Doug Moe: Historical Society reveals Ron Paul's incendiary past
Doug Moe — 1/11/2008 6:58 am
http://www.madison.com/tct/news//index.php?ntid=266699
EVERY ONCE in a while the old ways surface and trump the technology train.
It happened this week on a national scale, and the Wisconsin Historical Society was in the middle of it.
What happened was that a journalist from the New Republic, James Kirchick, on Tuesday posted a story on the magazine's Web site about newsletters written in the 1980s and 1990s under the name of Ron Paul, a Texas congressman who is now running for the Republican nomination for president.
"What they reveal," Kirchick wrote of the Paul newsletters, "are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is 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."
Kirchick noted that the Ron Paul Freedom Report was archived online only back to 1999. But at two libraries in the United States -- at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison -- Kirchick was able to find earlier newsletters that contain the incendiary material.
The New Republic piece has created a firestorm. Historical Society librarians spent several hours Wednesday finding and faxing portions of the newsletters to CNN, which was planning to explore the controversy on its "Situation Room" show Thursday. Paul has issued a statement saying that although the newsletters went out under his name, he did not pay attention to the content and denounces it today.
Kirchick, a New Republic associate editor, first contacted Wisconsin Historical Society circulation librarian Laura Hemming in November. The Historical Society has Paul newsletters under four titles: Ron Paul Investment Letter; Ron Paul Political Report; Ron Paul Survival Report; and Ron Paul's Freedom Report.
At the time, the Historical Society's Paul newsletters were not microfilmed and were stored off site. Because of Kirchick's query, and Paul's presidential candidacy, the society has since put them on microfilm. Kirchick was then able to obtain them through an interlibrary loan.
The newsletters attacked Martin Luther King Jr.; praised the KKK's David Duke; championed quarantining people with AIDS; bashed Israel, "an aggressive, national socialist state"; and supported the right-wing, anti-government militia movement in the United States.
Why were these newsletters collected in Madison and almost nowhere else? Because the Wisconsin Historical Society in general and its longtime librarian Jim Danky in particular have worked diligently to catalog all manner of seemingly fringe publications, because as this week demonstrates, you never know what may one day be important.
"We acquired them because we try to cover politics comprehensively," Danky told me Thursday.
They have perhaps the best collection anywhere of leftist, underground publications. And the Historical Society's collection from the political far right was praised in an essay by Chip Berlet in the Sesquicentennial Issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
Berlet, who is with Political Research Associates in Massachusetts, wrote: "There are other collections at libraries and archives around the country, but none offer the range and depth of the collection combined with the cheerful staff knowledge and painless retrievability. The society's periodical collection is a national treasure as far as our staff is concerned, and we mine it frequently. Where else can you find a librarian who asks if the particular type of hate-group newsletter you are looking for is Ku Klux Klan, racial nationalist, neo-Nazi, Third Position, homophobic or Christian Identity?"
Paul's statement this week, posted on his campaign Web site, concluded with this: "When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine fulltime, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name."
Doug Moe — 1/11/2008 6:58 am
http://www.madison.com/tct/news//index.php?ntid=266699
EVERY ONCE in a while the old ways surface and trump the technology train.
It happened this week on a national scale, and the Wisconsin Historical Society was in the middle of it.
What happened was that a journalist from the New Republic, James Kirchick, on Tuesday posted a story on the magazine's Web site about newsletters written in the 1980s and 1990s under the name of Ron Paul, a Texas congressman who is now running for the Republican nomination for president.
"What they reveal," Kirchick wrote of the Paul newsletters, "are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is 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."
Kirchick noted that the Ron Paul Freedom Report was archived online only back to 1999. But at two libraries in the United States -- at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison -- Kirchick was able to find earlier newsletters that contain the incendiary material.
The New Republic piece has created a firestorm. Historical Society librarians spent several hours Wednesday finding and faxing portions of the newsletters to CNN, which was planning to explore the controversy on its "Situation Room" show Thursday. Paul has issued a statement saying that although the newsletters went out under his name, he did not pay attention to the content and denounces it today.
Kirchick, a New Republic associate editor, first contacted Wisconsin Historical Society circulation librarian Laura Hemming in November. The Historical Society has Paul newsletters under four titles: Ron Paul Investment Letter; Ron Paul Political Report; Ron Paul Survival Report; and Ron Paul's Freedom Report.
At the time, the Historical Society's Paul newsletters were not microfilmed and were stored off site. Because of Kirchick's query, and Paul's presidential candidacy, the society has since put them on microfilm. Kirchick was then able to obtain them through an interlibrary loan.
The newsletters attacked Martin Luther King Jr.; praised the KKK's David Duke; championed quarantining people with AIDS; bashed Israel, "an aggressive, national socialist state"; and supported the right-wing, anti-government militia movement in the United States.
Why were these newsletters collected in Madison and almost nowhere else? Because the Wisconsin Historical Society in general and its longtime librarian Jim Danky in particular have worked diligently to catalog all manner of seemingly fringe publications, because as this week demonstrates, you never know what may one day be important.
"We acquired them because we try to cover politics comprehensively," Danky told me Thursday.
They have perhaps the best collection anywhere of leftist, underground publications. And the Historical Society's collection from the political far right was praised in an essay by Chip Berlet in the Sesquicentennial Issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History.
Berlet, who is with Political Research Associates in Massachusetts, wrote: "There are other collections at libraries and archives around the country, but none offer the range and depth of the collection combined with the cheerful staff knowledge and painless retrievability. The society's periodical collection is a national treasure as far as our staff is concerned, and we mine it frequently. Where else can you find a librarian who asks if the particular type of hate-group newsletter you are looking for is Ku Klux Klan, racial nationalist, neo-Nazi, Third Position, homophobic or Christian Identity?"
Paul's statement this week, posted on his campaign Web site, concluded with this: "When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine fulltime, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name."
