

Rich Iott, Republican candidate in northwest Ohio, and tea party favorite running against Democrat Marcy Kaptur, "was involved with a group that calls itself Wiking, whose members are devoted to re-enacting the exploits of an actual Nazi division, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott's participation in the Wiking group is not mentioned on his campaign's website, and his name and photographs were removed from the Wiking website."

A screen capture of the GOP "Young Guns" site from October 3 lists Iott among "The Contenders" — a group of candidates considered almost as promising as the "young guns" themselves. The day after Green's report in The Atlantic, Iott's information mysteriously disappeared from the GOP site.

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