A response to Ron Paul supporters

In a comment responding to two recent posts about anti-Semitic material on Ron Paul's websites (read here and here), I've heard from someone called Dan Hansen. He writes:

Adam,

You went looking for anti-semites on open political forums and (surprise) you found them.

You could do the same using any common search engine. You can find plenty of anti-semitic rants using google, yahoo, it does not matter.

But you didn't. You went to C4L (i.e. Campaign for Liberty, the official Ron Paul campaign website) and other sites affiliated with Ron Paul. After finding anti-semitic rants and forums on those sites you then disparage the small government, pro-liberty, anti-interventionist wing of the Republican party.

I say disparage. "Oldguy" speaks of nuts. "Beth" speaks of Paultards (and more nuts). Another fellow speaks of a cult. (NOTE: Dan refers here to reader comments to the post.)

I don't know if this means much to you but you are engaging in a rhetorical fallacy given the rather over-the-top name of "Affirming the Consequent". The attempt to smear politicians using guilt-by-association with unattractive supporters is old. I discuss it a bit in a (too) longish blog of my own - see http://web.me.com/dhansen/Site/Blog/Entries/2009/7/5_Poor_Logic_in_Politics_(I).html

Ron Paul is no anti-semite. Several core economists of the movement were and are Jewish (Rothbard, von Mises, Block). And you will find plenty of people in the community that find the message of individual freedom and small government to be very compelling.

"Oldguy" basically asks - "Why does Ron Paul attract these types?". The answer is simple - they find something attractive in the message. For example, they may like the anti-Fed message.

Regardless, Paul's reason for disliking the Fed is based solely on reasons deriving from his views on monetary policy and his political philosophy.

Why do your anti-semites dislike the Fed? You've been spending some quality time reading (and cutting and pasting) their comments. I think you can figure it out. It doesn't have much to do monetary policy, does it?

So they may support him - but for their own reasons that generally have nothing to do with the movement as a whole.

Presuming that you are trying to have a serious discussion of the small government wing of the Republican party then you do Dr. Paul and yourself a disservice by engaging in this sort of poor logic. It turns your article into a simple ad hominem hit piece.

Now, if that's actually your intent then I've wasted my time. Hopefully not. Hopefully you'll take a look at what the political movement is all and see if there is some common ground that we can work together towards. Say, getting the Fed transparency bill passed.

Dan:

Contrary to what you write, I did not "disparage the small government, pro-liberty, anti-interventionist wing of the Republican party". In fact, I never mentioned those issues at all. I looked at two Ron Paul websites, neither one of them "open political forums" as you assert. Both are moderated by administrators who can approve or disapprove content as they decide to. Those who run the two Ron Paul websites which I looked at have the ability to delete material they deem inappropriate. What I found there was extremely troubling.

As you must be aware as a Campaign for Liberty blogger yourself, registering to post at the blog requires providing your name, address, phone number, and a working email address. (Read here.) The Ron Paul Forums registration is a bit more basic, but does require revealing a working email address. (Read here.) Those who abuse the forum can be readily identified and their accounts suspended. Website administrators also have the power to delete individual blog posts and comments on both websites.

The Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty bloggers I wrote about have, for the most part, been writing for the website for years, some with hundreds or even thousands of contributions, much of it of a similar ilk to that which I wrote about. The Ron Paul Forums website is set up for briefer comments with a more conversational tone. The troublesome material I found there was similarly put there by long-time "senior member" users, and was frequently supported by other Ron Paul in the subsequent give and take. Those who run both the blog and forum have had more than an ample opportunity to deal with this matter appropriately.

Your comment that it is very easy to find the sort of anti-Semitic hate speech and conspiracy theory I found on the Ron Paul website elsewhere on the internet is undoubtedly true. Have you asked yourself what sort of website publishes that sort of stuff? It is very largely published by extremist groups and individuals. When a mainstream politician (to the extent Ron Paul is that) publishes this stuff, it is very obviously noteworthy. At the very least, it calls into question just how mainstream he is.

The obvious question (the one you're avoiding) is: why does the Ron Paul campaign provide a forum for hate speech? Your argument that these are completely open forums without any limitations on content is demonstrably false. While the websites include hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages of hate speech and conspiracy theory, you would be hard pressed to find that volume of material advocating positions in opposition to Ron Paul -- for example, supporting President Obama. I'm not advocating that the Ron Paul campaign should have to publish such material, only demonstrating that they do limit what is said on their websites. They choose to allow the sort of hate speech I found -- massive amounts of it. Moreover, when compared to some real political issues I searched for comparison's sake, I found much more concern with terms such as "Illuminati" and "Rothschild". How do you explain this focus?

