“Anonymous” hack of neo-Nazi A3P reveals Ron Paul link!

Us old-school lefties have been wondering for a quite some time, which is more annoying—the legions of “Anonymous” hacktivists who think that faceless adventurism is the cutting-edge of revolution, or Ron Paul supporters who think that this ultra-reactionary Republican crank stands for progressive change? Well now, much to our amusement, they appear to be at each other’s throats! And we have to give an editorial tip o’ the hat to Anonymous for uncovering more dirt on Paul’s ties to real live neo-Nazis. In their latest cyber-attack, they apparently hacked the website of some nimrods calling themselves American Third Position, or A3P—a Southern California-based outfit that is seeking to mainstream white supremacism by running candidates, in the style of David Duke back in the ’90s. The hackers evidently splashed a bunch of the A3P crew’s internal e-mails on the group’s homepage—and, lo and behold, it turns out they are a well integrated into Paul’s political machine! This account from the UK’s International Business Times, Jan. 31:

Anonymous also claims that the organisation has links with Republican candidate Ron Paul. “We found a disturbingly high number of members who are also involved in campaigning for Ron Paul,” the statement said, adding that Paul had regularly met with many party members and even engaged in conference calls with its board of directors.

Another target of the hack was the A3P webmaster, Jamie Kelso. According to the hacker collective, Kelso, a former Scientologist and organiser for Paul campaign events, is also the account owner of neo-Nazi forums and websites.

The hacktivists said they also hacked Kelso’s credit card and made donations to anti-fascist organisations, such as the Anti-Defamation League.

“We call upon not only other anti-fascists but all those opposed to white supremacy to utilise this information and make hell for these white nationalist scumbags,” the statement added. “It is essential, if we wish to live in a world free from oppression, to expose and confront racists at their jobs, their schools, at their homes and in the streets.”

The Anonymous hacks are part of an ongoing campaign called Operation Blitzkrieg, which is aimed at attacking and exposing the websites of neo-Nazi organisations in Europe and the United States.

The ADL was a very impolitic choice, of course, which isn’t going to win Anonymous too many friends on the left. We suggest next time they try Anti-Racist Action, or even the more mainstream Southern Poverty Law Center. More from a Feb. 1 IBT article which again sports the famous photo of Ron Paul schmoozing with Don Black of Stormfront:

Members of the nationalist American Third Position Party (A3P), whose website was defaced by Anonymous, organised Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s meetings and campaigns, according emails hacked by the collective.

Chairman of the British National Party (BNP) Nick Griffin also took part in meetings with Paul and other representatives of A3P.

“According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors,” read a statement from Anonymous.

It also claims that Paul received financial support from other white power groups, such as the online hate forum Stormfront, founded by Don Black, a white supremacist. There is even a photograph of Paul with Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a current member of the American Nazi Party. Paul allegedly refused to return donations from Black and Stormfront. Black told The New York Times that Paul’s newsletter had inspired him to become a supporter.

In its statement, Anonymous said it put extra effort into hacking A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso, a key figure in organising Paul’s meetings and conferences.

Kelso, a former Scientologist and account owner of other German Nazi forums, became an active supporter of Paul in 2007. He was reportedly attracted to Paul because he believed the Republican’s followers would be receptive to his white supremacist views. He described Paul as “implicitly white” and started to actively organise Paul’s events.

“Let’s appreciate this big (Paul) audience that’s overwhelmingly white,” Kelso said in an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “This is our audience, this is our public. These are our people. If we can’t persuade these people of the rightness of our cause, then we’re finished,” he said.

Excerpts from the email hacked by Anonymous show Kelso’s commitment to Paul’s policies.

In 2009 he wrote to a supporter: “My own opinion is that the White revolution has already begun, and that the good White folks…that fills [sic] these Ron Paul crowds and marching armies ARE the start of the revolution.”

