I trolled the internet and found as many as I could, compiling a whopping 35 PDF files. Most are a few select pages from newsletters published between 1978 and 1996. Some are scans of the masthead showing Paul credited as editor or publisher, while others are related documents such as solicitations to subscribe (for a hefty $200 for 12 monthly editions in 1987, or nearly $380/year in 2010 dollars).
A vast trove was supplied by The New Republic, which has been out front of the newsletter reporting over the past four years. More were found at Mother Jones, and the rest were found one or two at a time from various other websites.
Paul supporters have claimed that the incendiary passages lifted from these newsletters are out of context or at least not the norm. Paul himself denies authoring or overseeing any of it. I would submit that with examples from at least two years' worth of newsletters, the reader will see that these publications were full of hatred and crazy conspiracy theories, and that Paul likely had a larger hand in their authorship than he now claims (in 1996, he sang a different tune).
Without further ado, the links and my own commentary:
April 1978: Trilateral Commission conspiracy theory involving the Panama Canal treaty
January 1988: The federal government engineered AIDS as part of a program to create "deadly diseases for World War III" (duh!)
April 1988: Goldbuggery and "the IRS is bad." This one's mainly notable for listing Paul as "editor" at the bottom.
May 1988: In the next edition of the Ron Paul Investment Newsletter, Paul's been bumped up to "publisher" -- of probably the only investment guide at the time that encouraged readers to "buy and distribute" 100 or more copies of a book about the "New World Order."
April 1989: Offers myth repeated often throughout these newsletters: that every homeowner in Switzerland has an automatic assault rifle and that's why crime is so low in Switzerland. In reality, every Swiss male age 20-30 (34 for officers) is a member of the Swiss militia and required to keep a government-issued weapon at home. However, the government also issues the ammunition, in sealed boxes, and inspects these boxes to make sure they're still sealed. This newsletter also views praise of Salman Rushdie as anti-religion and takes up for skinheads, Holocaust deniers and David Duke
November 1989: More conspiracy mongering, this time about Bohemian Grove
December 1989: Here we have eight pages chock-full of racist and anti-gay nuttiness with a chewy conspiracy-mongering center, all wrapped in era-appropriate AIDS hysteria. Young black teen girls infecting whites in New York City with AIDS-infected needles (and a media cover-up) is perhaps the highlight, but there's much to choose from.
January 1990: Highlights include "Sodomy = Death" and the good doctor warning that using drugs might turn you into a liberal.
May 1990: The old saw linking capitalism to religiosity and leftism to atheism, plus the notorious "Coming Race War"
June 1990: We were all better off when gays stayed in the closet. More butthurt over not calling AIDS "GRIDS" ("Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome"). Dubious anecdotal "evidence" that publicly funded police don't get the job done
October 1990: Really bad racism: re-name New York City "Zooville," "Welfaria" or "Lazyopolis" in "honor" of its black residents. More AIDS and NWO conspiracy stuff
November 1990: Excitement over David Duke and his "tax cuts, no quotas, no affirmative action, no welfare, no busing" agenda
December 1990: Calling Martin Luther King Jr. everything from a commie to a pedophile, and several items' worth of teen sex hysteria. And then Ron Paul, who insists he never wrote nor read any of this stuff, seems to wish his readers a happy holiday season from his entire clan of apparent pro-capitalism jingoists:
"My wife Carol, and our children and grandchildren, join me in wishing you and your family a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. May we start to confound the plans of the Trilateralists ..."
February 1991: More anti-MLK slander
January 1992: Why Ron joined the campaign of the racist Pat Buchanan for president; more goldbuggery
More from January 1992 on Buchanan's run; goes into the paleo-conservative/paleo-libertarian alliance
June 1992 (page 1): "A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism." Commenting on the L.A. riots. Lots of racism. Take-away quote: "... 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."
June 1992 (page 6): "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks." Lamenting that "whites and Asians" couldn't just shoot all the rioters
July 1992: Virulent racism worthy of Stormfront: "The liberals want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare." "Jury verdicts, basketball games and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems."
