During the last Presidential election, which ultimately pitted Obama against Mitt Romney – I became aware of a whole bunch of young folk around our community who were big fans of Ron Paul.
“What the fuck?” I thought… Here were a bunch of nice, pot smoking, lefty-type kids that were turning away from Obama and appeared to be captivated by a politician they really knew nothing about. I remembered this phenomenon once before, back in the Clinton era. We knew a young kid – almost a street waif – who had long dreadlocks and said he was going to vote Republican. I laughed in his face, and told him that those fuckers would eat him alive.
Ah, so much for rejecting what is perceived as “the establishment”.
Ron Paul should be relegated to the annals of history now, a cranky old arnarcho-capitalist that would normally be tucked into his rocker on the porch with a bottle of wine. That would indeed happen, if not for his equally nutty son “Rand” setting his sights on a 2016 Presidential run. Rand has plenty of time to implode in his own strange way – and we will touch on that later, but being as that the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree, let’s review a little about Papa Ron…
Ron Paul has been a Congressman for a long, long time. His Libertarian stance favors “wild west” capitalism, elimination of much of the federal government, a relaxed social system regarding things like drugs and prostitution, and non-intervention in foreign affairs. The easy drug and veiled anti-war policy is what tends to attract the young crowd, and they remain blind to his broad anti-government stance and association with the racist, militant far-right, including neo-Nazis.
Because he’s been in it for the long run, Ron Paul has a lot, I mean a lot of baggage. In December of 2011, The New York Times delivered a devastating takedown of Paul:
“The American Free Press, which markets books like “The Invention of the Jewish People” and “March of the Titans: A History of the White Race,” is urging its subscribers to help it send hundreds of copies of Ron Paul’s collected speeches to voters in New Hampshire. The book, it promises, will “Help Dr. Ron Paul Win the G.O.P. Nomination in 2012!”
Don Black, director of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront, said in an interview that several dozen of his members were volunteering for Mr. Paul’s presidential campaign, and a site forum titled “Why is Ron Paul such a favorite here?” has no fewer than 24 pages of comments. “I understand he wins many fans because his monetary policy would hurt Jews,” read one.”
(DR)- But Paul’s history with neo-Nazi’s goes back much further – to his years of publishing political newsletters. Again, from the Times article:
“In May, Mr. Paul reiterated in an interview with Chris Matthews of MSNBC that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing segregation. He said that he supported its intent, but that parts of it violated his longstanding belief that government should not dictate how property owners behave. He has been featured in videos of the John Birch Society, which campaigned against the Civil Rights Act, warning, for instance, that the United Nations threatens American sovereignty.
In the mid-1990s, between his two stints as a Texas congressman, Mr. Paul produced a newsletter called The Ron Paul Survival Report, which only months before the Oklahoma City bombings encouraged militias to seek out and expel federal agents in their midst. That edition was titled “Why Militias Scare the Striped Pants Off Big Government.”
An earlier edition of another newsletter he produced, The Ron Paul Political Report, concluded that the need for citizens to arm themselves was only natural, given carjackings by “urban youth who play whites like pianos.” The report, with no byline but written in the first person, said: “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.”
“Those newsletters have drawn new scrutiny through Mr. Paul’s two recent presidential campaigns. The New Republic posted several of them online in 2008 and again recently, including a lament about “The Disappearing White Majority.” The conservative Weekly Standard ran an article highlighting the newsletters last week.
Mr. Paul has long repudiated the newsletters, contending that they were written by the staff of his company, Ron Paul & Associates, while he was tending to his obstetrician’s practice and that he did not see some of them until 10 years later. “I disavow those positions,” he said in the interview. “They’re not my positions, and anybody who knows me, they’ve never heard a word of it.”
But production of the newsletters was partly overseen by Lew Rockwell, a libertarian activist who has been a close political aide and adviser to Mr. Paul over the course of decades. At the same time that he was a director for Mr. Paul’s company, Mr. Rockwell called on libertarians to reach out to “cultural and moral traditionalists,” who “reject not only affirmative action, set-asides and quotas, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act and all subsequent laws that force property owners to act against their will.”
(DR)- Recall the name of Ron Paul’s associate Don Black, listed in the Times article above. Here’s what Black, a neo-Nazi had to say about The Ron Paul newsletters:
“Still, the newsletters had a lasting appeal with the audience Mr. Rockwell and Mr. Rothbard talked about reaching.
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.”
Ron Paul and Neo-Nazi Don Black
Ron Paul’s ties to neo-Nazi Don Black go back much further. Indeed, he and former Texas Governor John Connally were implicated in a plot to overthrow a Caribbean island government, From Newsone.com:
Ron Paul Was Implicated In Failed White Supremacist Island Invasion
Jan 20, 2012
By Casey Gane-McCalla
(Excerpts)
“In 1981, a lawyer tried to subpoena Ron Paul to testify in the trial of Don Black, a Grand Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan who would later go on to found the white supremacist, neo-Nazi website, Stormfront. Black was charged along with two other Klansmen with planning to violently overthrow the small Caribbean country of Dominica in what they called “Operation Red Dog.” While a judge refused to subpoena Paul, Don Black would come back to haunt him many years later.
In 1981 a group of American and Canadian white supremacists lead by Klansman and mercenary, Michael (Mike) Perdue planned on taking over a small West Indian country called Dominica by overthrowing the government and Prime Minister Eugenia Charles and restoring its previous prime minister, Patrick Johns into power. The group planned to create an Aryan paradise in Dominica and make money through casinos, cocaine and brothels.
