Why so much concern with Ron Paul?

[LeftishBrit]

24. As someone who has been concerned about this issue for 4 years, despite not living in America...

the reason is indeed that some progressives are tempted to make comimon cause with him because of his anti-war views. This is not new; in fact I think there are fewer supporters of Paul on DU now than a few years ago. But for instance at one point in 2008 there was a DU poll that indicated that over 25% of respondents would be prepared to vote for Ron Paul against Hillary Clinton. The respondents may have been self-selected to some degree but still it's worrying.

And the reason why it worries me, despite the fact that he won't be president and I don't even live in his country, is that good rarely comes of progressives making common cause with right-wingers. Usually, the right ends up dominating the left rather than vice versa (what with Blair-Bush followed by Clegg-Cameron I've seen too much of this among our leaders!) And when the attraction of the right-wingers is largely based on their appeal as 'mavericks' and 'iconoclasts', this can lead to a false, pseudo-populist rising against a corrupt current establishment, only to lead to the rise of a much worse establishment. To some extent, this contributed to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. Perhaps this is at the back of my hatred of such as Ron Paul. In some ways, he reminds me of the BNP - except that even the BNP are not quite so right-wing economically as he is.

There are *genuine* populist risings against the corrupt establishment now, i.e. the Occupy movements and similar. We do not need fake populist risings by those who would end up crushing poor people and minorities even more than they are crushed already.