Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign has run into trouble recently after national media refocused on decades-old racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and deeply conspiratorial articles published under Paul’s name (and at least occasionally under his signature) in late 1980s and early 1990s newsletters.
The Texas congressman, who defended the newsletters when they first became a political issue in 1996, has since disavowed their contents repeatedly. But in a 1998 John Birch Society film unearthed by Andy Kaczynski, Paul endorsed some of the more paranoid ideas outlined in the Ron Paul Survival Report—including the the idea that a United Nations dictatorship was imminent:
As a narrator scarily intones that American churches will be forcibly shuttered under UN rule, Paul urges viewers to stay informed. “If the United Nations has their way, there will be curtailment of our right to practice our religion,” he says. “They are not going to be believers in the right to practice our religion as we have seen fit throughout this country. And therefore individuals who are interested in this subject certainly cannot be complacent about what the United Nations is doing.”
The scene is preceded by an image of of a building that’s been converted into a “United World Temple” emblazoned with UN flags, and immediately followed by images of soldiers and guerillas fighting in the streets.
This is exactly what you’d expect from the John Birch Society, an organization that has spent four decades urging the United States to leave the United Nations. It’s not what you’d expect from a serious Republican presidential candidate. It’s not even the kind of language you tend to hear from Paul on the campaign trail, where he’s more likely to talk about raw milk than the New World Order. And that’s been Paul’s best defense; the newsletters just don’t sound like anything he’s ever said.
That’s partially true, but in the last few days, we’ve seen a clip (from 1990) of Paul embracing the idea that the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations are secretly running the country, and now this. Josh Marshall reminds us, meanwhile, that back in September, Paul said that the border fence might actually be used to keep Americans penned in. Setting the racist articles aside, Paul really did endorse some of the more out-there arguments in his newsletters.
