Old Bookmark I had - on Ron Paul, Libertarianism and Nazism.

Ron Paul debacle exposes the racist underbelly in the Rockwellian camp.

01.09.08 (9:58 pm)

This blog, part time that it is, has been trying to warn people about the infestation of bigots and racists who have invaded the libertarian movement. Starting in 2005 we issued our first warning and we did our best to link to the sources and show evidence. Unfortunately much of the evidence is personal experience, simply knowing the people involved.
Our warnings were basically ignored. And now the whole issue has exploded with the shocking (to some) revelations of Ron Paul’s newsletter and the vile statements that were published there.

The Paul newsletters were usually a joint project between Paul, Lew Rockwell and Burt Blumert. Perhaps they all were but I will only say what I’m confident about. Paul really did provide the name and the public face. He was the bait to attract the subscribers. The money came from Blumert to set things up and Rockwell did much of the writing. Of course Paul was fully aware of the newsletters and can’t really argue that he didn’t know what was published.

After all these articles appeared over a period of years. We are talking multiple issues and multiple years. To say Paul didn’t know implies he was totally comatose. It went on too long and in too many issues for him to feign ignorance.

The New Republic article accurate notes that to understand Paul you have to understand the Mises Institute -- the fount from which so much racism in the movement comes. And it noted that the crowd at the Mises Institute “are nothing like the urbane libertarians” at Cato or Reason. In fact they are unlike the libertarians I knew most of my life. As we have shown here repeatedly, people connected with Rockwell and his misnamed Institute regularly hang out with racists, bigots, anti-Semites and hate-mongers for all kinds. This article was correct to point out how the Mises Institute and Rockwell play a prominent role in the disastrous newsletters that were recently republished.

My understanding over the years has been that the newsletter was in fact written by Lew Rockwell. Mr. Rockwell is notorious in libertarian circles for having been the author. The problem is that this was one of those issues that was so widely known that no one archived the evidence. It just was. And Rockwell is refusing to talk. Paul is refusing to the name the individual who wrote the hate material.

So why won’t Paul name him? He has referred to him as a “former aide”. People assume that means he and the individual are no longer associated. That is a false assumption. Many people who are “former aides” merely move higher in the hierarchy. Rockwell was a former aide. He was also Paul’s business partner in the newsletter and has remained a major confidant and adviser to Paul. I suspect that Paul won’t name names because his previous answers were intended to imply he was so shocked by the content that he dismissed the writer.

Paul could get away with that excuse when it was limited to one issue of the newsletter. Now it covers many issues over many years and that doesn’t wash. The rumor is that Rockwell was the author and he remained Paul’s close ally and ghost writer for many years. They are still closely linked. So Paul’s previous answer would be exposed as intentionally misleading if he were to reveal that he and the actual author were still working together. If Paul was ever actually embarrassed by the content, and there is zero evidence he was, then he clearly wasn’t embarrassed enough to severe his connections with the alleged author.

Rockwell’s group publishes Paul’s books. I think we’d find that Rockwell, or other Mises Institute individuals, actually author much of Paul’s work. Paul’s books are on a far higher level than some of his rambling answers or explanations when he is interviewed. That seems a strong indication that Mr. Paul didn’t write his own books.

So I do, in large part, buy Paul’s story that he didn’t write much of this material. Though I can’t rule out that he wrote some of it. But the line that he didn’t read it or know about it is just too absurd to be believed. Nor do I buy that he was repulsed by the content of these newsletter since it looks to me that he has continued his close allegiance with the likely author of the pieces.

Does Paul agree with the hateful comments. I don’t know. He’s smart enough to know not to say such things on the campaign stump. And my interactions with Paul were always in the role of questioning him on things where he was defensive and trying to cover his ass on unlibertarian votes or positions he took.

The reason for this blog was to warn people about this festering sore before it really did a lot of damage. But Paul, who is closely allied to this vipers nest of Rockwellians, rose to some prominence mainly due to his strong opposition to the war -- one issue where he is right I might add. Unfortunately Paul’s close alliance with bigots meant that at some point the sordid newsletters would be exposed.

Every increase in the Paul campaign also increased the chance that these newsletters would be made public. I suspect Paul and Rockwell were counting on the relative obscurity of the publication and time to make that impossible. I believe some of the later years, without the racism, are available on line but neither Paul nor the Mises Institute would put the early issues on line. In fact Paul claimed he didn’t have any copies and couldn’t release them. But copies were found and that is what brought forth the rather unpleasant publicity.

The real tragedy here is that libertarianism itself is smeared because of this. Ron Paul was promoted as some sort of icon. Rockwell’s site published the claim that “’the Ron Paul question’ constitutes a litmus test for libertarians. Simply put, the ‘Ron Paul questions’ consists of determining whether or not a person supports Dr. Paul. If so, as I see matters, he passes the test and can be constituted a libertarian; if not, his credentials are to that extent suspect.”

What cheek!

Here is what is absurd. The racists at Stormfront have been cheering Paul all along. Many of these people are open about their race hatred and their support for Hitler or some form of racialist agenda. But they support Paul. According to Rockwell’s site, if someone supports Paul, “he passes the test and can be constituted a libertarian”. So apparently the Nazis are libertarians but many prominent libertarians are “suspect” because they don’t support Paul. Well, since Mr. Paul’s racist newsletters were exposed the number of libertarians in the world apparently dropped because lots of people are now sorry they were backing Paul.

