Ron Paul and the Neo-Nazis
When I'm not writing on this blog, I spend most of my net time these days over at Little Green Footballs, which seems to go 24/7 (I'm a star on the 'dead thread' when most of the US is sleeping :-). Charles Johnson, the head lizard, figured out pretty early on that Ron Paul supporters would spam any poll in which their man was included. So he stopped putting Paul in the polls, and Ron Paul became a joke to many of us. He just stopped being a joke to me thanks to James Kirchick.Daniel Siederaski of the Jewish Telegraph Agency has a story that should rile all those liberals oddly attracted to the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul: not only have neo-Nazis vocally expressed support for his campaign and form a crucial part of his online spam brigades, but one of their leaders has donated money and the Texas Republican hasn't decided yet whether to return it. Siederaski has been trying to get in touch with the Paul campaign for an explanation, but thus far, his many phone calls have gone unreturned, leading him to conclude that "Ron Paul will take money from Nazis. But he won’t take telephone calls from Jews."Here's the key part of Sieradski's (Kirchick got the name wrong) post:
Indeed, Ron Paul has become the most popular candidate among right-wing extremists, including white separatists, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists who believe that “the Zionists” were behind 9/11. This group includes Frank Weltner, creator of the antisemitic website JewWatch.com, who in a YouTube video, accuses the “Zionist-controlled media” of attacking Paul’s candidacy. Paul has also received favorable coverage from the Vanguard News Network, a White Nationalist news organ, members of Stormfront, an online neo-Nazi community, as well as the National Alliance, the “mainstream” White Nationalist group featured prominently in Marc Levin’s 2005 film Protocols of Zion.Zionists for Ron Paul hasn't posted since last Wednesday. I wonder if this has made them re-think their support for him.
Of course, Congressman Paul cannot be held accountable for the views of his extremist supporters, unless he publicly acquiesces to those views. Yet, when his extremist supporters begin providing a substantial amount of campaign funds, things get a bit dicier. And that’s Paul’s biggest problem.
According to the Lone Star Times, White Nationalists have become a noticeable source of financial contributions to the Paul campaign. Indeed, even Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, and one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in America, has personally contributed $500 to Paul’s campaign.
Though it’s true that Paul’s campaign has no control over who sends them money in advance, once it becomes apparent that a neo-Nazi leader is sending money, any sensible politician who does not wish to be identified with neo-Nazism should send the money back. Not so for Ron Paul, however, whose campaign is still making up its mind as to whether or not to return Black’s money.
Paul’s spokesman Jesse Benton told the Lone Star Times:At this time, I cannot say that we will be rejecting Mr. Black’s contribution, but I will bring the matter to the attention of our campaign director again, and expect some sort of decision to be made in coming days.
Frankly, this is a no-brainer. Any other candidate would unequivocally reject that money as soon as its donor’s identity was known. That Paul’s campaign needs time to think about it is shocking.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:57 AM
21 Comments:
So . . . the candidate who is anti-war and anti-torture is the Nazi.
I'll let this link speak to the slandering of Dr Paul:
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/123347.html
Here is the gist of their libertarian view:
"I asked Bydlak about attention the campaign is getting from creepy white supremacists, and whether if they discovered donations from specious people they'd give them back. "If people who hold views that the candidate doesn't agree with, and they give to us, that's their loss," he said. What if the campaign keeps getting scrutiny as its coffers grow? "The scrutiny is a perfect sign of how this campaign is growing.""
PS: My late cousin was once head of the JTA.
Let's put this in perspective:
Someone that was Anti-Ron-Paul (vehemently so) before finds something (which is some wild conspiracy theory crap, I might add) that makes him Anti-Ron-Paul again....
And we are supposed to be shocked?
Ron Paul's campaign has repudated the neonazis, he just hasn't returned the *SHOCKING* $500 donation.
I just wonder how difficult it is to get a PO box in W. Palm Beach under someone else's name (or even just lie on the online donations) especially seeing that a very prominent member of the anti-Ron-Paul squad that made a point to land on Fox News and call Ron Paul 'cerifiably insane' (and then went on to brag about it) also happens to live in... wait for it... W. Palm Beach, FL. Not only that, but this particular person attended the protests for GWB vs. Gore in 2000 with.... Don Black. In fact, you find their names beside each other quite often.
Neo-Nazis are socialists. Why would they "really" support Ron Paul other than to create trouble? And when they supported GWB in 2000, why wasn't it a problem for the JTA and LGF? Exactly...
