Holy shit! New York Magazine doesn't pull any punches: Ron Paul Is a Huge Racist [View all]

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By Jonathan Chiat

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/12/news-bulletin-ron-paul-is-a-huge-racist.html?mid=twitter_DailyIntel

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With Ron Paul ascending in Iowa, winning the hearts of independents, and even the endorsement of Andrew Sullivan, it’s worth pointing something out: Ron Paul is not a kindly old libertarian who just wants everybody to be free. He’s a really creepy bigot.

Around four years ago, James Kirchick reported a lengthy story delving into Paul’s worldview. As Kirchick writes, Paul comes out of an intellectual tradition called “paleolibertarianism,” which is a version of libertarianism heavily tinged with far-right cultural views. The gist is that Paul is tied in deep and extensive ways to neo-Confederates, and somewhat less tightly to the right-wing militia movement. His newsletter, which he wrote and edited for years, was a constant organ of vile racism and homophobia. This is not just picking out a phrase here and there. Fear and hatred of blacks and gays, along with a somewhat less pronounced paranoia about Jewish dual loyalty, are fundamental elements of his thinking. The most comparable figure to Paul is Pat Buchanan, the main differences being that Paul emphasizes economic issues more, and has more dogmatically pro-market views.

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There’s way, way more of this in Kirchick’s piece. The slight complicating factor is that Paul’s newsletter was unsigned, so even though it purported to express his views, he can plausibly deny having authored any single passage personally. But the general themes of white racial paranoia are so completely pervasive that the notion that they don’t represent Paul’s own thinking is completely implausible. It is possible that another contributor could have snuck in a line here or there that did not reflect Paul’s thinking, but they couldn’t have set the consistent ideological line for his newsletter. Paul may be a dissident from the main thrust of Republican policy-making but this is not because he’s more tolerant or more sensible than the leaders of the GOP. It’s because he’s crazier.

There are a few excerpts of the Paul newsletter in Chiat's brief piece. Here's one:

This “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” was hardly the first time one of Paul’s publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled “What To Expect for the 1990s,” predicted that “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities” because “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” Two months later, a newsletter warned of “The Coming Race War,” and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, “If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.” In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.” “This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,” the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter’s author--presumably Paul--wrote, “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.” That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which “blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot.” The newsletter inveighed against liberals who “want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare,” adding, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”

Kirchick's article is at TNR -- I no longer have a subscription so can't access the whole article. But for those who do, here's the link:
Angry White Man: The bigoted past of Ron Paul.

I'm so used to seeing political speech couched in double-talk & veiled innuendoes, I was amazed to see anything this blunt!

(Oops....ETA link to the Chiat article)