I will state my main thesis again. It is lethal and destructive for any libertarian to be associated with bigotry and racism. Not only is it destructive to the cause of liberty but I would assert that it is morally wrong and contemptible. I don’t care how “pure” this individual pretends to be -- in fact many of the most racist types around the Rockwell circles brag about “anarcho-capitalist s” though their anarchism consists of massive state aggression against immigrants. Libertarians need to take back their movement from the racists and the bigots and let they people know they are not welcome. Maybe the bad publicity associated with the Paul debacle will do that, but I won’t hold my breath.

SOURCE: http://rightwatch.tblog.com/post/1969971088

The Ron Paul Conspiracy

20 years ago Paul and his kooky friends cooked-up a conspiracy to attain high office and change America:

In 1991, a newsletter asked, “Is David Duke’s new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?” The conclusion was that “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.”
SOURCE

Funny how Paul's supporters see conspiracy everywhere yet this sort of thing by their own candidate passes unnoticed as 'the usual stuff of politics'.

The Libertarian cabal? The Libertarian conspiracy? Oh no! Only other people conspire.....only other people build up networks.....etc. lol.

For anyone but themselves this stuff would be self-evident proof of malevolent conspiracy, but for the conspiracists supporting Paul it's all perfectly normal and absent the least possible whiff of anything sinister. Funny.

What's a little hypocrisy amongst friends?

Ron Paul: Gingrich taking Freddie Mac money 'immoral'

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on Sunday called Newt Gingrich's acceptance of more than $1 million from a government-controlled mortgage lender "immoral."

Paul, who has called on Gingrich to apologize for the $1.6 million he received in his role with Freddie Mac, said while the former House speaker isn't under any legal obligation to return the funds he should consider the move.

"I wouldn't have taken their money just for the fact that I think it's an immoral thing," Paul said Sunday morning on NBC's "Meet the Press."

SOURCE

Paul wouldn't have taken the money because it's 'immoral'. But then compare what Ron Paul obviously considers moral - accepting campaign finance from Neo-Nazi Don Black (Stormfront):

Paul keeps donation from white supremacist

Aide: Candidate to take money and 'try to spread the message of freedom'

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn't plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday.

Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, "White Pride World Wide." The site welcomes postings to the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community."

"Dr. Paul stands for freedom, peace, prosperity and inalienable rights. If someone with small ideologies happens to contribute money to Ron, thinking he can influence Ron in any way, he's wasted his money," Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said.

"Ron is going to take the money and try to spread the message of freedom."

"And that's $500 less that this guy has to do whatever it is that he does," Benton added.

SOURCE

So, taking money from Freddie Mac is immoral, but taking money from Nazis is fine. Bizarre sort of morality.

Stormfront, Spotlight, Willis Carto......Ron Paul

From the New York Times article on Ron Paul and the controversial newsletters:

Mr. Black of Stormfront said the newsletters helped make him a Ron Paul supporter. “That was a big part of his constituency, the paleoconservatives who think there are race problems in this country,” Mr. Black said.

“We understand that Paul is not a white nationalist, but most of our people support him because of his stand on issues,” Mr. Black said. “We think our race is being threatened through a form of genocide by assimilation, meaning the allowing in of third-world immigrants into the United States.”

Mr. Black said Mr. Paul was attractive because of his “aggressive position on securing our borders,” his criticism of affirmative action and his goal of eliminating the Federal Reserve, which the Stormfront board considers to be essentially a private bank with no government oversight. “Also, our board recognizes that most of the leaders involved in the Fed and the international banking system are Jews.”

Mr. Paul is not unaware of that strain among his supporters. Mr. Crane of the Cato Institute recalled comparing notes with Mr. Paul in the early 1980s about direct mail solicitations for money. When Mr. Crane said that mailing lists of people with the most extreme views seemed to draw the best response, Mr. Paul responded that he found the same thing with a list of subscribers to the Spotlight, a now-defunct publication founded by the holocaust denier Willis A. Carto.

SOURCE

Egyptian forces raid NGOs

The Guardian is reporting "US 'deeply concerned' after Egyptian forces raid NGO offices in Cairo."

Relations between Egypt's military rulers and the United States threatened to hit a new low after Egyptian security forces launched unprecedented armed raids on a series of high profile human rights and pro-democracy organisations.

The 'usual suspects' are named in the article, including IRI, NDI and Freedom House:

The raids included targeting the US-government funded National Democratic Institute – founded by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright – and the International Republican Institute, whose chairman is Republican senator John McCain. Both organisations are affiliated with the two major US political parties.

Security forces also raided the offices of Washington-based Freedom House.
SOURCE

Hmmm.

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.

Ron Paul under scrutiny - racism? Whooops.

Source: FoxNews

It's also featured in the Guardian.

Ron Paul: racist newsletter scandal won't go away
Ron Paul says he knew nothing of a racist newsletter published under his name two decades ago. But he hasn't offered a convincing explanation – and that could hurt him in Iowa

And it's at their source too, of course..



Honest Ron. sure.

Paul has claimed that the newsletter, which compared African Americans to zoo animals, warned of a coming race war, and generally promoted racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia views, was written by other authors and he was unaware of its content — even passages written from his perspective. He has not offered up any of the names of the six to eight writers he said were responsible for writing the incendiary material, however, and reporters are pressing him for more details

"racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia views" - never! I mean, why would racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia views be found amongst Ron Paul's racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia support?

He now says he disavows such views. Maybe someone should tell his "racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia" supporters that he's disavowed them?

Why hasn't Paul ever told them?

** ETA - Here's a link to one of Ron Paul's solicitations for subscription to his "newsletters".