Crazy like a Fawkes

10Nov07

I’m late to the whole Ron Paul raises $4.3 million on Guy Fawkes Day celebration, but I still want to get my thoughts out.

First of all, the symbolism behind the event is ridiculously confusing. As Jacob Levy puts it:

It was deliberate irony. The inversion was part of the point: it’s now the British state that has become the enemy of British liberty, and those who once rooted against Fawkes should now root for him.

But that was mostly lost on American audiences, I think– even the politically self-aware nerdy libertarians, anarchists, and socialists for whom V was a favorite work.

Some really weird confusion has resulted, with American anti-statist types celebrating Fawkes-as-commemorated-by-V using the words and imagery of the celebration of Fawks’ defeat.

Additionally, it can’t be a tactically brilliant idea to organize a grassroots campaign around an event which was, in every definition of the word, an act of attempted terrorism. When a candidate’s most visceral supporters seem to be found on hate sites, it’s probably a bad sign when your campaign staff has to make these kinds of nuanced clarifications:

Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. “He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,” Mr. Benton said, “but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”

And, as Phil Allen notes, Guy Fawkes lost.

What’s most depressing about this moneybomb campaign is that the fundraiser cast a bigger shadow than the candidate himself. Choose a less controversial event — such as, say, Constitution Day — and you can receive all the positive media coverage of outraising Romney without engaging in feeble attempts to delink your candidate from Catholic terrorists.

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