Is this the “rev3VOLution” that Ron Paul’s supporters are always talking about? Did Ron Paul actually meet with Nick Griffin, as implied above? The Paul connection to Griffin and his vile British National Party is instructive. The BNP has lately been very aggressive with a campaign to steal the populist fire from British labor, linking demands for jobs to xenophobia. Griffin is also, not too surprisingly, a Qaddafi-admirer. Further elucidation is provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s page on A3P :

Rounding out the A3P’s white nationalist team is Jamie Kelso, who has in the past worked for David Duke and served as a moderator for Stormfont, the first major hate site on the Web. The A3P website does not mention Kelso’s official position, but he has described himself as the “executive assistant” to William Johnson. Kelso is a behind-the-scenes player at the A3P, but an influential one…

With this group of white nationalist leaders assembled, the party is now seeking active dues-paying members and recruiting voters to register as members of the party for the 2010 California elections. Johnson plans to target a number of different groups in order to assemble the party’s base. He developed contacts with Republicans and libertarians who supported Ron Paul during the 2008 US presidential election, holding a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser for Paul’s campaign in September 2007. In a July 1, 2010, Internet radio broadcast, Kelso said: “There’s a great overlap in Patriot activities and Patriot causes, and we have, we will have a big effect on this much larger movement, the Ron Paul Revolution, that has millions of people engaged…we’ll be pulling them from the right.” The A3P also has shown up at Tea Party rallies to try to fulfill this goal.

Maybe the Paul-suckers out there who fancy themselves “progressives” of some sort, and are attracted to the weasel for his facile anti-war and civil libertarian talk, will start to wake up now. Meanwhile, we are a bit confused as to what is actually going on with the A3P website. A Google search turns up American3rdposition.com, which redirects to MerlinMiller2012, the (seemingly un-hacked) website of A3P’s presidential candidate, white supremacist independent film-maker (gee, just what the world needs) Merlin Miller.

See our last posts on the Ron Paul pathology and the politics of cyberspace.


    1. Paul-suckers are liars
      No you don’t. That’s a lie.

      We forgot to post this. We have a pay-to-play policy for Ron Paul-related material:

      We know from bitter empirical experience that if we allow the comments in a post about Ron Paul to be a free-for-all, it will quickly become a forum for pro-Confederacy revisionism and other such noxious propaganda. Because we have no desire to loan these vile voices any more of a soapbox than they already have, we are charging a minimum of $5 per comment—only on posts about Ron Paul. As you Paulistas should understand, this website is our private property and we therefore have the perfect right to do this. You may use the PayPal button below. Please make sure you post under the same name that you use for the PayPal payment so we can keep track. This will also be a measure of the quality of the comments: The price will go up as the comments get more asinine, or (less likely) drop as they get more intelligent. Our Posting Policy still applies, so please read it first.

      OK, fire at will…

      1. One comment deleted
        You gotta pay to play here, guys. Get it?

        OK, we’ll drop down to $1 a comment just to get the ball rolling. If the posts aren’t too stupid, we’ll keep it at $1.

        Your move, guys.

        1. If you are going to charge
          If you are going to charge to post a comment shouldn’t you do charge people before they comment instead of trying to afterwards?

          I fail to see how any of this relates to an inflationary monetary policy.. Or how 30% of my (and your) income goes towards financing un-winnable wars, insolvent socialized medicine, or bailouts for the richest businessmen and most corrupt corporations in America.

          I also fail to see how this relates to a government that is $15 trillion dollars in debt, with no regard from congress or any other presidential candidate to actually make this problem better.

          But maybe you ‘progressives’ are just waiting for the day the government steps in and takes absolute control over your life. How much earn, how much you save, fixing prices, with no middle class.

          I think you just have too much faith in the govt

          1. You owe me a dollar
            We are charging before people comment. Why do you think we keep deleting comments? Because those shirkers didn’t pay first. We thought that was obvious. But since we had to explain it to you, you owe us a dollar. Pay up:

             

            As to your irrelevant “points”… What I wrote has nothing to do with un-winnable wars or bailouts for the rich and underserving. I agree with you on those questions, but Paul talking a good line on them doesn’t let him off the hook for being in bed with neo-Nazis. What is so hard to understand about this? Baiting me as a big-government liberal is a transparent ad hominem distraction, and an unthinking kneejerk response. It is neither an accurate representation of my politics, nor relevant to what we are talking about. It will cost you another buck to respond.

