matgb | Ron Paul is, and always has been, a bigot and a crank

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Ron Paul is, and always has been, a bigot and a crank

Right then, the US primaries are on us, and a bunch of people are backing anyone they think is anti-establishment or just anti-Bush. One in particular is getting a load of support online. The "libertarian" called Ron Paul. The scare quotes are there for a reason, he ain't any kind of libertarian I recognise. Ages back I somehow got myself on left-leaning news magazine The New Republic emailing list. I've kept meaing to unsubscribe, but think I may keep it going for a bit longer. Real, proper investigative journalism, digging out and wading through years worth of his newsletter archives (anyone who tells you "blogging" is new has no clue what blogging is). In the past, when archives of his racism have been dug out, he's said that it was written by someone else, well digging back further into the depths gives us evidence of a very Angry White Man:

whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul's name, and the articles ... seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him—and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing—but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.

Jennie has found more at The Gob and is linking to

pope_guilty's post on the same article and also to his regular copy/paste Paulbomb. Reading on in the TNR article gives quotes condemning Martin Luther King, supporting the KKK's David Duke, calling for the quarantine of AIDS victims (and perpetuating the saliva transmission myth way after it was proven false) and calling Israel a "national socialist state".

Paul is anti-war. So is Kucinich. Paul is pro-legalisation of marijuana. So is Kucinich. Paul is a racist bigot. Kucinich isn't. If you want an anti-establishment "big money" candidate, back Kucinich or an actual Libertarian (actually, don't do the latter, the US FPTP is even worse than ours). Paul's only main strength is his appeal to "the constitution" as if it's some hallowed document. Even the people that wrote it didn't expect it to be relelvent 50 years afterwards, that it's lasted 300 is testament to their genius. Times changes, the economy changes. Appealing to the "sacred words" of some dead white slaveowners and refusing to accept it'll ever need updating is insanity writ large.

In the primaries, if you've got a vote, vote for the candidate closest to you on the issues. If you genuinely think that candidate is Ron Paul, then, seriously, get a reality check. It isn't.

ETA: Paul has distanced himself from the articles, saying:

“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

So either he's lying, or he's not competent enough to take responsibility for words written in his name. Either way, he's unfit to be the leader of the free world. Thanks for the head's up Aaron!

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Yes, thanks for posting. I've been following this for a little while already. Ron Paul's anti-war and pro-pot Youtube sound bites are attractive; but scratch the surface and it gets real ugly real fast.

In the recent tradition of the GOP, if he's rabidly anti-gay, that means he probably IS gay. How long before one of his boyfriends surfaces, I wonder.

Ron Paul is probably a moot issue at this point, anyway. His primary numbers have been dismal. I suppose he could run as an independent and steal progressive votes; but once the racism stuff becomes more widely known, probably the left wing will drop him like a rock.

Aye, I've known it for ages (both

theweaslking and

flemco have been ripping into him regularly and

pope_guilty drops the c/p Paulbomb in their comments whenever needed.

But while he is pretty much dead in the water, he's distracting reformers into believing that the problem isn't the constitution, it's abose of it, when the reality is the whole thing is messed up. Ah well.

Anyway, sleep called for. I suspect he's not gay. That'd just be too much. Besides, he seems to hate all "Other".

But, you know, whatever his /personal/ opinions are, he's not going to subject /anyone/ else to them because he wants to put everything back to individual state control and not federal. So even if he, personally, wants to kill all gays and tar and feather those funny-looking coloured folks, he'd let (say) Mass. enact all the gay-loving beatnik legislation they like, so long as (say) Texas could legislate itself straight back into the stone age at the same time...

(edited for spelling)

Well, yes, true. But he wouldn't let Congress block Texas from doing anything, and he'll go back to the Gold Standard FFS. He talks about "the inflation tax" but doesn't seem to actually understand anything about economics.

But, y'know, who cares about Texas. Well, apart from the decent USians that live there (like

flemco. And I think the above linked Pope.

And

neohippie. Close brackets.

I'm in Indiana. We actually voted more for Bush in 2004 than Texas did.

Ow, see, Texas has an excuse, he was a former Governor, so you'd expect him to get a lot of votes there. So I'm guessing there are more idiots in Indiana than I suspected.

Ouch.

You looking at referral links or something?

As far as I know, LJ doesn't offer the ability to look at referral links. I just got curious and googled "paulbomb".

Fair enough—I have bloglines and Blogger blogsearch citation searches set as RSS feeds in Firefox live bookmarks, you get a bit of spam but it can be useful.

But yeah I see, top of page two—it's all over the place, not bad. He's still got more delegates than is sane but at least he's had almost zero impact, which is nice.

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/10/paul.newsletters/index.html) have now seized on the New Republic story of Ron Paul's 1990s pronunciamentos ~~that he wrote in Landsberg prison after the Munich beer hall putsch~~. He will be toast by Tuesday.

