Category Archive

Ron Paul’s various publications from the 1980s and 1990s have gotten a lot of attention recently, due to various bigoted statements that appeared in their pages. But it’s not until you sit down and read the originals at length, as I’ve done over the last few days, that the full scope of their ugliness becomes apparent.

The worldview of the Ron Paul newsletters is the worldview of the late 20th century American rightwing fringe — not merely racist, but paranoid, conspiracist, sexist, anti-Jewish. It is, in short, the worldview of The Turner Diaries, the apocalyptic novel that inspired Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The Turner Diaries, a bizarre fantasy of race war, white supremacist revolution, and nuclear holocaust, is far more extreme than the Ron Paul newsletters, but the obsessions and even the writing style of the two documents resonate powerfully with one another. The two are even weirdly contemporaneous — though The Turner Diaries were written in 1978 and revised in 1980, they are set in the years 1991-1993.

I’ve compiled twenty-five short quotes below, about half from The Turner Diaries and about half from Ron Paul’s newsletters. If any of you can identify them all correctly without cheating, I’ll buy you a beer next time you’re in town. Do your best, leave your guesses in comments, and I’ll post the answers before too long.

1. A lady I know saw a black couple in the supermarket with a cute little girl, three years old or so. My friend waved to the tiny child, who scowled, stuck out her tongue, and said “I hate you, white honkey.”
2. On September 1, a federal data bank for tracking health-care professionals began operating. This program is designed to monitor physicians, but it will spread to all professions and businesses.
3. Our biggest difficulty is that the public sees us and everything we do only through the media.
4. Washington—with its racist government, racist radio, racist ministers, racist universities, and racist attitudes–is the black New Jerusalem, so no white is supposed to question it.
5. I had a chance to do some thinking on the plane from Washington. From 35,000 feet one gets a different perspective on things. Seeing all those sprawling suburbs and freeways and factories spread out below makes one realize just how big America is and what an awesomely difficult task we have undertaken.
6. Perhaps the most scandalous aspect was the response by the media and the Washington politicians. They all came together as one to excuse the violence and to tell white America that it is guilty, though the guilt can be assuaged by handing over more cash. It would be reactionary, racist, and fascist, said the media, to have less welfare or tougher law enforcement.
7. In January 1990, I predicted major race riots before this decade ends. I may have to move up my timetable!
8. For the first time in our nation’s history, the organized forces of perversion were feted at the White House.
9. All ticket counters, motels, physicians’ offices, and the like will be equipped with computer terminals linked by telephone lines to a huge national data bank and computer center.
10. Most of all, though, many of them seem to be convinced that any effort at self-defense would be “racist,” and they fear being thought of as racist, even more than they fear death.
11. “Let’s do a victory dance,” barked one minister, as a sea of fists gave the Communist/black power salute and the congregation shouted anti-white slogans.
12. If you’re trying to convince the public that the races are really equal, how can you admit that it’s worse to be locked in a cell full of black criminals than in a cell full of white ones?
13. We learned long ago not to count our enemies, only our friends.
14. It’s astounding how many dark, kinky-haired Middle Easterners have invaded our country in the last decade.
15. The president also promised to look the other way when the Soviets crush the Baltic states and the other captive nations in the USSR. The timetable for the planned massacre is as soon as US troops move against Iraq, and the media’s attention is riveted there. The wonders of the New World Order.
16. In San Francisco the rioting was led by red-flag carrying members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. A friend of Burt’s, a jewelry store owner, had his store on Union Square looted by blacks, and when the police arrived in response to his frantic calls, their orders were not to interfere with the rioting.
17. The largest blood bank in San Francisco succumbed to political pressure and holds blood drives in the Castro district, where the people give at three times the usual level. Either they are public spirited, or they are trying to poison the blood supply.
18. We have to do an end-run around the controlled media and get our message onto TV ourselves.
19. None of the politicians are willing to face the real issues involved here, one of which is the disastrous effect Washington’s Israel-dominated foreign policy during the last few decades has had on America’s supply of foreign oil.
20. The reporter, who certainly had an axe to grind, and that’s not easy with a limp wrist, claimed that Roony believed that blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children. Roony denied making the remarks, although only in today’s crazed environment could such statements get you in trouble.
21. Is this really the same race that walked on the moon and was reaching for the stars 20 years ago? How low we have been brought!
22. The inability to face reality and make difficult decisions, that is the salient symptom of the liberal disease. Always trying to avoid a minor unpleasantness now, so that a major unpleasantness becomes unavoidable later.
23. The streets of New York City are terror zones, and home burglaries are not even investigated unless someone is hurt or more than $10,000 of property is taken. There are a zillion well-paid police, but they are of virtually no use.
24. We now know, if we did not before, that we are under assault from thugs and revolutionaries who hate Euro-American civilization and everything it stands for: private property, material success for those who earn it, and Christian morality.
25. As everyone is aware, the bands of mutants which roam the Waste remain a real threat, and it may be another century before the last of them has been eliminated.

On your mark, get set … GO!