A Face in the Crowd

I see that as Ron Paul's Iowa numbers rise, the old story of his 1980s and '90s newsletters has reappeared, this time in The Weekly Standard. For those who may have forgotten, Paul had an (apparently lucrative) newsletter business during the period in question; a good deal of outrageous (racist, conspiracy-mongering, "anti-Zionist") material appeared in these newsletters. Paul claimed that this material was published without his knowledge, that he was angry when he found out about it, and that these items do not represent his views. (Even if he's telling the truth, that doesn't say much for his executive abilities.) As might be expected, the pro-Paul folks have denounced this "sad neocon hit piece," complete with lists of names (many of them Jewish) of The Weekly Standard's writers and editors and comments on their zeal to have America fight "their" (read "Israel's") wars for them.


Paul is an interesting phenomenon, an exponent of both a fundamentalist libertarianism and a paleoconservative isolationism. He has a fondness for conspiracy theories, as all too many paleoconservatives had and have. Among the latter, in the 1930s it was the conspiracy of the Jewish Bolsheviks and bankers (what are a few pretend political differences among Jews?) and their gentile tools to get the U.S. into a war in Europe, a conspiracy that reached its zenith when FDR (who these same folks alleged was a secret Jew) maneuvered the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor so that he could declare war on Germany. In the postwar period, among the heirs of the old American right, it was a strange combination of fear of both domestic Communist conspiracies and "entangling alliances" broad, often laced with  "anti-Zionism," and on the fringes, with Holocaust Revisionism (which began soon after the war).

Now, I don't know that Congressman Paul himself subscribes to the old-right position in all its details (though he seems to receive a lot of support from the followers of Willis Carto and has appeared in his publications). But Paul represents a certain mindset that is uncomfortable with the messiness of most human affairs; that sees (usually sinister) human intent in most of the bad things that happen in the world. For traditionalist Catholics, it's the Jews and the Masons; for the plebeian right, it's the "ZOG" and its racially inferior tools; for many on the left and the right, and apparently for Paul, as for his pal Alex Jones, it's the CIA and the Mossad and the Federal Reserve.

What appeals to many about Paul, I think, is what's seen as his honesty and directness. He opposes our imperial wars (how many are we fighting today?), the burgeoning domestic security apparatus, the increased regimentation of both the economy and of civil society. He may be right about one or all of these things. And even if he's wrong, you know that he's consistent, unlike the rest of the Republican field. But I think that clarity is bought at a very heavy price

It's perhaps the saddest commentary on the current state of the Republican Party that the only candidate around who seems to energize some at least of its cadres reminds one of no one so much as Charles E. Coughlin.