PJV#32
February 2008

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Congressman Ron Paul poses with neo-Nazi leader and campaign contributor Don Black. (Photo: Ace of Spades)

Special Dossier: Presidential Primaries

Congressman Ron Paul and the Jews
Accepting donations from White Supremacists, and Accusing the Mossad of trying to blow up the World Trade Center.

-- Steve Rabin

In one of the most sad, cynical, and disgusting moments of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Associated Press is reporting that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has refused to return a campaign contribution from Don Black, who runs a vicious White Supremacist website.

Rep. Paul's spokesman's pathetic excuse for keeping the money was that "If someone with small ideologies happens to contribute money to Ron, thinking he can influence Ron in any way, he's wasted his money," and that "Ron is going to take the money and try to spread the message of freedom."

The spokesman, Jesse Benton also, pitifully noted, "And that's $500 less that this guy has to do whatever it is that he does." Even if Ron Paul had not recently set fundraising records, this excuse would still be an insult to the intelligence of voters. Given his fundraising prowess, the excuse is doubly insulting.

If Rep. Paul refuses to stand up to hate-mongers like Don Black, it is fair to ask whether he is tacitly welcoming their support in a desperate attempt to gain traction in the Republican primary. And, if the other Republican candidates do not condemn him for this, it will send a similar message as did their refusal to condemn Ann Coulter.

Rep. Paul, it should be noted, has a terrible record on Israel and has called the Israeli government "evil." In October, the Republican Jewish Coalition barred him from their policy forum due to his libertarian stance against providing foreign aid to Israel. The New Republic reports that GOP Presidential Candidate Ron Paul published a newsletter containing racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric including a claim that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing may have been carried out by the Mossad:

"The rhetoric when it came to Jews was little better. The newsletters display an obsession with Israel; no other country is mentioned more often in the editions I saw, or with more vitriol. A 1987 issue of Paul's Investment Letter called Israel "an aggressive, national socialist state," and a 1990 newsletter discussed the "tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise." Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a newsletter said, "Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little."

This is the same Ron Paul who came in second place in the recent Nevada caucuses with 14% of the vote, and here is more shocking, hateful writing from Paul's newsletter. Reports The New Republic:

"Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul's newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. (‘What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!’ one newsletter complained in 1990. ‘We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.’) In the early 1990s, a newsletter attacked the ‘X-Rated Martin Luther King’ as a ‘world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours,’ ‘seduced underage girls and boys,’ and ‘made a pass at’ fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that ‘Welfaria,’ ‘Zooville,’ ‘Rapetown,’ ‘Dirtburg,’ and ‘Lazyopolis’ were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as ‘a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.’

"While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled ‘The Duke's Victory,’ a newsletter celebrated Duke's 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Republican Senate primary. ‘Duke lost the election,’ it said, ‘but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment.’ In 1991, a newsletter asked, ‘Is David Duke's new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?’ ‘The conclusion was that "our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.’"


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