Not “racism” as in “opposing Barack Obama is racist”. “Racism” as in objectively racist. Crap you’d find in despicable corners of the web like Stormfront’s website. Stuff that makes his fellow libertarians like Reason editor Matt Welch recoil.

In January 2008, the New Republic ran my story reporting the contents of monthly newsletters that Paul published throughout the 1980s and 1990s. While a handful of controversial passages from these bulletins had been quoted previously, I was able to track down nearly the entire archive, scattered between the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society (both of which housed the newsletters in collections of extreme right-wing American political literature). Though particular articles rarely carried a byline, the vast majority were written in the first person, while the title of the newsletter, in its various iterations, always featured Paul’s name: Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Political Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report, and the Ron Paul Investment Letter. What I found was unpleasant.

Paul now insists the racist, conspiratorial crap found within the newsletters bearing his name wasn’t written by him. It was all written by someone else. But he won’t name names.

Even if he didn’t write the material, it was all published by Ron Paul & Associates — a company that included himself and his wife as officers, and which reported more than $1 million of income in one year (1993) alone. In other words, we’re supposed to believe he had no idea what was being published under his name by a company he ran and from which he profited greatly.

Among the material contained within his newsletters:

1992 Riots

“Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks,” read an article from a 1992 edition of the newsletter. The issue was named “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism”.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

A 1990 issued warned of “The Coming Race War”. The newsletter declared Reverend King to be “the world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours” and who “seduced underage girls and boys”. Paul hated that Reagan signed into law a day of remembrance for King: “We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.”

AIDS and Needlin’

One conspiracy theory that stood out in the newsletters was something called “Needlin”. One article warned of “gangs of black girls between the ages of 12 and 14″ roaming the streets of New York, injecting white women with syringes contaminated by HIV. Another article said AIDS patients should be banned from restaurants lest their saliva infect everyone else.

Creation of AIDS

Paul’s newsletter lent credence to the idea that the United States government created AIDS in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The theory was later discovered to be a product of Soviet disinformation.

Advice to Militias

Just a few months before the Oklahoma City bombing, Paul gave advice to militia movements which he praised. He advised them to keep group size down, refrain from phone use, “leave no clues”, and don’t fire unless fired upon “but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here”.

Hatred for Israel

No country was more hated upon in Paul’s newsletters than the Jewish state. He referred to it as “an aggressive, national socialist state”. He theorized that Jews — possibly from Israel — were behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack: “Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little.”

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There’s more, but you get the idea. But hey, these days are over, right? Hardly. To this day Paul continues to go on Alex Jones’ radio show. Jones is a perennial conspiracy theorist, believing all sorts of crap about Jews, 9/11 conspiracies, and some global elite that’s going to turn the world into a prison (hence Prison Planet). This crap continues to this day.