Drugs, Guns and Madness in the Ron Paul Revolution

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Ron Paul didn’t do as well as the media thought he would in Iowa, but he is moving on toward New Hampshire, where the candidate has what the media call a good “ground game.” But the “Ron Paul Revolution” in New Hampshire looks a lot like what Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn tried to accomplish with the 1960s generation. Disillusioned young people, brainwashed with illegal mind-altering drugs and armed with weapons in the name of “liberty,” are being taught to hate their government and the police. They believe Ron Paul is their savior.

Remember that communist terrorist Dohrn had said, “We fight in many ways. Dope is one of our weapons. The laws against marijuana mean that millions of us are outlaws long before we actually split. Guns and grass are united in the youth underground.”

The same attitude is apparent in some of the libertarian-anarchist groups backing Paul in New Hampshire.

In order to grasp this phenomenon, consider what happened at the Porcupine Freedom Festival (PorcFest) held in New Hampshire in June of last year.

A film called “Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom” was screened for the PorcFest participants. The “weed” is marijuana. This very disturbing video, which carries a warning, features many objectionable scenes, including one of a rapper with a gun dancing in front of a huge poster of marijuana leaves. “Today,” says the narrator, “many cops who enforce pot laws do so because it provides them with cushy jobs, good benefits, and a chance to push people around.”

Another video, “PorcFest marijuana users & their supporters lose fear,” covers one aspect of the PorcFest—open drug use. It shows participants smoking dope while paying tribute to one Stefan Molyneux, a self-styled “freedom advocate” who is described as a frequent guest on the Moscow-funded Russia Today (RT) propaganda channel’s Adam Kokesh program, which has since been cancelled, and RT’s Max Keiser Report. On the eve of the Iowa Caucuses, Molyneux recorded a 14-minute rant in a video for Paul, saying that the Congressman’s stance against “imperialism and foreign wars” would save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He called Iowa “make or break” for the Paul campaign and urged people to vote in the caucuses and send money immediately.

This video, “Armed slam dancing & other PorcFest scenes,” shows a rock concert on the grounds of PorcFest, with the lead singer wearing an “End the Fed” T-shirt while two young men, one armed with a gun in his belt, practice “slam dancing.”

The PorcFest was sponsored by the Free State Project, a political movement trying to recruit tens of thousands of “libertarian-leaning people” to move to New Hampshire. It became a gathering of the “New Hampshire Liberty Movement” and other such organizations from around the nation. This is Ron Paul’s constituency.

But the mixture of drugs and guns with an anti-government philosophy that borders on paranoia can have disastrous consequences.

One only has to recall that John Patrick Bedell, a 36-year-old marijuana addict, had used “medical marijuana” cards to get legal dope in California, before he drove to Washington, D.C. in March of 2010 to murder people at the Pentagon. Bedell, who injured two security guards before getting killed in the crossfire, was a libertarian who thought the government was out to get him. He was devoted to legal marijuana, believed in the 9/11 “inside job” theory, and accused the U.S. Government of murdering a Marine Corps colonel, James Sabow, in California in 1991.

Anarchy and Gay Rights

National Public Radio covered the PorcFest event, where New Hampshire correspondent Josh Rogers interviewed the lead organizer, “an anarchist who goes by the name Sovereign Curtis.” Rogers reported, “Curtis was between pulls on a marijuana pipe outside an event called the big gay dance party. Curtis thinks many Porcfest attendees will probably skip the 2012 elections because he says government is corrupt, period. But Curtis admits a soft spot for a certain Congressman from Texas.”

Sovereign Curtis explained, “I’m a big fan of Ron Paul. I tell people he’s my favorite government thug. But he’s still a government thug, you know.”

Rogers reported that some participants at PorcFest “wore pistols and knocked back cocktails, and others practiced yoga and traded silver as currency.”

One is tempted to laugh at some of this, except for the fact that young people disillusioned with American society and government are being drawn into the “guns and weed” philosophy and leaving their families. It’s much the same thing that happened with the New Left, the SDS and the Weather Underground in the 1960s. I have talked to a distraught mother who says her daughter was brainwashed into joining the Ron Paul movement. “I just wonder if the voters know what kind of political groups are backing Ron Paul’s campaign,” she tells me.

These are young people who have “dropped out,” to use the vernacular of LSD guru Timothy Leary, but are dropping back in through the Ron Paul campaign. They have certainly become cannon fodder for the Ron Paul Revolution. Ron Paul is their Messiah, with Gary Johnson, the libertarian former New Mexico Governor and drug legalization advocate, waiting in the wings. The “Next Ron Paul,” as he has been called, has openly talked about the joys of smoking marijuana.

It’s of course worthwhile that these young people have taken an interest in politics, but their political activities resemble something that we used to associate with the New Left and the anti-government radicals and communists of the 1960s. They are not only destroying their lives with drugs, but embracing a political philosophy that would leave America defenseless against real enemies abroad.

Left-Right Alliance

If this sounds like an area where the extreme left meets the extreme right, it is not the only one. Rep. Paul joined with Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts liberal, to advocate massive defense cuts and the legalization of marijuana. It seems to be a deliberate strategy of Paul’s to seek the votes of the liberal/left on such issues.