          2. illiterate economics
            Why do you Paul cultists throw around “an inflationary monetary policy”? Dressing up right wing ideas in an entirely fictional economic shell game is a really old far right tactic. Explain in some detail why you have problems with the Federal Reserve (for instance) and address the issues the Federal Reserve was created to avoid. If you have a problem with corporate capitalism in general I understand but that’s not Paul’s “free market” read: monopoly corporate capitalist rhetoric.

            In 2008 this debate went around and not one Paul cultist could explain Paul’s incoherent (or, I suspect, dishonest) economic babble. It would be really refreshing if one of you could make a realistic economic argument so pay the $1 and work away.

            1. OK, I’m going out for dinner…
              So if anyone pays up and your post doesn’t immediately appear, just wait. It will.

              C’mon guys, if Brent paid, so can you Paul-suckers…

      2. Ron Paul flip-flopped on racist newsletters… repeatedly
        Amazing that anyone who fancies himself any kind of “progressive” would consider even tactical support for this sleaze-bag weasel…

  1. Nonsense.
    Excuse me. But I have seen pictures of President Obama with Black Panthers. Suddenly President Obama is now a Black Supremacist? What about Obama’s membership and attendance to Jeremiah Wright’s Church?

    This entire article is silly. The writer sounds childish.

    1. Paul-suckers are liars
      1. No you haven’t seen pictures of President Obama with Black Panthers. I challenge you to post them.

      2. Equating the Black Panthers—a self-defense movement that resisted racism—to neo-Nazis and the Klan is a perverse absurdity.

      3. I’d love to know what Jeremiah Wright ever said that came anywhere close to the toxic crap that can be read at any brief perusal of the Stormfront website. 9-11 was “America’s chickens coming home to roost.”

      4. Obama ditched Rev. Wright. Ron Paul will not ditch Stormfront. I don’t hear Don Black complaining about how Ron Paul “threw me under the bus.” All Ron Paul has ever done is issue weasily, lukewarm and equivocal pseudo-disavowals of his neo-Nazis pals.

      5. You owe me a buck. Pay up.

      1. Obama with Black Panthers from 2007
        Mr. Weinberg,

        Stop whining! Here you go. In 2007, Barack Obama marched with the New Black Panthers.

        FAIL!

        1. Paul-suckers are idiots and cheapskates
          For starters, you must be either pretty damn gullible, or else think that other people are. These are two photos, and the one with Obama doesn’t show any Panthers. Media Matters for America explains the subterfuge, which originated from Andrew Breitbart:

          In claiming that Obama was “joined by” the Panthers, “appeared and marched with” them, and “shar[ed] the same podium” with them, Breitbart carefully avoids explaining just what the event in question was… [S]everal thousand people “appeared and marched” with the New Black Panthers that day. The event in question was the 42nd anniversary of the 1965 march from Selma, which ended when the civil rights marchers were attacked by law enforcement at Edmund Pettus Bridge. The Birmingham News reported:

          Former President Bill Clinton and presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama locked arms with civil rights icons Sunday and marched through thousands of wellwishers, crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge to cap the 42nd anniversary Right to Vote and Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

          It wasn’t Obama’s event. It wasn’t the Panthers’ event. They were all in Selma for an annual celebration of an historic civil rights moment. During that event, Obama and New Black Panthers leader Malik Zulu Shabazz gave speeches from the same podium, and both were part of the crowd that then marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

          So, no, you haven’t posted pictures of Obama with Black Panthers. As you so eloquently put it: FAIL! Furthermore, I have repeatedly made clear that this is a pay-to-play item. Under free-market principles, I am exercising my private-property rights and charging a modest one dollar per post. I don’t know why you think I should provide you with a soapbox for free. You are trespassing on my private property by positing your lies here. You now owe me (at least) three dollars. Pay up:

           
          1. Friendly reminder to Paul-suckers
            This is a pay-to-play item. On the basis of the continued low level of intelligence in the comments here, the price has just gone up to $10 per post. If you wish to post asinine drivel (as someone just attempted to do) baselessly asserting that Obama pals around with Black Panthers (not that there’s anything wrong with that), you’ve got to pay up first:

             

            Dear “Anonymous2”: Your transparently stupid comment is still in the approval queue. If I have not received a $10 payment by midnight, it will be deleted.