I think he was always toast, it was just a matter of time. Then again he's not got much mainstream coverage before, this'll be the first time some will have heard of him.

Sorry to twig you on spelling again, but I find it hilarious that you spelled it "Martin Luthor King". I get images of Lex Luthor standing on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, "I have a dream! That a man will be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character! Wait. . . scratch that! I'm white! Yay! Go me!"

Fixed. Mah spelling varies depending on how familiar I am, it's not often I write about MLK ergo I don't know it as well, serves me right for not checking though.

At some point I'll do another Shaksper poll.

As well as being a racist, he also doesn't believe in evolution and is a supporter of a lot of anti-science.

Not that the racism alone isn't reason enough to steer well clear, but extra evidence never hurts.

Your links, I has seen them. Have a look at the Paulbomb linked, it's worth it if you're wondering around any comms in which politics comes up.

The whole racism thing has pretty much been argued to death over the web, particularly at the Daily Kos. If Ron Paul has got those racist skeletons in his closet (noting that he claims that the comments about LA blacks, MLK etc. were never written by him), he's long since disavowed racism publically many times. All this racism stuff is suddenly getting dredged up to discredit him, but I actually think that it's not the grounds to discredit Ron Paul at all because I don't think he's a racist. He can be discredited because he's a loony Libertarian. He's not even a consistent loony Libertarian, as the rejection of the federal level seems to stop at the issues of abortion and immigration.

But I like him a lot, as I like David Icke. Speaks a lot of sense, and speaks a lot of nonsense, with nary a cognitive boundary twixt the two. People have flocked to him because of the single issue of the War, which is a mistake on their part. But then again, were I American I wouldn't be voting for any of the bastards running for election. What a bunch of useless crypto-fascist arseholes, just like most Americans in fact.

He has a choice: Either he supported the message of the newsletter that he paid to have put out with his name and his byline, or he had no clue about the contents of the newsletter that he paid to put out with his name and his byline.

Either way, he's incompetent to hold an office higher than dogcatcher.

(And he STILL EMPLOYS the entire staff of his newsletter. They run his campaign in Texas. Go ahead, look up the names.)

Dude, you were writing this as I was writing my post edit. Get outta ma head!

But seriously, I agree completely, again, it was in his name, he should've been more responsible, some things can be forgiven, but not that level of crap.

Yeah, get out of his head. It's getting bloody crowded in here...

Yeah I've been reading the debate out of passing interest and have seen all the stuff about the donations from the white power groups etc. as well. There's also plenty of evidence that he's anti-gay. But these matters are open for contention, and I think the correct terrain to attack Ron Paul on are the things that he definitively advocates here and now rather than dubious comments made in the 90s: his absurd Hayekian belief in the gold standard and monetary policy, his creationism, his anti-choice stance, and so on. Like all Libertarians Ron Paul is only able to conceive of power as a top-down force flowing oppressively from central government, rather than something that has myriad points of origin (including most significantly, capital).

I think the reason his anti-gay and racist past is being dredged up by his opponents is to highlight to those who are supporting him solely on his anti-imperialist policy that there's more to Ron Paul than just calling for troops out. It's proving effective in dissuading the Democrat chattering classes from switching, but it does highlight the paucity of American political discourse that it is these issues, rather than questioning his Libertarianism per se, that are the main focus IMHO.

I agree on the latter point, but that's the nature of FPTP on such a large system, it's one or the other writ large, so you need to attack on easy targets, nuanced debate simply can't happen.

Agreed. I guess I just find it interesting how certain issues play so big in US political debate, namely abortion, God, sexuality... that sorta thing. Stances on these appear to be the vote clinchers, and the meaty stuff such as war, economics, and the role of Government seem almost secondary (though that's not to say that Americans don't recognise them as hugely important also). So when Ron Paul makes a tangible break from the pack by clearly defining his opposition to war and imperialism it's no wonder he attracts support, because he's treading on a different sort of political territory and people find this refreshing. And rather than attacking him on these grounds or through an ideological critique of Libertarianism itself, Democrats are instead deploying the social issues I mention above (racism, homophobia etc). I'm not saying these aren't legitimate grounds for criticism, I'm just noting the parameters of the discourse.

I reckon the reason is because Libertarianism is the defining aspect of American politics. A heady brew of the Founding Fathers, Hayek, and Rand infuses all mainstream US politics to a significant extent. I've been chatting to a lot of Americans online lately from both sides of the political divide and it's the social issues that grab them. When you get down to it, most are in agreement that small government, low taxes, and individual freedom are all a priori good things. Ron Paul seems like a living embodiment of these ideas taken (almost) to their logical conclusion and since the ideas are already a part of everyone else's US political discourse one could almost say that Ron Paul is a suicide-virus, exposing the limits of US politics itself!

