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1

Yes, the followers of Ron Paul are delluded. And a little bit like Hitler's rise to power in Germany during the early 1930's. But we fortunately do not have a parlimentary system so we should be okay...and I said should be.....

Posted by Cato the Younger Younger | January 2, 2008 9:50 AM
2

Neofascist? I know he's pro-life, and a little loony, but . . . neofascist?

Posted by Ziggity | January 2, 2008 10:00 AM
3

Um, Ron Paul's rise, such as it is, doesn't even remotely resemble the rise of Hitler. He's not a neofascist; he's a small-potatoes libertarian loon, Texas-style.

Posted by Fnarf | January 2, 2008 10:02 AM
4

Fascism is a political ideology which strives to be a modern version of feudalism. Corporations in the fascist terminology are descendents of medieval guilds and are political bodies in which the economic leaders are oganized in state-sanctioned councils which determine the economic course of the country. Since Ron Paul is a defender of a free market, in which such councils do not exist, he cannot be considered a fascist.

Posted by pwa | January 2, 2008 10:08 AM
5

Calling Ron Paul a "neofascist" is cheap and lazy. He seems like the most articulate and least autocratic of all the Republicans. He's the only candidate that isn't name-dropping from the New Testament. He's the only (R) candidate calling for an end to the war, and he's consistently and genuinely called for down-scaling the Federal government, including a material downsizing of the US military. He's the only candidate that has mentioned anything about the deliberate devaluation of the US currency that manifests itself in painful asset, commodities, and services inflation (Bought a house lately?).

Mayor Rudolph McMussolini sounds more like a neo-fascist than Ron Paul.

Posted by Joe Blow | January 2, 2008 10:11 AM
6

eric, you are fucking dumb.

romney and guiliani are fascist.

Romney wants to double guantanamo, and guiliani is all about the unitary executive.

contrast that with ron paul who is against a strong federal government and imperialist military adventures.

fascism "considers individual and social interests subordinate to the interests of the state or party". that's the opposite of libertarians, which he essentially is.

in fact, paul has been calling the other republican candidates fascists and says that we're dangerously close to living in a fascist society, and thats, well, bad:

REP. PAUL: ...I think this country, a movement in the last 100 years, is moving toward fascism. Fascism today, the softer term, because people have different definition of fascism, is corporatism when the military industrial complex runs the show, when the--in the name of security pay--pass the Patriot Act. You don't vote for it, you know, you're not patriotic America. If you don't support the troops and you don't support--if you don't support the war you don't support the troops. It's that kind of antagonism. But we have more corporatism and more abuse of our civil liberties, more loss of our privacy, national ID cards, all this stuff coming has a fascist tone to it. And the country's moving in that direction. That's what I'm thinking about. This was not personalized. I never even used my opponents names if you, if you notice.

MR. RUSSERT: So you think we're close to fascism?

REP. PAUL: I think we're approaching it very close. One--there's one, there's one documentary that's been put out recently that has generated a lot of interest called "Freedom to Fascism." And we're moving in that direction. Were not moving toward Hitler-type fascism, but we're moving toward a softer fascism. Loss of civil liberties, corporations running the show, big government in bed with big business. So you have the military industrial complex, you have the medical industrial complex, you have the financial industry, you have the communications industry. They go to Washington and spend hundreds of millions of dollars. That's where the control is. I call that a soft form of fascism, something that is very dangerous.

----

i'm no ron paul nut. i'm an obama guy. but you really irritate me with how consistently retarded you are.

i know you want to just slander the guy, but at least insult him with something that isn't so ignorantly unfitting.

Posted by erica is a neomisogynist | January 2, 2008 10:13 AM
7

What @2 through @4 said. That Paul is a raving loon is a given, but calling him a "fascist" is lazy, unsubstantiated name-calling. (Unlike, say, calling him a raving loon, which is just a statement of fact).

Posted by tsm | January 2, 2008 10:19 AM
8

Only 100 mm displaced by rising oceans? That figure seems rather small, considering a large portion, something like 40% IIRC, of human beings live within 100 K of coastlines.

Posted by COMTE | January 2, 2008 10:26 AM
9

Ron Paul isn't a fascist if you're a rich white man. For everyone else, I can't think of a better word to use.

Ron Paul is for no worker's rights, no social safety nets like social security, and no guaranteed human rights like education and health care. His basic political belief is that the rich aren't exploiting the poor enough.

Oh, and if you ARE born black and poor and you can't afford school and you make $0.25/hour in an unregulated factory? Ron Paul does support legalized crack.

Posted by jamier | January 2, 2008 11:20 AM
10

Yeah, 100 mil isn't nearly enough. Rising sea levels may also fuck up sewage systems. So, even cities that dodge the bullet on actually being overtaken by the ocean could still be rendered uninhabitable.

Posted by keshmeshi | January 2, 2008 11:31 AM
11
Ron Paul isn't a fascist if you're a rich white man. For everyone else, I can't think of a better word to use.

Then you don't know what it means.

Fascism: "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition".

