Thursday 29 December 2011

Ron Paul's newsletters drawing justified criticism (finally)

The following is a selection of commentary on Ron Paul's newsletters. Pleased to say they generally closely validate and support all the things I've been saying about him (and his supporters eg 911 Troof) these last 5 years or more.
Paul knows where his bread is buttered. He regularly appears on the radio program of Alex Jones, a vocal 9/11 and New World Order conspiracy theorist based in his home state of Texas. On Jones’s show earlier this month, Paul alleged that the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on United States soil was a “propaganda stunt” perpetrated by the Obama administration.

In light of the newsletters and his current rhetoric, it is no wonder that Paul has attracted not just prominent racists, but seemingly every conspiracy theorist in America. The title of one of Paul’s newsletter series – the Ron Paul Survival Report – was a conscious appeal to followers of the “survivalist” movement of the 1990s, whose ideology blended white supremacy and anti-government militancy in preparation for what Paul himself termed the “coming race war.”

As Paul told The Times last week, he has no interest in dissuading the various extremists from backing his campaign, which is hardly surprising considering he’s spent three decades cultivating their support. Paul’s shady associations are hardly “bygone” and the “facts” of his dangerous conspiracy-mongering are very much “in evidence.” Paul has not just marinated in a stew of far-right paranoia; he is one of the chefs.

Of course, it is impossible to know what Ron Paul truly thinks about black or gay people or the other groups so viciously disparaged in his newsletters. What we do know with absolute certainty, however, is that Ron Paul is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who regularly imputes the worst possible motives to the very government he wants to lead.
SOURCE
Here's an old video of Ron Paul taking credit for the newsletters he now disavows:



On the strategy which produced the newsletters:
This is new to the Paper of Record, but Julian Sanchez and I wrote about this -- these two exact essays -- nearly four years ago.
Rockwell explained the thrust of the idea in a 1990 Liberty essay entitled "The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism." To Rockwell, the LP was a "party of the stoned," a halfway house for libertines that had to be "de-loused." To grow, the movement had to embrace older conservative values. "State-enforced segregation," Rockwell wrote, "was wrong, but so is State-enforced integration. State-enforced segregation was not wrong because separateness is wrong, however. Wishing to associate with members of one's own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse."
The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an "unholy alliance of 'corporate liberal' Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America."
Why has it taken four years for these public domain facts to become "news"? How did Paul slide through a year of televised debates, where his rivals were asked about their opinions of "submission" in marriage and accusations of affairs, and never get a question about this stuff? Paul's associations haven't changed in four years. His explanations haven't changed. You can see why Paul's fans might get annoyed or paranoid about this. They thought they'd litigated this stuff already, and earned a pass.
SOURCE
Again, on the writers of the report:
Ron Paul doesn't seem to know much about his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has "no idea" who might have written inflammatory comments such as "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks"—statements he now repudiates. Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.

Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings.

Rockwell has denied responsibility for the newsletters' contents to The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick. Rockwell twice declined to discuss the matter with reason, maintaining this week that he had "nothing to say." He has characterized discussion of the newsletters as "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies" of The New Republic. Paul himself called the controversy "old news" and "ancient history" when we reached him last week, and he has not responded to further request for comment.

But a source close to the Paul presidential campaign told reason that Rockwell authored much of the content of the Political Report and Survival Report. "If Rockwell had any honor he'd come out and I say, ‘I wrote this stuff,'" said the source, who asked not to be named because Paul remains friendly with Rockwell and is reluctant to assign responsibility for the letters. "He should have done it 10 years ago."

Rockwell was publicly named as Paul's ghostwriter as far back as a 1988 issue of the now-defunct movement monthly American Libertarian. "This was based on my understanding at the time that Lew would write things that appeared in Ron's various newsletters," former AL editor Mike Holmes told reason. "Neither Ron nor Lew ever told me that, but other people close to them such as Murray Rothbard suggested that Lew was involved, and it was a common belief in libertarian circles."

Individualist-feminist Wendy McElroy, who on her blog characterized the author as an associate of hers for many years, called the ghostwriter's identity "an open secret within the circles in which I run." Though she declined to name names either on her blog or when contacted by reason, she later approvingly cited a post naming Rockwell at the anonymous blog RightWatch.
SOURCE
Here's TNR's "A Collection of Ron Paul’s Most Incendiary Newsletters"

Lots of good links in that one.

Why Don’t Libertarians Care About Ron Paul’s Bigoted Newsletters?

A Libertarian’s Lament: Why Ron Paul Is an Embarrassment to the Creed
Given that the most shocking racist and homophobic content from his actual newsletters is reprinted in the span of just one eight-page mailer, it offers a stark picture of just how focused the publication was on these conspiracy theories. You can read the full letter here.
SOURCE
I especially liked the libertarian criticism of Ron Paul as it reflects some of my own criticisms against Paul (and his support) - for example, the incongruency of a belief in 'Liberty' versus support for secure borders and opposition to immigration. This is a difficulty Paul's supporters, such as Alex Jones and the 911 Troofers have never managed to properly address - they've managed to avoid all serious criticism until now, because they control their own media and refuse to embrace any criticism.

Well, now RP is out in the open, such criticism cannot be avoided. In such a light, I guess it can only be a positive thing RP is attracting significant support in his Presidential run - finally he (and his belief system) are attracting attention in places where Paul and his supporters cannot exercise control, as they do at Prisonplanet and WhatReallyHappened.com etc. Good.

The party is over, conspiro-nuts! Great. Whilst the conspiros obviously won't reconsider anything, the coverage should at least successfully delegitimise their creed in the eyes of 'normal' people. Success.

