Republican warned of ‘race war’ and homosexual cover-up

A DIRECT-MAIL solicitation for Ron Paul’s political and investment newsletters two decades ago warned of a “coming race war in our big cities” and of a “federal homosexual cover-up” to play down the impact of AIDS.

The eight-page letter, which appears to carry Paul’s signature at the end, also warns that the US government’s redesign of currency to include different colours — a move aimed at thwarting counterfeiters — was actually part of a plot to allow the government to track Americans using the “new money”.

The letter urges readers to subscribe to Paul’s newsletters so that he could “tell you how you can save yourself and your family” from an overbearing government.

The letter’s details emerge at a time when Paul, now a contender for the Republican nomination for president, is under fire over reports that his newsletters contained racist, anti-homosexual and anti-Israel rants.

Reports of the newsletters’ contents have Paul’s campaign scrambling to deny that he wrote the inflammatory articles.

Among other things, the articles called the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr a “world-class philanderer”, criticised the US holiday bearing King’s name as “Hate Whitey Day”, and said that AIDS sufferers “enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick”.

As Paul made a campaign stop in Manchester, Iowa, his Iowa chairman, Drew Ivers, repeated Paul’s assertions that he did not write the articles that resurfaced this week in a report in the Weekly Standard magazine.

Paul said that he is not sure who wrote the articles that were published under his name. He said the articles do not reflect his views, and noted that his public stances — supporting gay people in the military, for example — have run counter to the incendiary statements in the newsletters.

Paul said of the newsletters’ articles: “I didn’t write them. I didn’t read them at the time and I disavow them.”

When pressed on a TV show, Paul removed his microphone and walked out of the interview.

“It is ridiculous to imply that Ron Paul is a bigot, racist, or unethical,” Ivers said.

However, Ivers added, Paul does not deny or retract material that he has written under his own signature, such as the letter promoting Paul’s newsletters.

When asked whether that meant Paul believed there was a government conspiracy to cover up the impact of AIDS, Ivers said, “I don’t think he embraces that.”

Paul’s newsletters “showed good factual information and investment information”, Ivers claimed. “It was a public service, helping people understand and equip them to avoid an unsound monetary policy.”

The letter promoting Paul’s newsletters was written about 1993. It was during a period in which Paul — who left Congress in 1985 after serving for eight years — returned to Washington after a decade’s absence.

The letter was provided by James Kirchick, a contributing editor for the New Republic magazine. He says he found the letter in archives of political literature maintained by the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Early in the 2008 presidential campaign — in which Paul was a candidate — Kirchick published an article in the New Republic in which he described Paul as “not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing — but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.”