Bernie, Black America, and Leftover Paranoia and Conspiracy Theories

As Texas libertarian activist Corie Stephens observed weeks ago “Bernie Sanders: The candidate of far-left ideologues imbued with infinite amounts of white privilege and shielded from the economic impact of their socialist fantasies.”  And Bernie Sanders campaign events, largely attended by white yuppie leftovers, are now being protested by #BlackLivesMatter activists.  (It’s kind of rich that this Sanders event is held in front of a Starbucks.)

How much this is because BLM peeps are attention whores, how much because they are upset the Democrats only have old 70 year old white candidates running, and how much because they are concrete-bound sheeple who think socialism served up by their party must focus specifically on racially inflected programs I don’t know.  Perhaps they even have some cognition that issues like police brutality or mismanaged state schools and lack of economic opportunity in urban areas have been persistent failures of the Democratic Party.

http://launch.newsinc.com/?type=VideoPlayer/Single&widgetId=1&trackingGroup=69016&siteSection=thehilldotcom&videoId=29513716

On social media, Bernie supporters and other pro-regressives are now claiming #BlackLivesMatter is funded by the Koch brothers.

Is the acronym for the Ron Paul Institute to be R.I.P.? (updated)

Ron Paul Institute: Charlie Hebdo Massacre, Like 9/11, Was a False Flag Operation | The Weekly Standard

As The Weekly Standard rightly notes this is a sad piece of conspiracy theory with no evidence for its claims.  The Standard of course fails to identify the author (Paul Craig Roberts) or point out that the piece originally appeared  at LewRockwell.com.

They do manage to ask Rand Paul to take a position on it, probably the only reason they covered it.

Do they have opinions on all the writings of Midge Decter, Frank Gafny, and anyone and everyone else published in neocon land?

******************************************************************
Update:

I was of course curious about what Ron Paul supporters would say about this.  Would they double down and construct bizarre justifications of it as a knee jerk reaction to attacks by neoconservatives and others?

So last night at one of the perpetual DC libertarian happy hours, I asked someone, a friend and good person, who has worked for Ron Paul and his organizations for years:

Me:  So what did you think of that Paul Craig Roberts article on the Ron Paul Institute website?

Ron Paul apparatchik: Awww….I think…that article…has some interesting points…at the beginning…and then made some more interesting points…and then just took a flying leap with no logic whatsoever…into conspiracy theory.

Third Person (who works for a non-Ron Paul, free market, organization): Paul Craig Roberts is crazy. It’s like he couldn’t get a job after the Reagan administration and he went crazy.

RPA:  Paul Craig Roberts and Bruce Bartlett both couldn’t keep their careers going after the Reagan  administration so they had lunch and decided to both become crazy ideologues, Roberts went with Alex Jones and Bartlett went with Paul Krugman.

TP:  But Roberts went crazier because even Alex Jones says there is no evidence Charlie Hebdo was a “false flag” operation.

RPA:  No one at The Ron Paul Institute asked my opinion before they published that piece.

Me:  Maybe the editors in Tehran didn’t call you because it was long distance?

RPA:  Tehran?  You mean Russia?  No Putin didn’t call either.

Me: Oh you mean the senior editor, not the managing editor?

The conversation then devolved further into jokes about whether the Ron Paul Institute would be publishing new shirtless photos of Putin.

————————————————————-

P.S.  I put so called “conspiracy theory” blogs in our blog roll, if they are intresting, if they aren’t anti-Semitic, if they cover other interesting topics, if they are published abroad and offer an international perspective.  I haven’t put RPI in in part because I haven’t had time to monitor it and see if the bad outweighs the good.