No, I agree with Carl that Paul's creepy supporters are a problem. Paul has appeared on the talk show of a radio host who is well-known as a 9/11 Truther. LGF reported it, though I can't recall his name. LGF also posted video of Ron Paul talking to a Truther and playing up to him. It was disgusting. The Truther was saying stuff like, "Don't you think there are things we aren't being told about 9/11?" Stuff Paul had to _know_ was Truther stuff. Instead of saying, "No, I don't think it's much of a mystery. Muslim terrorists flew planes into buildings. The details aren't that important, and the so-called Truthers are insane," Paul promised to get together with a Democrat in Congress (Kucinich, was it?) and get more "investigation" done. He deliberately played up to his questioner. And everyone knows that Paul is fully capable of saying outright if he thinks a question is misguided or betrays a false assumption. He could and should have done so here. Oh, sure, he's said he doesn't believe 9/11 was an inside job. Big deal. But he hangs out with people who do, and he's clearly courting their votes. That's disgusting.
FREE PAULISTINIANS FROM AMERICAN OPPRESSION!!!
/sarc
Listen to Ron Paul himself on Foreign Policy.
http://www.sais-jhu.edu/mp3_player/fall2007/ronpaul091107.htm
most of the US is sleeping
But not all. I'm a dead thread guy myself. Always nice to have some one who keeps some of my hours. :-)
LGF had a Ron Paul - Nazi thread a while back which I covered with Neo Nazis Love Ron Paul. Around 11 Oct 007.
All the Christian Identity followers I know also happen to support Ron Paul, could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.
I'm an Orthodox Jew (and American citizen) and I live in Israel (check the IP address this is posting from if you don't believe me).
I also happen to be a very big fan of Ron Paul.
And all I can say is a big "yawn." Seriously. Come on people.
These odious donations are almost certainly because Paul opposes aid to Israel. He happens to oppose government aid to ALL nations, many of which are actual or potential enemies of Israel anyway.
It can't be because of what Paul has actually said vis a vis Israel. He has said numerous times he supports Israel's absolute right to defend itself and that if Israel has issues with Iran, it is welcome to pursue solutions as it sees fit. He supported Israel's right to take unilateral action against Iraq in 1981, while practically the entire world condemned Israel's bombing of the Osirak reactor.
What makes Nazis dangerous is not their odious and murderous ideology. What makes them truly dangerous and capable of murdering six million Jews is having the full authority and power of a large and centralized bureaucracy behind them.
In case you haven't connected the dots, any smart Nazi would want as president someone whose goal is to INCREASE the power of the federal government, not a libertarian who wants to emasculate it.
Regarding the donations. Yeah, they're distasteful. I admit it. But you can't compare them to the donations by Hsu that Hillary returned. In her case, those donations were very likely ILLEGAL and she in no way wanted to risk an investigation. In Paul's case, that is not the case, or he would have returned them by now.
By the way, commenter Scott McDonnell makes a good point. When donating, you can put down ANY name and affiliation you like. There is no fact checking. It's entirely plausible that someone who doesn't like Paul could just be provocative. Certainly, many so-called mainstream opponents are absolutely irrational in their to Paul.
Also, regarding 9/11, I don't believe the government organized or perpetrated the attacks, but I too believe the government is being less than truthful. I would like a more open and public investigation. And Lydia, I happen to think the details ARE important.
Scott, I think if you knew more about the "cut aid to Israel" attitude, you might not say what you do about "hey, he believes in cutting aid to everyone." I used to think like that, too, but I've realized since then that the people who shout loudest about cutting aid to Israel think that's a _priority_, which, considering all the disgusting foreign aid we (the U.S.) give out (including to Fatah/PLO) is crazy. On Free Republic, they've quoted stuff from the 80's showing that Paul also made statements supportive of the PLO.
Do I think he's a neo-Nazi? No, not at all. Do I think he's as bothered by his creepy supporters as he should be? No, he's not bothered enough by it, and I reiterate--in the case of the 9/11 deniers, he courts it.
