“With Jews We Lose” Campus Speaker Killed in Car Crash

Robert Ransdell of Florence, Kentucky was recently killed by a drunk driver.

Randsell was invited to speak by Prof. Buck Ryan in 2014 at the University of Kentucky for a Constitution Day event. Randsell ran as a Senate write-in candidate with the theme “With Jews We Lose.”

Ransdell was a former regional coordinator for the neo-Nazi National Alliance in Cincinnati and, most recently, coordinator for the neo-Nazi National Alliance Reform & Restoration Group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The National Alliance was for decades "the most dangerous and best organized neo-Nazi" organization, the law center said.

Campus leaders at UK had no prior knowledge that Ransdell would speak. 

After the event, they strongly denounced his message. 

Appropriately, too, they said that speech cannot be censored on their campus because of the First Amendment—but such speech should be strongly confronted and rejected.

In 2014, many people—myself included— would dismiss Ransdell as a fringe lunatic. He lived long enough, however, to see a U.S. president who equated him to "fine people" who protested against racism at Charlottesville.