It Takes Many Wards to Make an Asylum
Maybe this will help support my efforts to talk one of you off the Ron Paul ledge. The favorite candidate of “truthers” and other conspiracy theorists the mainsteam won’t embrace is also the favorite of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Andrew Walden lays it all out in meticulous detail. Call it guilt by association if you will, but weeks after the questions were raised, Paul isn’t refusing their money or blocking those donate links from white supremacist sites.
I’ll save you the trouble of giving any of those sites a page view. Here’s a screenshot of a live link — one of several — on a Stormfront chatroom. All that I saw were pasted in by site members, although the Paul site appears not to have blocked the IP, either. At a certain point, you have to assume this means that Ron Paul welcomes their contributions.
Here’s one from David Duke’s White Civil Rights blog, trying to raise money for Ron Paul. This one was put in by someone with administrative rights to post on Duke’s blog:
You have to wonder what kind of asylum can hold pacificists, isolationists, and avowed white supremacists and expect them to eat in the same cafeteria, cutlery and all. Or what of themselves all of these inmates see in this guy, besides the fact that he alone finds nothing especially repellent about them, either.
Has it ever been this hard to distinguish far left from far right?
It has not been very hard to distinguish between leftists and white supremacists when it comes to topics like opposition to Israel. One white supremacist who follows a mixture of left-wing and right-wing ideas is Tom Metzger. His website is http://www.resist.com. On his site, Metzger has archived radio shows where he expresses his ideas.
I do not visit the far fringes of the Internet, and had no idea these kooks are supporting Ron Paul, or Ron Paul not doing anything about it. I have not heard anything about this in the mainstream media (surprise there), but I am also surprised I have not heard anything about this elsewhere. I would assume places like Stormfront would draw serious fire from his opponents. I mean those people look for all the dirt. I am going to venture a guess if it does come out, it could get ugly with the usual spin of course.
As for distinguishing far left from far right, in my view, it does not matter in this case. I was looking into Ron Paul, but this news changed my mind very quickly. Thanks for the heads up.
You’re welcome. Just knowing that I played some small part in saving your immortal soul is reward enough. 😉
Ditto.
Joshua,
These fringe groups are Americans, and I may disagree with what they say or stand for, but they are Americans. I, and I’m guessing you, have defended their right to say it.
As far as any candidate taking their money, well, McCain is broke. I bet you he would take their money. Obama and Clinton probably take money from politically extreme groups as well. Giuliani has been under suspicion for taking money from the mafia. Everyone takes the money handed to them on the campaign trail and spends it. The important thing is that they act in the best interest of ALL their supporters. Sadly, Bush did not listen to ALL, just the ones that contributed the most (MBNA), and pushed through a bill that made it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy (Another topic, another time).
Now, does that necessarily make Ron bad even if he knows where it came from? Should he return it? I wouldn’t. In fact, I think it is rather ironic that that money might be used to give one of the few Republican candidates that met with minority group leaders a boost in campaigning. I don’t recall Romney or Giuliani doing that.
Joshua, I know I probably won’t change your mind, but thanks for giving us a place to debate.
No one is saying that Stormfront should be censored. I’m saying that Ron Paul is knowingly taking neo-Nazi money and should therefore be fenced out of the political mainstream and labelled as a wackadoodle. Being right about Korea doesn’t make him sane in the broader sense, any more than nice autobahns made Hitler an effective leader for Germany.
If you show me a shred of evidence that McCain or any other candidate knowingly takes and keeps neo-Nazi money, the same standard would apply. I’ll bet you can’t. And I know why.
Ron Paul is the perfect illustration of Mencken’s maxim that for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat . . . and wrong. But such ideas have great appeal to those who think in simple terms. And no question of U.S. involvement abroad can be rightly assessed without a case-specific consideration of the U.S. interests at stake, and how the involvement advances those interests.
You’re right. I cannot prove that any other candidate takes neo-Nazi money. Your argument is very specific and I can not disagree. However, if we put neo-Nazi’s in a larger group called, extremists, then it can be argued that all candidates take money from extremists. Some democrat or republican is taking money from some special interest group/extremist group. Whether it is Earth First or Jewish Zealots or Christian fundamentalists or neo-Nazi’s, some candidate is knowingly taking their money.
Some of these solutions are simple. Why make it complicated. If we left Korea or Japan or Germany or Iraq, what would happen? Would the Chinese move in? Who knows? We are not the world police, nor should we militarily intervene because an oil company was backdoored by a corrupt government. I point to Vietnam and our interest in the 60’s (Domino theory). Once we left things got worse, but aren’t they looking better now?
If you don’t want to support Ron Paul because he accepts neo-Nazi money, that’s your choice. Suggest another candidate that is as honest and consistent as Ron, and I’ll support him/her. Don’t just give me a candidate that will flip-flop on the issues or change their stance because it’s not popular at the time. I don’t agree with everything that Ron says, but at least I know where he stands.
To me, it does not matter where Paul stands on the issues at this point. If I know somebody is openly accepting Neo-Nazi money, I cannot push that aside and vote for that person. Perhaps he does not support the groups, but the groups support him. Who knows? However, this news made me change my mind.
As for the other candidates, I am not happy with any of them at this point, and if there are no other candidates that I believe will make the US a better place, I will simply do a write-in vote. Yes, chances are very good (if not 99.99999%) unlikely to win, I’d rather do that than compromise.
That is just my opinion on the matter.
As for the people supporting Paul or other candidates, hey, it is a free country, and they are free to believe whatever they want. I have no problems with that.