MSNBC's Deafening Silence on Patrick Buchanan's Association with Holocaust Deniers

One week ago, I outed Patrick Buchanan, the former senior White House official in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, erstwhile reactionary candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and now a highly paid political commentator on MSNBC, for sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on his website. Within hours, the forum in question, entitled "Disinformation, Deception and Other Tricks: Discussion about 'The Holocaust'" (with The Holocaust in quotes, of course), mysteriously vanished from Buchanan.org, and the link to it was disabled.

The Buchanan website's forum followed the standard Holocaust deniers' playbook, complete with such gems as "Most historians believe it was LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GAS 6 MILLION JEWS AND REDUCE THEIR BODIES TO ASHES;" "We have known for some time that the Auschwitz myth is of an exclusively Jewish origin;" "The same blinded people that believe that the Germans intentionally killed Jews -- also believe the myth of the Anne Frank Diary;" and "Rightly or wrongly -- the Jew was blamed for a lot of the problems that Germany suffered. The Jews were given years of warnings that they were unwelcome in Germany. A lot of Jews fled Germany in the late 1930s. The United States was not very anxious to accept very many. This was when White Christians still had a little control of our Nation."

One might have expected the disclosure of this forum to at least raise some eyebrows at MSNBC. After all, two years ago, the news channel summarily fired talk show host Don Imus for making a racially insensitive remark about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on one's website strikes me as no less offensive. But not a single member of MSNBC's management has deigned to publicly address Buchanan's association with anti-Semites, White supremacists and other assorted bigots.

One would also have expected Buchanan's MSNBC colleagues to take him to task for aiding and abetting Holocaust deniers. They have not done so. Not once.

If Fox News' Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly had sponsored a similar forum, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews would have been all over them. If Buchanan had been a CNN or Fox News fixture rather than an MSNBC pundit, Olbermann would most certainly have excoriated Buchanan as the "worst person in the world." So the question to Messrs Matthews and Olbermann has to be, how can you justify giving Buchanan a pass?

Since Buchanan's Holocaust denial forum became public, I have watched him on three popular MSNBC programs: Morning Joe, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Andrea Mitchell Reports. Neither Joe Scarborough nor Mika Brzezinski, the co-hosts of Morning Joe, asked Buchanan to explain why he provided a platform for Holocaust deniers. Matthews did not ask Buchanan whether he approved of or agreed with the Holocaust denying screeds that were posted on Buchanan.org. Andrea Mitchell did not ask Buchanan how and why the Holocaust denial forum was so suddenly removed from his website.

Matthews would never have remained silent in the face of slurs directed at Irish-Americans, or Scarborough at Southern conservative Christians, or Brzezinski at Polish Catholics, or Mitchell at women. Holocaust denial by definition is toxic, and Buchanan's MSNBC colleagues have an obligation to confront him on their shows with the vitriol he allowed to be disseminated under his auspices.

MSNBC's audiences for the most part have no idea that Buchanan is not just another affable, well-spoken if arch-conservative television personality. They do not know that he has compared John Demjanjuk, the Nazi guard at the death camps of Sobibor and Majdanek who has just been deported from the United States to stand trial in Germany, to Jesus Christ. They do not know that he wrote in his March 17, 1990, syndicated column that Jews could not have been murdered in the gas chambers of Treblinka, and dismissed the Holocaust survivors' experiences derisively as "group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics."

They do not know that Buchanan has referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory" and called Israel "a strategic albatross draped around the neck of the United States." They do not know that he told the Christian Coalition in 1993 that "Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free."

They do not know that he has actively lobbied on behalf of Nazi war criminals like Demjanjuk, Karl Linnas and Arthur Rudolph. They do not know that Buchanan called for the abolishment of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which prosecutes and seeks to deport Nazi war criminals from the United States, because he considered the unit to be "a shark force... running down 70-year-old camp guards." They do not know that he once wrote that "Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier... a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him."

Patrick Buchanan has no greater credibility or respectability than David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, or Louis Farrakhan, the grotesquely anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam. If, however, MSNBC's executives insist on retaining him as a fixture on their news channel, he must be clearly identified as an enabler of Holocaust deniers and a defender of Nazi war criminals whenever he appears on the air.

Menachem Rosensaft, the son of two survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, is General Counsel of the World Jewish Congress and Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School.

 

Comments

[mypicasso]

Okie,

Your argument is flawed because the other examples you alluded to does not fit the logic. You're comparing these things to the slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews. This Holocaust should never be denied, EVER!

It is interesting that it is a crime now in Germany, to deny the Holocaust and is punishable by law. Most of the other European countries are on board with that.

[mypicasso]

MSNBC should have investigated this, then should have fired him. He has no business on this network or any other network, for that matter. This is completley unacceptable. Does anyone know whether there's a petition circulating to have him dismissed?

[cariintexas]

If there isn't, there should be. Pat Buchanan has no substance to add anything coherent to any conversation.. he sits there with that grimacing look, shouting like he knows everthing about everything. i turn the channel when he's on.

[jcole]

I all ways thought he was a racist but i did not know until now, have msnbc let him go, and why have msnbc spoke of the matter, or they trying to cover this up.

[spanky0719]

I will be the first to sign it

[yhgtup]

You don't have to sell me on "Dog Face" Pat Buchannan. Can't stand him. Mute or switch channels whenever he's on Hardball. Matthews & "Dog Face" are good buddies.

[noudidnt]

Buchanan has been embraced by Joe Scarborough, Jack Welch and Phil Griffin. I wonder why?