Moreover, he does not understand the jihadi threat. He's like so many paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians: Because they are so dovish on foreign policy and think it always wrong (pretty much) for America to engage in foreign wars, they downplay the true evil of the jihadis and try to blame America for terrorist attacks against her. Usually this blame, explicitly or tacitly, takes the form of implying that America's support for Israel is a form of "meddling" with Islamic countries, a "meddling" to which Muslims *understandably* respond with terrorist acts. This is a very dangerous way of thinking in anyone who wants to be president of the United States. Paul's comments about 9/11 in the one debate--all that "How would we feel if the Chinese tried to take over the U.S." junk, which essentially implied that Osama bin Laden was reasonable in planning 9/11 as a retaliation for the _first_ Iraq war and the sanctions against Iraq!--were crazy and marked the end of my interest in Paul as a presidential candidate. And this was before any of the creepy supporter stuff started happening. And I add that I'm no fan of the second Iraq war. But I think many people are so opposed to it that they say dangerously muddle-headed things.
Lydia,
Let me add from Israel's perspective that without the airlift that President Nixon arranged during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel might not be here today (yes, he waited too long, but the bottom line is that he sent the airlift in the end). Would President Ron Paul do the same? I doubt it.
Every time America pursues an isolationist foreign policy it's bad for the Jews (see, "Hitler, Adolf" and how long it took FDR to nudge America into World War II because of the isolationism of his predecessor). The fact that America isn't going to help anyone else either if Paul wins won't change that result.
Lydia, regarding cutting aid to Israel, what matters is not the shouters, who are of course ecstatic with that prospect, but Paul himself. At the same time, given that Israel is the largest recipient of foreign aid, by far, it would be natural to focus on it. Personally, I have supported ending American aid at least since the mid-90s. It is demonstrably bad for Israel. It allows Israel to avoid reforming bloated government or making necessary choices about budget priorities. Plus it pads a lot of politicians' wallets.
As far as Paul's attitude regarding the threat of Muslim fundamentalism, I do agree that he is at best naive. However, I think it's reasonable to believe that he is more easily convinced that his outlook is flawed than the likes of Bush or Clinton, both of whom got caught up in the Peace in the Middle East in Our Time game. And if that were sadly the case, he wouldn't wage a war with no goal of victory, as Bush is currently doing in Iraq.
I saw the now infamous debate episode between him and Guiliani. I thought Paul could have expressed his thoughts better, but he was not wrong. The concepts of "blowback" and unintended consequences are very real and well recognized in the intelligence community. Bin Laden himself is just one example of blowback. He didn't say he sympathized with the perpetrators of 9/11. Osama bin Laden has telegraphed his intentions rather clearly, moreso than most enemies. What motivated him were many things, not just the first war in Iraq. Do I condone any of his actions or his justifications? Of course not. And neither does Paul. But you can't deny that Muslims did not like the American presence on the Arabian peninsula, which was one of his primary complaints. Bush did eventually pull American troops out of Saudi Arabia. Are you going to say that was a bad move or that he was appeasing bin Laden in doing so?
It is hard to accept, but American policies (which are policies of the government, not the people) actually do inflame people around the world. Bush talks about promoting democracy (a decidedly bad form of government - in case you weren't aware, America is a republic, not a democracy) all while propping up despots like Musharraf (who siezed control of Pakistan in a military coup) with $10 billion to date. Believe it or not, such shameless hypocrisy is blatantly obvious to people around the world, and not surprisingly, they don't like it.
Would Paul's policies reduce the Muslim threat? At first, probably a little, but over the long term, I doubt it. However, they would allow America to better focus on defending and protecting itself. Extending an American defensive shield to countries who resent its presence or who aren't interested in defending themselves is counterproductive.
Carl, do you really want to go there? Who forced Israel to refrain from preemptively responding to a known threat to begin with? And to give Nixon a pass for "waiting too long" while Jews were dying?
The first modern example of American intervention, that of entering into WWI, almost certainly precipitated the Holocaust the followed (from a natural perspective, of course). Americans didn't want to enter into WWII precisely because of the negative repercussions of its experience in WWI. Not because they wanted to see millions of Jews killed (though I will admit they were indifferent to the plight of European Jewry, but the same thing could be said about much of the American Jewish leadership as well).
Technically, what Paul proposes is not isolationism, but non-interventionism. The former term is a perjorative.
I don't believe Paul would be good at helping America defend herself by _domestic_ measures, either, because I think he is very dangerously naive about jihadism and Arab interests. (He was, I believe, the only Republican who attended that American Arab interest-group meeting in Detroit a few weeks ago.) What this means is that he would be at least as disinclined as Bush is (sadly) to recognize the domestic jihadist threat, while at the same time saying blowback self-blaming-sounding stuff which, to his minimal credit, Bush does not say.
It's an interesting question what Paul's approach to Israel would be like. But if paleolibertarians are any indication (and he is pretty much a straight paleolibertarian), he would not be consistent in his non-interventionism but rather would pressure Israel at least as much as our current administration to give up the Golan and all the rest of the nonsense.
