The tactics of Ron Paul supporters have only gotten dirtier since I wrote about them previously in Ron Paul Supporters Now Openly Turning to Crime, Hacking Computers, Terrorizing Reporters, the tactics of the Ron Paul supporters now suggest some of the worst behavior of the Nixon administration and Hillary Clinton. It isn’t really a surprise because the Ron Paul campaign is a stalking horse for the far right, the sort of nuts who cut their teeth on staging these same dirty tricks for Oliver North and Pat Buchanan and David Duke in their own races, now empowered with the internet and a lot of free time.

To sum up, Ron Paul supporters responded to an article about Pro-Ron Paul spam using a Botnet in Wired by organizing a campaign against the article’s reporter Sarah Lai Stirland. The first wave of the campaign played into the usual paranoia of the far right by accusing her of being a neo-con and working for Rudy “Ghouliani”. (Sample of Sarah Lai Stirland’s article Hillary Clinton Stands Up for Science, Slams Bush, not exactly prime Neo-Con Rudy booster material)

The next stage occurred when these or other Ron Paul supporters then created a post by Sarah Lai Stirland, on a pro-Rudy forum that they themselves might have created or at least taken over, that had her claiming she wrote the article to support Rudy and asking for money to be sent to her PayPal account. It is of course ironic but not surprising that Ron Paul supporters responded to an accusation that they had engaged in criminal activity in support of Ron Paul by trying to refute it with more criminal activity. It just shows how fundamentally rotten the Ron Paul base is.

The third stage has now gone viral with Ron Paul supporters creating a video that features a screenshot of their impersonation of Sarah Lai Stirland with the claim that the Wired article has been “exposed” as a plot by Rudy, uploading the video to numerous sites and then gaming YouTube and then spamming Digg comments with links to the video to promote it.

On my own Ron Paul Supporters Now Openly Turning to Crime, Hacking Computers, Terrorizing Reporters Digg post, a Ron Paul supporter SMSC using the V for Vendetta avatar posted the link to the video 7 times in the comments, even as he was ironically enough burying my article as “Blog spam”. (If Ron Paul supporters ever understood the concept of irony, they’d kill themselves.)

SMSC himself is a charming fellow emblematic of the far right bigots behind the real Ron Paul campaign. SMSC’s Diggs include such lovely features as “Rothschilds funding Hillary’s campaign”, “Americans: 1 out of 7 hate Jews”, “Dog The bounty Hunter drops the “N” word - Now Asking Al Sharpton for Help”, “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth!” and of course “Ron Paul Revolution BIG Interstate 15 signs (VIDEO)”. This is basically Ron Paul’s fanbase, racists, conspiracy theorists and 9/11 Deniers. And it’s the core that is behind this latest campaign.

But what’s really troubling is that previous Ron Paul gaming could have been dismissed as overenthusiastic support for a candidate, but there’s no such excuses here. Ron Paul supporters are now using the dirtiest tactics and the smears are no longer targeting just other candidates who might arguably be fair game, but reporters who write articles critical of the Ron Paul campaign. At this point the gaming stands revealed as the thug’s tactic that it is.

Ron Paul supporters repeatedly claim that they’re for liberty and freedom. People who are for freedom and liberty don’t behave this way. Fascists do. People who can’t stand an open marketplace of ideas and so bury every post critical of Ron Paul, while using every dirty trick to promote their candidate not realizing how they’re repulsing everyone else in the process.

People who care for freedom don’t call for the jailing of a reporter who criticizes their candidate or post her personal information and encourage others to call her up and harass her. That’s the behavior of thugs, fascists and Chavestitaz, it’s the behavior of the SA wannabes that are the real force behind the Ron Paul campaign.

As a final note here’s a comment from one of the people claiming to have been at work on the Wired comment section

Re: I WANT RON PAUL AS PRESIDENT FOR LIFE
Posted by The Asskicking Ghandi on 2007-11-01 19:29:14
PLEASE ____, PEOPLE LIKE ME ARE RON PAUL’S CAMPAIGN

CHECK THIS OUT WHERE I’M BRINGING THE HEAT IN THE COMMENTS UNDER ANOTHER NAME

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/paul_bot

WE’RE BRINGING THE HEAT ON THAT $%!@ REPORTER, THIS IS HOW DEAL WITH THE ENEMY

YOU DON’T ____ WITH US

RON PAUL IS GONNA BE THE PRESIDENT AND THEN WE’RE GONNA BE PUTTING SOME PEOPLE AGAINST THE WALL AND THERE’S GONNA BE LOTS OF ‘BERGS AND ‘STEINS AMONG THEM

Enough said. I believe the book is It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. Unfortunately for Ron Paul supporters It really can’t happen here. But it’s worth keeping in mind when confronting the thuggish anti-democratic tactics of these fascist buffoons.