On the day the group of white supremacists were supposed to travel to Dominica, they were arrested by ATF agents and were found with over thirty automatic weapons, shotguns, rifles, handguns, dynamite, ammunition, a confederate flag and a Nazi flag. The plan would be dubbed “The Bayou Of Pigs” after the failed invasion of Cuba.
The leader of the group, Michael Perdue, would plead guilty to planning the coup and turned state’s evidence. Perdue would testify that several other people helped organize and fund the coup and that two Texas politicians were aware of the plan. Among those Perdue implicated were infamous white supremacist, David Duke, former Texas Governor, John Connally and Congressman, Ron Paul whom he claimed knew about the plot. Connally was credited with helping Paul win his first congressional election.
A judge refused to subpoena Paul and Connally despite the fact that Perdue had claimed that both of them were aware of the plot. Don Black’s friend and fellow KKK Grand Wizard, David Duke was called to testify before a grand jury but claimed that he would take the Fifth Amendment and never testified. While Duke was never charged with a crime, several books points to Duke as the organizer who connected Perdue to the other mercenary Klansmen and the people who funded their endeavor. Everyone else implicated by Perdue was charged with the plot.”
“Paul would be once again tied to Don Black 26 years after the Bayou Of Pigs. After it was revealed that Black donated $500 dollars to the Ron Paul Presidential campaign, Ron Paul’s campaign refused to give it back. Paul was photographed with Black and his son by David Duke’s former assistant, Jamie Kelso who was an organizer for Ron Paul and the owner of white supremacist sites, WhiteNewsNow.com and TheWhiteRace.com and a moderator for Black’s neo-Nazi website, Stormfront.
Black would become one of Paul’s most enthusiastic supporters and helped rally the white supremacist community around Paul, through Stormfront. Paul would praise another Operation Red Dog planner, David Duke in his newsletters and Duke would return the favor calling him “our king” and endorsing him for President.
This would not be the first time Paul was tied to white supremacists. In 80s, Paul claimed that the best source of his campaign donations came from a list from notorious neo-Nazi, Willis Carto’s publication, The Spotlight. In the 90s, Paul’s newsletters were originally discovered from an online neo-Nazi directory. As recently as 2006, Paul was scheduled to appear on David Duke’s white supremacist protégé, James Edwards’ radio show, “The Political Cesspool.”
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In 2012 the hacker group “Anonymous” also tied Ron Paul to another neo-Nazi group:
“Goodnight white pride: Anonymous hacktivists expose Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s connection with American neo-Nazis.
On Tuesday, Anonymous enthusiasts hacked and defaced the website of American Third Position (A3P), a major US-based white supremacist network. According to Anonymous, documents liberated in the hack show that “Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors.”The notorious international Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous is currently targeting American Nazis and white supremacists as part of their ongoing Operation Blitzkrieg (#OpBlitzkrieg). On Sunday, as part of Operation Blitzkrieg, hacktivists associated with Anonymous hacked and defaced the web page belonging to the American Nazi Party.The Anti-Defamation League reports that the American Third Position (A3P), is a white supremacist political party based in California. The white nationalist political group was reportedly created in October 2009 but began promoting itself to the public in January 2010.”
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Defenders of “The Paulistinian Libertarian Organization (as researcher Dave Emory has dubbed them) would say “Hey, Ron doesn’t believe in that stuff, and besides, look at his politics, not the darker elements of his movement!”
To that I say; nowhere on the planet, except maybe Somalia under pirate and war-lord rule, is Libertarianism a societal roll model. As attractive as the rhetoric is to political neophytes, and no matter how hard Paul Ryan-types push German-style austerity, Libertarian philosophy is an uneasy fit in the conservative spectrum. Average working people eventually get it: Libertarianism throws a pot-and-prostitute bone to the working class, while enriching the corporations that really run the world. Let ‘em pollute. Let ’em steal. Let ’em crush the little people under their boot…
But before we tuck old Ron into his rocking chair with a bottle of wine, we will have to put up with his zany son Rand for the foreseeable future. As indicated at the beginning of this article, Rand is entering his own path of self-destruction. From The Huffington Post:
“Chris Hayes is done with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
Though Paul has drawn favor from liberals for his defense of civil liberties and opposition to America’s wars, the MSNBC host argued on Tuesday night’s installment of “All In With Chris Hayes” that it’s impossible to take him seriously after the revelation that one of his aides used to be a neo-Confederate activist.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon published some surprising details about what Paul’s social media director, Jack Hunter — who also co-wrote a book with Paul in 2011 — used to do in his spare time:
From 1999 to 2012, Hunter was a South Carolina radio shock jock known as the “Southern Avenger.” He has weighed in on issues such as racial pride and Hispanic immigration, and stated his support for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
During public appearances, Hunter often wore a mask on which was printed a Confederate flag.
Prior to his radio career, while in his 20s, Hunter was a chairman in the League of the South, which “advocates the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.”
This isn’t an isolated incident, Hayes argued, listing the three “white supremacist strikes” Paul has racked up so far.
“Strike one was in 2009 when Rand Paul’s Senate campaign spokesperson was forced to resign over a horribly racist comment and historical image of a lynching — I’m not making that up — posted by a friend of his on his MySpace wall on Martin Luther King weekend, then allowed to remain for almost two years,” Hayes said.
Strike two, Hayes added, was when Paul expressed reservations about the Civil Rights Act in an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show. (Paul later said in a statement that he supports the Civil Rights Act “because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws.”)
“And now this. Southern Avenger on the Senator’s staff,” Hayes said. “Well, I’m sorry, Rand Paul. That’s three racist strikes. You’re out.”
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So good luck Rand, you’d better get a long-bed pickup truck for all that baggage you’re gonna’ carry with you!
For more information on the failed plan to invade the island of Dominica, see this Wikipedia entry.