October 1992: Once again, out-of-control black teenagers are coming to beat you up and take your stuff, writes somebody who adds, "Even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas [residence of Ron Paul, who says he did not write this], I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming."
November 1992: Anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-condoms for teens. Strange positions for libertarians ... Also laments the damage to the reputation of chess champion Bobby Fischer, who, though Jewish himself, was a Holocaust denier and believed in Jewish world-dominance conspiracy theories
January 1993: "The Disappearing White Majority" with plenty of racism mixed with cranky old-guy observations: "Just look at the clothing young people wear today (baggy jeans, backward hats, high-top sneakers) and the music they listen to (which has a thumping beat once heard only on safari)."
You kids get off my lawn!
March 1993: Reporting on Bill Clinton's interracial illegitimate kids; a long list of taxes Clinton "wanted" to implement; railing against Clinton allowing "AIDSians" from Haiti to move in and "go on U.S. welfare in Florida" ("... he hates the real America"); lamenting that a Floridian business owner wasn't allowed to fire a transexual employee ("You Can't Fire a Freak")
April 1993: Speculates that the Mossad might have carried off the World Trade Center bombing; praises Rush Limbaugh for indulging in a little goldbuggery
Undated, 1993: Here's the special guide on "How to Protect Yourself From Urban Violence," basically encapsulating every far-right paranoid survivalist's
January 1994: Stirring up anti-government sentiment via Waco/Ruby Ridge sympathy; more anti-gay/AIDS hysteria
September 1994: Hysteria abounds, from the government being against Christianity to avoiding AIDS to teen sex and of course, more goldbuggery
January 1995: Chilling advice to militia members includes "avoid the phone as much as possible and never speak in plain English" about militia matters and to call the milita a "Bible study, a self-help group, even a bowling league" and ends with: "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." And what would a newsletter be without more goldbuggery? You'd think Paul owned stock in gold mines or something
May 1995: Pointing out that his Congressional district "does not include the liberals of Austin," Paul frames his upcoming election as, in part, a struggle against "Janet Reno and Bill Clinton (who) are even establishing a 2,500-member federal army to oppress any area of the country that give the raspberry to D.C." Adds, "Welfarism is coming to an end ... no more freeloading!"
Another awkward authorship question moment: "Even though I left Congress undefeated in 1984, I have continued to fight for our property and our freedom through the Ron Paul Survival Report ..." I guess Lew Rockwell represented District 14 in Congress
September 1995: There are foreign troops from the U.N. on American soil! flying around in black helicopters to advance the cause of the New World Order! and of course, dogs and cats living together
June 1996: More UN hysteria; "activist judges"; the ATF as "jack-booted thugs" (that phrase never gets old)
VARIOUS DOCUMENTS
These aren't newsletters but in many cases are related to them, or are Paul campaign materials.
Undated 1987 masthead: Where I come from, if you're credited as the editor of a publication, you know its contents pretty well. In fact, you could be said to have "edited" them
1984 campaign funds solicitation: Paul's running against Phil Gramm along with a big evil "Kissinger-Rockefeller" conspiracy (aren't we all)
Authorship awkwardness: "... You may have my newsletter for an unprecedented 50% off ($49.50)! - Ron," writes the guy who says he didn't write these things, in his own handwriting
Circa-early 1990s rant against "the new money"/sales pitch: I saved the craziest for last. In this eight-page solicitation, redesigned U.S. currency was supposed to somehow involve "an IRS agent with an AK-47" and "the dead eyes of a mako shark." Our currency was to become "totalitarian bills" that made Ron's skin crawl, "tinted pink and blue and brown, and blighted with holograms, diffraction gratings, metal and plastic threads, and chemical alarms," a "portable inquisition" to "allow the feds to keep track of American cash, and American citizens." The redesign was a "financial Manhattan Project. But this time, the government wants to drop the bomb on us." Ron had "been told not to talk, but these stooges don't scare (him)." He has "laid bare the coming race war in our big cities (and) the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS," so of course you can trust him. How do you fight this monstrous pink money? By buying Paul's newsletters, of course.
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Please feel free to send me any more material you find, and I welcome your comments below. Be sure to come back for analysis and updates as well.
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