12 comments:

Real Truth Online said...

and yet NONE of your links shows that Ron Paul is the AUTHOR of those words!!

So, I will ask you AGAIN: [FOURTH time now]...

"So, if I create a newsletter and attach your name to it [oh, thats right, you're too chickenshit to POST your actual name...frauds usually don't] and I printed a bunch of comments endorsing Rivero and Willis Carto and Alex Jones--all the people you despise---then YOU would ADMIT to writing them and you'd endorse them???

Answer please??"

Real Truth Online said...

HINT: It's a YES/NO question!!!

Real Truth Online said...

In the video he is talking about the Ron Paul SURVIVAL REPORT. Any evidence the racist comments are from the Ron Paul SURVIVAL REPORT??

Uhhhhhh, let me guess......NO?

Real Truth Online said...

In this link from Kirchick...

http://www.tnr.com/article/
politics/ron-paul-newsletter

...isn't it odd that the one list [of newsletters] he does NOT show is the RON PAUL SURVIVAL REPORT...which is the ONLY ONE Ron Paul claims he put out in the video you posted, but in Kirchick's list---nope, the SURVIVAL REPORT is NOT among them.

DEBUNKED AGAIN!

the_last_name_left said...

Read the Solicitation Letter [PDF] that I have twice linked to.

It says, for example -

"Let me show you how to do all of this. Let me rush you my new $50 report on "Surviving the New Money" and each month mail you my Ron Paul Investment Letter and Political Report."

and

"But you and I aren't sheep, and we won't stand still to be fleeced. That's why I wrote Surviving the New Money. That's why I publish the Ron Paul investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report. To protect middle-class Americans and their savings from the federal shears."

I've laid bare the coming race-war in our big cities, the Federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS. The Bohemian Grove perverted pagan playground, the Israeli lobby, blah blah blah blah"

That's why I must send you Surviving the New Money, the Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report."

Surviving the New Money, the Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report will be your survival kit and if you act now you can get this $224 value for just $99 -- 55% off!

Send your check today......on my toll-free 800 number: 1-800-RON-PAUL."
=============

Sincerely

Signed
Congressman Ron Paul

the_last_name_left said...

From Christian Science Monitor:

"It's the biggest setback to hit Ron Paul's candidacy for president: publicity about racially charged statements and other controversial comments in newsletters published in Mr. Paul's name in the 1980s and 1990s.

On Thursday he responded at some length to the concerns during an Iowa radio interview, calling the newsletter statements "terrible" but insisting that he wasn't the one who wrote them. He added that the offensive comments totaled about "about eight or 10 sentences."
=============

RP now says the statements were "terrible" (but he didn't write them).

Notice the difference to what you're saying Larry - you claim he wasn't responsible, because people entirely unconnected to Paul made the newsletters.

If that were the case, sure, it'd be unfair to blame Paul for it.

But that isn't the case.

the_last_name_left said...

These statements were first brought up by Paul's opponent in the 1996 Congressional election, Charles "Lefty" Morris. At the time Paul did not deny writing the newsletters , stating that they were taken "out of context".


from the 1996 Houston Chronicle news report:

"In May, Morris' campaign distributed other selected newsletter writings from 1992 in which blacks were portrayed as inclined toward crime and lacking sense about major political issues.

Paul said then that he opposed racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of ""current events and statistical reports of the time."
=============

From another Houston Chronicle report, in '96:

-
Texas congressional candidate Ron Paul's 1992 political newsletter highlighted portrayals of blacks as inclined toward crime and lacking sense about top political issues.

A campaign spokesman for Paul said statements about the fear of black males mirror pronouncements by black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has decried the spread of urban crime.

Paul continues to write the newsletter for an undisclosed number of subscribers, the spokesman said.
=============

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1996_1343749

Real Truth Online said...

So, in other words, you have no PROOF that Ron Paul wrote the words in the PDF file! Amazing how "racist" Ron Paul won Congressional elections TWELVE times and miraculously escaped being called a racist during any of 12 wins as Congressman! That's simply amazing!!

Since you have a reading disability, I will post my question for a FIFTH time. When OH WHEN will you answer this question??????

"So, if I create a newsletter and attach your name to it [oh, thats right, you're too chickenshit to POST your actual name...frauds usually don't] and I printed a bunch of comments endorsing Rivero and Willis Carto and Alex Jones--all the people you despise---then YOU would ADMIT to writing them and you'd endorse them???

Answer please??"

PSSST. It's a YES/NO question!!!

Real Truth Online said...

You forget---or too stupid to even know that libertarians are incapable of being racist because they dont see individuals as a part of a group [blacks, gays, etc...] they see them as individuals and protect their individual liberty. Ron Paul is the biggest advocate of ending the drug war, which imprisons people for non-violent crimes, of which blacks have the highest rate of non-violent incarceration call it racist to say that all you want, its true]. Ron Paul wants to END that. That's racist to want to FREE blacks for non-violent crimes???

Answer please.

the_last_name_left said...

"libertarians are incapable of being racist"
--------

funny

Real Truth Online said...

Actually, what's funny is how you continually ignore my question, which showcases the fact that a you are living proof that when challenged to answer hard questions about the things you believe, you ignore, ignore, ignore----whilst you ridicule those [like me] who make claims that the truth behind 9-11 has been ignored by the mainstream media and Washington. You fail to recognize when major entities ignore major stories---while YOU [a nobody] ignore MY questions on meaningless blogs like your own...yet you DENY the ignoring happens on a larger scale.

THAT is what's funny!

Real Truth Online said...
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