So he'd be no better than Bush on these Israel-related matters, and his rhetoric regarding Islam and the U.S. would be worse, more naive (which is hard to do--Bush is pretty naive), and more self-blaming.
I'm quite familiar with the blowback talk and frankly, I don't buy it. The jihadis would find some reason to attack us if we were non-interventionist. They really do--here I am _directly and deliberately_ contradicting Ron Paul's words in that debate sequence--hate us because we are free and prosperous. And, I would add, because we are not Muslim. The infidels must be conquered. Ron Paul doesn't get that. If possible, he's farther from getting it than our current president, which is saying a lot. Blowback is causally redundant to Islamic terrorism, in my opinion.
People seem to be presuming what Ron Paul would do with Israel.
That is why I posted the link early in the post Ron speaking for himself.
He has already stated he would let them protect themselves, which the UN and US is not letting Israel do, and he would withdraw foreign aid which we have to borrow from other countries anyway.
Here is another link written by Paul on entangling alliances with others and our not so well thought out current foreign policies of today.
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2007/tst111107.htm
it cut the link off above,
try again.
www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2007/
tst111107.htm
Lydia, you can dispute it all you want but blowback exists. Yes, Muslims look the non-Muslim world as future Muslim world. But American-engineered or backed coups in many countries eventually came back to bite them. Iran. Viet Nam. Certainly others. Backing the Mujahadeen in the 1980s seemed like a prudent thing to do at the time. Yet can you really dispute that it sowed the seeds (ie classic blowback) for future conflict by those same allies against America?
As far as America defending itself, I remember reading a long time ago that various people in high positions in the former Soviet Union said they never seriously considered a land invasion of America because of the huge number of weapons in private hands. Given that Paul takes the second amendment and defending the borders (and addressing the illegal alien problem) seriously, that defuses most of the potential problems of Muslim aggression. Would it still be a problem? Of course. But it would be a far more manageable problem.
And it is very clear that no one else (except for Tancredo, a single-issue candidate) has no interest in addressing the problem of unchecked legal and illegal immigration.
Duncan Hunter. On immigration. Yeah, I know, "Duncan who?" But I'm planning on voting for him in the primary.
As far as training the mujahids in Afghanistan, that was not the example Paul used. If anything, that example would imply that our present policy of "training Fatah to fight Hamas" is insanity. Which, of course, it is. I suppose spitting our help back in our faces as bin Laden did is a kind of blowback! But it isn't the kind Paul was talking about. He didn't portray bin Ladin as an ungrateful wretch who wants to kill Americans because they are Americans. Very, very much to the contrary, he portrayed him as an activist with a legitimate grievance. An almost exact quote of Paul's words: "They are over here because we are over there." Paul's problem isn't that he expressed himself poorly. His problem is that he hangs out with the wrong crowd and has learned to "see the side of" the wrong people.
I don't follow his every word, so maybe this prediction has already come true, but here is my prediction: You will find Ron Paul somewhere, sometime, saying that Iran is not a threat and perhaps even that they have a "right to nuclear power" and that this is what they are pursuing. He might even start saying that it's understandable that they should want nuclear weapons to respond to possible "American aggression." I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Shalom Carl, first of all thank you for reading our blog at Zionists For Ron Paul and caring enough about it to comment about it in your own article. No, we haven't recondsidered our support for Dr. Paul. We stand by the basic premise that a non-interventionist foreign policy would free Israeli decision-making from American control, thus this position is in Israel's best interest. We've just kind of dropped the ball on posting regularly - Yehuda and Ben are busy with things back in Israel and my work for Paul has shifted from online activism to chairing my county.
Regarding the issue at hand, others have made a good case on Paul's behalf. My two cents is that I'm supporting Ron Paul's positions, not whatever obscure or distasteful position one of his donors works for on his free time. And I have not seen Dr. Paul advocate an kind of racist or anti-semitic ideas. The white supremists who think that a Paul presidency would advance their agenda will find themselves severly disappointed. Paul's ideas of returning to the values of individual liberty and limited government that America was founded on offer something that people of diverse backgrounds can unite around. Paul has lead polls that ask which Republican African-Americans prefer, and his supporters include young, old, black, white, Muslim, Christian, Jew, and yes, even some Zionists.
Jews for Ron Paul has already been exposed as another Ron Paul campaign fraud
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/11/jews-for-ron-paul-exposed-as-fraud-jim.html
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