But the Colorado Republican Party now wants nothing to do with Ross after being informed by Westword about The House of David, a personal blog populated by well over a decade's worth of posts that include rants and musings most sentient humans would regard as racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and more, more, more.
"We did not know about the blog," stresses Daniel Cole, the Colorado Republican Party's communications director. "We find it reprehensible and not representative of the Republican Party or the Republican platform."
Ross, for his part, responded to an initial series of email questions from Westword with a simple confirmation that he owns The House of David. After we followed up with a new set of inquiries, he replied like so: "I do not talk with enemies of the people."
He's conversed plenty on his blog. Writing under the name Zimriel, Ross notes in the "About" section, dated April 27, that the site "has been running since early April 2002 (attached to webpages, some of which are here now, too, backdated). The blog has changed over the years...as have I. The point of this blog is to preserve Mindthoughts. Some of my mindthoughts are carefully reasoned. Some are...less so, especially in the 2002-4 era. If I thought that any of these dashed-off comments were worth paying to read them, I would be selling them in a book."
He adds: "For those seeking to remunerate me financially for these efforts, as it happens, I have written books — four of them, at present count (April 2018). These are sidebarred at my Islam page. House of War is the one most favorably received, if you haven't picked that up already."
Indeed, Ross apparently fancies himself something of an expert on Islam. The three items on his YouTube channel are presented in a lecture format, with the one below characterized as a discussion of "how we might sift through the sources for Islamic history — all the sources. The test-case here is to what extent Mecca and Madina [sic] was important to the earliest Muslims, and to which earliest Muslims."
If you don't want to watch the entire clip, Ross sums up his views about Islam in a line from a passage headlined "The US Army is under Shari'a Law."
"I'll just repeat that Islam is false and evil, and that Muslims have no place in any position of responsibility," he opines.
As for Ross's own belief system, he writes in the aforementioned "About" essay that "my faith and religion are Catholic Christian. I would argue that I have 'reasoned my way into it;' I was the opposite of born into it. My ancestry is a quarter Jewish (mothers' side, although as it happens this DNA runs back to Burma, not to Israel) and three-quarters Protestant, give-or-take (the Anglicans have been odd here, as you might know). My politics are Dissident Right, and this blog will argue from that perspective. I don't care if you label me Alt-Right."
Plenty of folks would after checking out blurbs like the following, from 2011, in which he writes, "If you love black people: never, never let them vote."
Could this be a one-time lapse that Ross meant satirically rather than literally? Consider that question while looking at some other observations from his site or other online chats. Here's a batch of takes about race; the first several words of each item are linked to their source.
"If blacks wish to be perceived better than white racists perceive them, they can start by not proving them right."These are hardly the only topics about which Ross feels strongly. He's also weighed in about homosexuality ("it is an orientation that cannot give new life naturally. Therefore it is a disease"), fascism ("I’d be fine with a Franco or 'Austrofascist' regime as long as it maintained property rights for the law-abiding and could protect itself from threats at home and abroad") and feminism ("I'm increasingly thinking that Handmaid's Tale might be a utopia, if Pence was running it rather than the caricatures Atwood dreamt up. Pence-Gilead would at least be an improvement on what we got").
"'Be aware of your surroundings' is code. It means 'watch out for young black people' and, also unspoken, steer clear of them."
"I lived in Houston for a long, long time. I witnessed many crime waves in that time. I also could not help but notice which demographics committed these crimes. For awhile, I could make believe that it was under control. Then came Katrina and the effects of the 'sanctuary city' policy. In Houston, I had a lot less to fear from a white hooligan wannabe-thug riot than from a pack of feral 'youths' who do this for a living. I expect this is true of most cities in the US."
"The outrages of 1865 and 1866, at least along the Gulf Coast, proved that enough blacks were ignorant or wicked that white civilians could not trust them with power over them."
"The US was 85 percent white up to the 1960 census. In 1965 the Congress passed the Hart-Celler act. So, yes, there was a deliberate program to 'diversify' this nation — to pull down the white share in it. I have also not seen anyone on the Left say what proportion of whites would be TOO low. Yes — they want to wipe us out. And it’s time more of us started pointing that out."
"I will not be allowing — say — Martin Luther King's hate-speech against my race to be forgotten."
"MLK marched to keep whites in subservience to blacks for eternity. He thought that whites were eternally damned from birth for what their ancestors did. Source: 1965 Playboy interview."
Oh, yeah: Ross has posted twice about this very publication since we reached out to him on Tuesday, September 4, first in a piece dubbed "Welcome, Westword." As you'll see, he identifies us as a "Boulder County broadsheet/tabloid," which will undoubtedly come as a surprise to postal workers who've been delivering mail to our various Denver addresses since the 1970s. Here's the first helping of what he shared:
I got a spike in traffic all from Google 31 August, which I'd worried at the time was a DoS attack. This morning I got a mail from someone at the Boulder County broadsheet/tabloid Westworld — or Westword. Either way, he's told me To Draw.Shortly thereafter, Ross offered an addendum tagged "Attn: Westword." It reads: "Anyone interested in a take on why I think Islam is wrong and evil (if not my words, certainly my sentiments), and not yet prepared to purchase one of my fine books on the topic, might wish to contact some people who have been there, and got out, through the other side. I don't reside in H'town no more and I don't know if any of this crew have cropped up in B'town, D'town or one of these L'towns in between. But the existence and power of an ISNA, and its embrace of views far more egregious than any of mine might well explain why ex-Muslims have seen the need to organize and to act — to Resist, as the cool kids say these days."
He was looking for comment about Islam, race and homosexuality. I've said Islam is Bad, that blacks are unready-for-universal-franchise, and that homosexuality is a disease. [The second might be mitigated by my overall sentiment that a lot of whites shouldn't be voting either; y'all DO see the freshly kept Moldbug link over there, no? Or it might not...]
Apart from verifying that, yes, this be my blog; I am leaving it to my blog, and to the articles which the relevant posts link, to argue for me. I saw little point in summarizing all that mess yet again to someone who already has his narrative laid out — scil., that I do not share in Our Values. Unless someone chimes in with a substantive rebuttal....
Like Allah, "I wish to make things easy for you, and not to make things difficult for you." One, two, three.
This material doesn't appear to have swayed Colorado Republican Party spokesperson Cole, who points out that his organization has not put any dollars or cents behind Ross's efforts in District 12.
"The state party gives support to candidates in various forms," Cole says. "Candidates are allowed access to our data systems, and some candidates receive financial support — and there are other types of support some candidates can receive. But nobody on our team has dealt with David Reid Ross. He's not plugged into any of our data systems. He hasn't received any support from us up until this point, and that won't change between now and November."
When asked what the party would like Ross to do next, Cole admits that "we'd rather he withdraw, give all donors their money back, and stop wasting everybody's time."
But in Cole's view, a broader repudiation isn't necessary given the likelihood that Ross will be handily defeated by his Democratic Party opponent, Sonya Jaquez Lewis; independent Theresa Stets is also running for the office. According to Cole, "One of the reasons we hadn't interacted with him up until this point is because House District 12 isn't a very competitive district. If it were competitive, I think we'd be having another conversation about how to go about getting him out of the race."
Unless something changes, though, Ross will be on the November ballot, with a Republican Party designation next to his name.