Why do you think the campaign attracts those who believe in these conspiracy theories? Your argument implies that any blog or internet forum would attract a similar pool of racist conspiracy nuts, but I don't believe that to be true. These people are not trolls or agents provocateur, writing offensive material to hurt Ron Paul. They are Ron Paul supporters with very troubling beliefs.

Your argument that the candidate cannot be judged by his supporters is partially true, but has limits. It was raised during the Republican primaries after I found that one of the people on Ron Paul's slate of delegate candidates in Tennessee was a neo-Nazi and Klan leader named Will Williams (aka "White Will"). This guy also served as the county organizer for the Paul campaign in his home county and organized several internet meetups on his behalf. Williams actually used his position in the Paul campaign to attempt to spread his racist beliefs. Ron Paul supporters claimed that Paul had no power over who ran as a delegate on his behalf. Sadly for that argument, the law in Tennessee requires presidential candidates to sign a statement approving of these delegates, so Ron Paul did have a say. Now you claim that Ron Paul has no say over what he publishes on the internet. That argument is also false. If he wants to stop this, he can.

When Ron Paul was found to have published for many years a newsletter with racist content, he first defended that material, then denied any knowledge it in spite of the fact that the columns were signed by him, published in the "Ron Paul Newsletter" and even referred to details of his personal life. (Read here and here and here.) That was taking plausible deniability into the realm of the implausible. Do you believe that the same elves who wrote the parts of his columns he now disavows also administer his websites? Would you argue that, just as a candidate can't be held responsible for his supporters, he can't be held responsible for columns written, signed and/or published by him, or for the material published on his websites? Why do you want to hold your candidate to this absurdly low standard?

If a candidate maintains websites with the massive quantity of offensive content of the two in question, this really does say something about who he is and what his candidacy means. Ron Paul supporters need to confront these issues head on and stop using the sort of obfuscations you resort to, Dan.

Political leaders have some very basic responsibilities, one of which is not to promote hate and conspiracy theory. Ron Paul has failed this very basic test.

A Note About the "Rothbard Defense"

One last thing: let me address the "Rothbard Defense". That's what I call Ron Paul's usual response to charges of anti-Semitism. Paul says (as you did) that his mentor Murray Rothbard was Jewish and that, therefor, Paul can't be anti-Semitic. The logical fallacy of this defense should be very apparent to a logical fallacy debunker like you, Dan. To those naive enough to take this defense at face value, and to those with no knowledge of Rothbard's views, this defense may be convincing; however, Murray Rothbard was an advocate of extreme and very troubling views concerning Jews and other minorities. He started young, as a supporter of Strom Thurmond's run for president on a segregationist platform in 1948. (Read here.) Later in his career, Rothbard advocated that the Libertarians work with the racist far-right including David Duke, leader of the Klan and American neo-Nazis, and wrote approvingly of Duke's runs for offfice in Louisiana. (Read here and here.) Rothbard was a strong long-time proponent of the views of Harry Elmer Barnes, the original Holocaust denier and Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorist. (I also discovered, in one of his Barnes columns, that Rothbard approvingly quotes the fascist author F. J. P. Veale's Advance to Barbarism, a book written in opposition to the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Read here.) Rothbard published columns claiming that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to be bombed because he and the "interventionists" in his administration wanted the U.S. to be forced to enter the war. Rothbard saw this as part of a Roosevelt plan to expand the federal government. He was also a supporter of Charles Lindbergh's isolationism. (Read here.) And here's a Rothbard obit by the anti-Semitic author Mark Weber.

The fact that Rothbard was of Jewish background hardly makes Ron Paul's friendship with him evidence of friendship with Jews. There's every evidence that Rothbard was no friend of the Jews himself. The fact that Ron Paul has to resort to citing his association with Rothbard to prove his friendship with the Jewish people really says a lot, doesn't it?

[NOTE: For those who want to read it, the Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty webpage of Dan Hansen, author of the comment this post replied to, is available here. It features a cartoon comparing Republican Senator Lindsay Graham to Mao. I thank Dan for his comment and hope he continues reading and commenting here.]

UPDATE: While this was being written, I received a comment from a person calling himself "Join the Ron Paul Revolution". JTRPR writes that he opposes food having kosher certification because this is a tax on gentiles. He also writes that I am lumping together legitimate criticism of Israel with bigotry to disparage Israel's critics. The fact that JTRPR has taken an anti-Semitic position himself really makes my point, doesn't it? It's not me who is lumping anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements together; it is he and the other Ron Paul supporters I quoted in the posts. (Read here and here.)