Former congressman Ron Paul is doing the I Never Meant That Racist Thing Published In My Name two-step, insisting that a staffer "inadvertantly" posted an incredibly racist image on a Tweet promoting a dumb Facebook whine about "cultural Marxism." Which is, in itself, a (usually) anti-Semitic trope pushed by rightwingers, with or without explicit racism strirred in. Hey, as long as it's not accompanied by evil caricatures from the Daily Stormer, it's just fine, yup yup yup.

Here's the original, now-deleted tweet from the Ron Paul Twitter account. See if YOU can spot why it's problematic!

This is where we have to point out that while cartoonist Ben Garrison is a rightwing, Islamophobic loon, he didn't draw this thing -- a lot of your online racist trolls have taken to either adding gross racially stereotypes like the ones seen here into Garrison cartoons, or slapping his signature onto old racist cartoons by other people, for the lulz. Mr Garrison's own libertarian wingnut oeuvre sticks to dog whistles, thank you very much. Garrison issued a very stern denial of any involvement with the image:

Funny how he forgot to condemn the racist stuff while he was at it, but he's a busy guy.

Once the Internet noticed the tweet, Ron Paul took a rare turn at tweeting something himself -- maybe -- explaining that everybody knows that nothing published under his name was really written by him, because he's just the ideas guy or something:

It was an inadvertent mistake by a staffer who somehow just slipped up and thought -- for some crazy reason -- the boss would approve. Ron Paul isn't a racist, he just employs racist staffers, and that's all there is to it. The offending tweet was done away with and replaced with a safer defense of racist talk:

This is all very familiar territory for Ron Paul, who spent much of his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns trying to run away from racist newsletters that went out under his name in the '90s. One 1992 Ron Paul newsletter on the LA riots offered these insights:

A Ron Paul Newsletter piece from October 1992, titled "Blast 'Em?" offered this helpful advice on how to kill a black kid without getting caught. We like the folksy racist turn in the final paragraph:

It is the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos. The youth simply walk up to a car they like, pull a gun, tell the family to get out, steal their jewelry and wallets, and take the car to wreck. Such actions have ballooned in the recent months.

In the old days, average people could avoid such youth by staying out of bad neighborhoods. Empowered by media, police, and political complicity, however, the youth now roam everywhere looking for cars to steal and people to rob.

What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).

I frankly don't know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.

First off, how can this be racist, because it never mentions race at all? And never forget: Ron Paul insisted he never wrote his newsletters anyway, so even if they occasionally suggested criminal acts against "animals," he's not responsible. When CNN insisted on asking Paul how he could let such evil go out under his name, he simply walked out of the interview.

Here's the full June 1992 newsletter on the LA riots, or as definitely-not-Ron-Paul called it, "racial terrorism":

Clearly, a man before his time. Just think -- he could be a cabinet member today.

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[HuffPo / Ron Paul's ghostwriter on Facebook / Pando / ITalkYouBored]