Updated at 10:57 AM
First it was the racist newsletters. Now it’s the direct mail advertising them. In a signed appeal to potential subscribers in 1993, Ron Paul urged people to read his publications in order to prepare for a “race war,” military rule, and a conspiracy to use a new $100 bill to track Americans.
The eight-page mailer obtained by Reuters via Jamie Kirchick, who unearthed Paul’s newsletter archives in 2008, is mostly focused on a rambling conspiracy theory about changes to the dollar. But Paul tries to bolster his credibility on the issue by noting that his newsletters have also “laid bare the the coming race war in our big cities” as well as the “federal-homosexual coverup on AIDS,” adding that “my training as a physician helps me see through this one.” He also condemns the “demonic fraternity” Skull and Bones, a Yale secret society that “includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress’s Mr. New Money,” and “the Israeli lobby that plays Congress like a cheap harmonica.”
Given that the most shocking racist and homophobic content from his actual newsletters is reprinted in the span of just one eight-page mailer, it offers a stark picture of just how focused the publication was on these conspiracy theories. You can read the full letter here.
In the letter, Paul warns that the federal government is planning to put chemical tracking agents in new currency as part of a broader authoritarian plot and that he had personally witnessed future designs for currency while serving in Congress.
“The totalitarian bills were tinted pink and blue and brown, and blighted with holograms, diffraction gratings, metal and plastic threads, and chemical alarms,” he writes. “It was a portable inquisition, a paper ‘third degree,’ to allow the feds to keep track of American cash, and American citizens.”
He goes on to warn the “New Money” will “steal our freedom and prosperity” and “accelerate the transfer wealth and power [sic] from the people to the government and its friends.”
Paul’s Iowa chairman, Drew Ivers, told Reuters that Paul — who now claims he had no knowledge of his newsletters’ incendiary content — does not deny having written anything that carries his signature, such as the direct mail piece. [NOTE: See update at bottom.] However, Ivers said he didn’t believe Paul actually subscribes to all the theories outlined in the letter.
“I don’t think he embraces that,” Ivers said when asked about the “federal-homosexual” conspiracy to cover up AIDS. He characterized Paul’s newsletters as “a public service, helping people understand and equip them to avoid an unsound monetary policy.”
TPM has reached out to the Paul campaign for further clarification as to whether Paul authored the letter, but the letter adds more kindle to several burning questions for the presidential candidate. If he authored the material, why does he not “embrace” his old views and when did he change his thinking on some of these issues? If he didn’t author the letter or his newsletters, who did? And how did he end up employing a group of writers with racist, anti-gay, and extremist views to ghostwrite his own publication?
Update: Paul spokesman Jesse Benton tells TPM that Paul did not author the direct mail piece and disavows its content.