Ron Paul was apparently not at PorcFest, but presidential contender Gary Johnson was. Reporter Rogers wondered if “embracing such a counter-cultural crowd would be good politics for a would-be president” and said, “Gary Johnson seemed to think so.” Indeed, Johnson, who dropped out of the current Republican presidential primaries to seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, was mingling with the crowd seeking votes. His campaign platform features “drug policy reform,” which is a fancy way of saying that drugs should be legalized so that the government can regulate, tax, and distribute them.

A video shows Johnson being interviewed by the reporter, who says to him, “A lot of people would say it’s a courageous candidate that would come to an event where there’s people walking around open carrying weapons, there’s gay disco, there’s people smoking marijuana. What do you make of that?” Johnson replies that he’s not courageous for being there and “Those things don’t bother me at all.” How’s that for a political leader concerned about the future of America and its youth?

One of the featured speakers at PorcFest was Adam Kokesh, the Ron Paul supporter who had a program on the Russia Today (RT) propaganda channel before he got fired apparently for improperly raising money on the air for Paul’s campaign. The scandal revealed a cozy relationship between the Paul campaign and a state-funded channel run by the regime of former KGB officer and now Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Paul is also one of Iranian Press TV’s favorite U.S. politicians, obviously because of the Congressman’s indifference to the Iranian regime developing nuclear weapons.

An Official Ron Paul Connection

Allison Gibbs, who worked for Kokesh when he ran for Congress, was director of outreach for Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty before becoming advance coordinator for the 2012 Ron Paul presidential campaign. She has attended the PorcFest in the past, where she received this neck tattoo. Like Ron Paul, Gibbs is a supporter of accused Army traitor Bradley Manning and calls him a “patriot.” She also started the “Ladies of Liberty” group and was one of their 2010 pin-up calendar girls. A video features Gibbs describing her transformation from left-winger to libertarian anti-war activist. She explains that she changed careers because she didn’t want to work for the Defense Department and be complicit in “atrocities.”

One of Gibbs’s associates in what they call the “liberty movement” is Mike Gogulski, sponsor of nostate.com and self-declared “stateless person” and anarchist. “I renounced my American citizenship in protest of what has become an American Empire, a nation that I see riding an express train to police state dictatorship with flags flying, anthems blaring and deluded, complicit masses cheering it along the track,” he says. He currently serves as a press spokesman for the Bradley Manning Support Network.

Gibbs’s video interviewer and associate, Pete Eyre, first went to the Porcupine Freedom Fest in 2005. “It was the first time I was around people who openly carried weapons and were living the free lifestyle,” he says. He became a libertarian and then an anarchist. He is now with CopBlock.org, an anti-police organization which depicts police officers as demonic figures with blood on their hands and batons. “We’re watching” the police, it says.

Eyre’s animus for police may have something to do with the fact that he obtained an undergraduate degree in law enforcement but was then turned down for jobs in various police departments. “I tested with New York City Police Department, Seattle PD and LAPD, and scored at the 94%, 98% and 100% levels, respectively. But, after a questionable reading on the lie detector test administered by the LAPD, they found that I hadn’t been truthful about my use of ‘illicit’ substances. Consequently, they dropped me from consideration,” he admits.

Eyre promoted the incident in which Kokesh, then with Russia Today television, disrupted tourism at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. and got himself arrested. Their strategy was to break the law and provoke a confrontation with police so that officers would be accused of brutality.

Eyre’s bio says that he interned with the Cato Institute and was a Koch Fellow at the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance. This is significant because the Koch Brothers are considered enemies of the “progressives.” It seems that, on the matter of ending the war on drugs, the Koch Brothers and “progressive” philanthropist George Soros agree. Eyre also worked at the Institute for Humane Studies.

One of the other interests listed on Eyre’s Facebook page is the “International Peace Movement,” which features speeches by Moammar Gadhafi, information about the 9/11 Truth movement, and tributes to Ron Paul. This video shows Ron Paul discussing civil disobedience with Pete Eyre.

“Marijuana Muscle”

But another video is perhaps the most interesting and frightening. It shows Eyre, described as a “marijuana muscle-sponsored anarchist/athlete,” talking in some detail about why he believes the war on drugs should be ended. As incredible as it may seem, Eyre promotes “Hemp Protein Powder,” advertised as a “vegan green protein,” for health purposes. It appears to be entirely legal. The website declares, “True freedom and liberty means using your body the way you choose. Freedom is to whatever it is that you choose into your own body no matter if it is healthy or not.”

Like Allison Gibbs, Eyre enjoys tattoos. This Pete Eyre website features his various tattoos, including one depicting a snake wrapped around an assault rifle. He also displays one tattoo called amagi, which is supposed to be the first written word for freedom or liberty. Another person has a “Come and Take It” pistol tattoo on his left forearm, with the “anarcho-capitalist flag” in the gun detail.

The heavy turnout of young people at Ron Paul events, including their loud and obnoxious behavior on behalf of the candidate at presidential debates, has been mentioned by the media throughout the campaign. Some of these young people are on news programs saying they are concerned about the national debt. Others oppose U.S. involvement in foreign wars. These are respectable views but they do not tell the whole story about what is going on in the “Ron Paul Revolution.” The media should take a much closer look.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.