That's interesting. I've lived in the United States all my life and I've met less than 1% of the population.

It must have taken a lot of time and work on your part to get to know so many Americans to be able to say that most of us are arseholes.

*cough*from the respondents interest list: obsconding with the urine*cough*

Just an FYI...

But also? Most people across the board are arseholes, including most Brits and most Americans ;-)

When it come to jerks, assholes, and morons, I've always thought more along the lines of percentages; whether by race, gender, nationality, or pretty much anything that doesn't categorize by opinion (there are just some things that attract certain types of people).

Watching Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares has exposed me to frequent (to say the least) usage of the phrase. I've got a general idea of what it means, but could you provide a more specific definition?

Taking the piss is making fun of someone, but in a mean-spirited or nasty way

We know I've just come back from South Carolina and his mailshots were some of the most vicious and racist I've seen in a campaign (including the BNP!). He seems to be chiming with some people judging by the lawn placards, will be interested to see his share of the vote in SC.

Really? I'd have thought he'd avoid overt racism—were they by him directly or a local campaigning office that may've been hijacked?

Can't remember, it was mainly attacking the idea of the immigrants amnesty in a pretty sensationalist way.

Wow, and there was me thinking I was the only one who didn't get the Ron Paul bandwagon. Seriously people, just because you agree with him on one issue and he paints himself as a revolutionary, that's not a reason to vote for him!

The only reassuring thing is that his 'viral', 'underground' campaign hasn't translated into votes so far. I have to say that from what I've seen on various news channels and websites, the American electorate does seem to be refreshing well informed about their choices.

As far as I can tell, if you have to choose between the old, white, homophobic, creationists, you may as well go for Mick Huckabee, because whilst he's a dick, at least he's a dick with a (Chuck Norris) sense of humour :-)

There are a lot of anti-Paul people out there, and they're keeping highlighting it to make sure that anti-establishment potential Dems don't switch. That's partially why he's not getting more votes I think.

Scarily, Huckabee is said to be a really nice bloke, Adrian's met him a few times and likes him personally even if he disagrees vehemently with the policies.

Michigan's primary is on the 15th. It was moved up against party rules, so some of the democratic candidates pulled their names off the ballot. Naturally, many people see no reason to vote now.
There was some talk of voting to throw the republican votes way off, like voting for a nut like Ron Paul. I just can't do it. He doesn't deserve any support, even if it's false.

Too risky—if he won he'd get publicity and possibly momentum, look at the money Edwards picked up in contributions after Iowa.

He is seriously insane and quite frightening. (His biggest appeal is with young-ish males, I think. He's all rah rah, the government sucks, let's legalize marijuana and stop paying taxes. But make abortion illegal!)

The worst part is, though, he's not the Republican candidate that scares me the most. (Edit: Mostly because it's been pretty clear from the start that he hasn't really got a shot, not because I think his policy ideas are innocuous.) Huckabee and Romney make Bush sound like he never talks about Jesus or Christian values, which terrifies me. Giuliani seems all too willing to change his answers to suit the whims of the questioner, and he pretty much has no platform apart from SEPTEMBER 11TH ZOMG!!! (He wants to waste our money building a wall (http://youtube.com/watch?v=NlWv34YqoQ4). Apparently, he never got the memo from Germany that it doesn't work.) McCain is far too old for this stuff. I know I shouldn't be ageist, but c'mon. He's mid-70s! We don't need another dottering old fool like Reagan in the White House. Plus, despite the fact that he was a POW in the American Revolution (I kid, I kid, but he was a POW in Vietnam) and refuses to vote to reinstate habeus corpus for suspected terrorists, or to improve conditions on Guantanamo. What is wrong with him? God help us all if the Republican Party wins in November.

Not that the Dems are any better, since Kucinich doesn't really have a chance and Dodd has already dropped out.

Yeah, but have you seen McCain's daughter? Admittedly I'd prefer Mrs Kucinich but still. (sorry).

If the Repubs (any of them) win in November the world's doomed. They need a landslide wipe out.

And you guys also need to get a series of reforms to voting systems, the Maine method of giving out Electoral College votes (or maybe that National Vote thing that's going around), switching to the Aus system for electing the Senate (and an extra member or two for the largest states) and the Irish system for the House.

Then you'd not have to worry so much about individual loons. But you know all this already.

Yeah, but have you seen McCain's daughter? Admittedly I'd prefer Mrs Kucinich but still. (sorry).

Pervert!

* approves *

Oh Kucinich. You never cease to entertain me with your refusal to drop out of the race. <3

My ideal (being realistic, of course) ticket at this point: Obama/Edwards. Yaaaay.

Yup, although I hold out a bit of a torch for Edwards/Kucinich just because. I really like Obama, but I'm still not sure..

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Ron Paul is, and always has been, a bigot and a crank

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