[mypicasso]

Who cares?

[truthglow]

Millions!

[bruderinnot]

"...lobbied on behalf of Nazi war criminals like Demjanjuk..."

Perhaps you mistake Demjanjuk for actual Nazi war criminals who were let go....because they were Jewish?

Demjanjuk is not a "Nazi war criminal" especially since he was exonerated by the Israeli Supreme Court on charges of being at Sobibor and Trawnicki (as well as Treblinka).

[rudiy]

I know it is hard for you to believe, but the reason was that the gallant Demjanjuk was deported was because he lied on his immigration application. Demjanjuk hid that he volunteered for the German SS and that he that he worked in German concentration camps.
In 1981 a Federal count stripped Demjanjuk of his US Citizenship because he obtained it under false pretenses.
Demjanjuk’s conviction for crimes against humanity was overturned by Israel's highest court in 1993 due to a finding of reasonable doubt based on evidence suggesting that Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible" and had, in fact, been a guard at camps besides the one at Treblinka, not because he was a great man.
I am sure if he was from Mexico you would have no problem with his deportation.

[aemathisphd]

"Perhaps you mistake Demjanjuk for actual Nazi war criminals who were let go....because they were Jewish?"

Huh?

Also, the Israeli Supreme Court did not clear him of the Sobibor charges. They refused to hear them. Big difference

[okiedokie59]

Are we going to start criminalizing thought, or the expression thereof? Are we going to stifle discussion? We question historical accuracy constantly. It would seem it is perfectly acceptable to question the existence of God, or Christ, and it's acceptable to question who killed Kennedy. We can question what really happened on 9/11, we can call our President a Muslim traitor, we can call democrats "communists" and "socialists", we can call Catholic Priests pedophiles....but we can't question ANYTHING about the Jewish loss of life during WWII? There seems to be a push to criminalize any thought or expression of belief, that could in any way, shape, or form, be offensive to Jews or Israel. The Pope was criticized in Israel last week because he wouldn't remove the cross from around his neck. The cross, he was told, was offensive to Jews and hurt their feelings. I don't know about the rest of the readers, but I sometimes feel we are marching to place in time where we are going to be told what we can think, believe, read, speak, etc. So, I might not like most of what Pat Buchanan says, I support his right to say it and believe it. I want the same courtesy. I don't need my thoughts policed.

[aemathisphd]

"but we can't question ANYTHING about the Jewish loss of life during WWII?"

Er, no.

You can question whatever you like. Historians have been exhaustively looking at this period of history for as long as it happened, and much in the way of legitimate revisionism of the history of this period has been done.

But if one begins from the standpoint that nothing happened to any Jew during World War II who didn't deserve it, then one is going to get flak for that. We Jewish people are funny that way.

We're also funny about people with a clear animus toward us being placed in positions of vocal and visual prominence.

Never mind what he has been recorded on tape during the Nixon administration as saying about black Americans.

Free speech and "thought policing" has nothing to do with it. Nobody is suggesting Buchanan be arrested. You're evoking a slippery slope fallacy. What is being suggested is that Buchanan's platform be taken away from him because his points of view are odious to most decent people.

[ic2much]

By taking away his "platform" you are depriving him of free speech. That makes no sense. I've been listing to Buchanan for years and he has never persuaded me of anything, so I have no fear of him or anyone else, including David Duke, shouting from the rooftops if he so desires.

I think this obsession with imprisoning and trying a sick old man nearly 90 years old is pathetic. After all these years, there is no way any viable evidence could exist against him and if it does, so what? He's on death's door. Show a little human decency and let him die in peace. You've already ruined his name. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord - that's Old Testament. Jews are supposed to believe in it. Tracking down "Nazi war criminals" like Adolf Eichmann, which I cheered when I was a kid, seemed like justice to me then. Now, however, after 2 or 3 generations, this compulsive "making things even" with the art collections, the Swiss bankers, etc. is just too much. That's war - the spoils go to the victor and it has been that way throughout human history. I'm ashamed of my government for involving themselves in the witch hunts for people who legitimately purchased art and other items only to have them revoked 50 or 60 years later. It's embarrasing to watch it.

[HeevenSteven]

This is not about questioning anything. The denial movement is not about historical accuracy, or anything else objective. If Chris Matthews actively supported debunked and objectively false 9-11 conspiracy theories, he would and should loose credibility, and that would surely affect his ratings and the viability of his show, and even tenure at MSNBC. Ditto Buchanan.

[JakeMontero]

easy Heven7... many folks here believe that 911 was an inside job :sad:

[JakeMontero]

Okie - I get your point and the Libertarian part of my brain agrees with you ... to a point. I don't believe you can question what happened in WWII...

[ecofriendly]

Criminalize? No. Accountability? Yes! MSNBC silence is a chilling reminder of a horrific period in history where to many stood by quietly.

Just stood there.

[aemathisphd]

Bravo, Mr. Rosensaft. Buchanan needs to be marginalized and not embraced by the mainstream. This was obviously as long ago as 1992 and his "war from the future of America" speech in New Hampshire. The Holocaust denial stuff has been around him a long time, and his association with Larry Pratt is also something he's never answered for.

Bill Buckley had Buchanan's number many years ago. If nobody listened to Buckley, there's little hope people will listen to other intelligent voices, be they liberal or conservative.

[Sinick]

Menachem. I agree with you wholeheartedly! One piece of advice however, the paragraph beginning with "Matthews would never have remained silent . . ." did not add any value. I feel that at that point, your piece took a step backward toward those that you are excoriating.