Paul's domestic policy plans are awful, but this simply doesn't describe them. Calling Ron Paul is a fascist is like calling Pat Robertson an Islamic extremist. It's not just a catch-all term for "guy we don't like".

Posted by tsm | January 2, 2008 11:31 AM
12

If Ron Paul ran this country, the corporations and the rich would hold all the cards, and religious minorities, especially Muslims, as well as socialists and communists, would go to jail. Racial profiling would be the law of the land. He says he believes in freedom, but then he also says he believes the Constitution, so what does that tell you? Ron Paul is a fascist.

Posted by elenchos | January 2, 2008 11:40 AM
13

Ron Paul is not a fascist, even though his prominence is due to the turning of the GOP from a group of fiscal discipline efficient government conservatives into a bunch of neo-fascist big spending big borrowing big government ineffective twits.

That said, the rise in sea level is going to be even more than twice the amount originally predicted - current scientific thinking in papers not yet published ranges from two to five times larger.

It's going to get a lot worse.

Posted by Will in Seattle | January 2, 2008 11:42 AM
14

And I agree with everyone else that Ron Paul is a loon ...

Posted by Will in Seattle | January 2, 2008 11:46 AM
15

Did they up the predictions on sea level after getting the 2008 Stranger travel itinerary?

Posted by whatever | January 2, 2008 11:51 AM
16

ECB was clearly troll-baiting. Either that or she's woefully uninformed about the definition of fascism and Paul's platform.

I wouldn't even go so far as to call him a loon or a raving fanatic like some previous commenters. Unless I were a (crypto-)socialist moonbat. He's a paleoconservative, a libertarian, and a constitutionalist. Disagree with that as you will. Point out the potential flaws of the platform (like #9). But call him a loon? Wake up.

Posted by mjg | January 2, 2008 11:55 AM
17

@12

Um, what? Where'd you get all that?

Sounds like more FUD to me.

Posted by mjg | January 2, 2008 11:57 AM
18

Ditto all that; everyone who is bad and wrong should not be called a fascist by left leaning progressives; everyone who is bad and wrong to right wing types should not be called a socialist or communist.
Because those are not the meanings of those words.

Posted by unPC | January 2, 2008 12:07 PM
19

Jesus Christ Erica, you are the very definition of a stupid fucking left-wing cunt. You wouldn't know what a fascist was if one came up and beat you senseless with a nightstick and then tossed your lazy incompetent ass into Gitmo.


What's up Erica? Have you realized that your career as the Stranger's in-house shill for Sound Transit is a total dead-end? Is this the reason for the inaccurate and Coulter-esque name -calling and your anti Ron Paul screeds? Are you hoping perhaps to become the Michelle Malkin of the left? Or are you simply one of those stupid fucking "liberals" who will mindlessly vote for Hilary Clinton in 2008 (because she's a vaginal American, just like you) and then spend the next four years defending her for her failure to withdraw our troops from Iraq, her failure to restore the civil liberties that the Bush administration has spent the last seven years destroying by pointing out that while she's no different than Bush was on foreign policy or civil rights that it's OK because she's a vaginal Ameican?

Posted by wile_e_quixote | January 2, 2008 12:56 PM
20

Ron Paul's not a fascist, but despite his rhetoric he's not an anti-authoritarian either. He's perfectly happy with social conservatism imposed by the government at the state level. If a state wants to demonize gay people and make abortion illegal, Ron Paul's all for it. His states rights ideology is substantially the same as that espoused by George Wallace and Strom Thurmond; only his rhetoric is different. Economically, he's more pro-corporate than any other Republican.

Ron Paul is a paleolibertarian, with ideological connections to the paleoconservatism of the Old Right. While paleolibertarians avoid the militaristic and ultra-nationalist propaganda of fascists, they nonetheless share a lot in common with the neo-fascist right. Just go to the Web site of fellow paleolibertarian and Paul supporter Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com and read a selection of his editorials--there's a lot of anti-semitism and throwback nationalism mixed in with their anti-interventionism. This is also the same political tradition that produced Pat Buchanan. They're not neo-fascist, and their rhetoric is superficially anti-authoritarian, but yet they're the favorites of the real neo-fascists out there. I don't think this is an accident, and if he came to power with a populist surge I bet Paul would turn out to have more in common with his neo-fascist supporters than it now seems. Still, "neo-fascist" is not an accurate term to use for him at this point.

Posted by Cascadian | January 2, 2008 1:29 PM
21

i tried (12,13) to get through the article, (ibid) on global (Pwadowski, pg 94) warming, but (the anus;157) I had a hard (73, 74-92) time getting through (subscript7; para12) it. (52)

Posted by michael strangeways | January 2, 2008 3:00 PM
22

#10 - not if you only use a bucket.

Posted by wbrproductions | January 2, 2008 4:51 PM
23

Anyone who seriously thinks that Ron Paul is a fascist, should note that Elenchos agrees with you. That alone oughtta make you think twice.

Posted by NJ Matt | January 3, 2008 11:38 AM

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