Pat Buchanan's Bile Goes Unchallenged

The fatal shooting at Washington's U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum four weeks ago is a grim reminder that white supremacists and Holocaust deniers are dangerous fanatics -- domestic terrorists, if you will.

The assailant James von Brunn's hatred for Jews and African-Americans was fueled by the vitriol he spewed out on his Web site and that he absorbed from similar internet sources. "The Holocaust is a lie," he wrote in a note found in his car after the attack. "Obama was created by Jews."

I do not know whether Patrick J. Buchanan's official Web site was one of von Brunn's regular haunts, but it easily could have been.

Buchanan is a former senior White House official in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, erstwhile arch-conservative candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and now a highly paid political commentator on MSNBC. He is also a patron of Holocaust deniers.

Almost two months ago, on May 12, I disclosed in a New York Daily News article that his Web site was sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum entitled "Disinformation, Deception and Other Tricks: Discussion about 'The Holocaust'" (with The Holocaust in quotes). Within hours, the forum vanished without explanation from Buchanan.org, and the link to it was disabled. However, no one at MSNBC has asked Buchanan a single question about this forum on the air.

Among the postings on the Buchanan Web site's forum were "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 "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."

Buchanan has long championed the cause of a succession of Nazi war criminals, including most prominently John Demjanjuk, the former SS guard at the death camps of Sobibor and Majdanek, who was recently deported from Cleveland to Germany to stand trial on 29,000 counts of murder. He has 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."

Buchanan considers World War II to have been "unnecessary," and 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." He also wrote in his March 17, 1990 syndicated column that it would have been impossible for Jews to be killed in the gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp, and dismissed the Holocaust survivors' experiences as "group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been excoriated for convening a December 2006 international pseudo-academic conference of Holocaust deniers in Tehran. Earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI was widely criticized when he sought to rehabilitate an obscure renegade Roman Catholic cleric who had declared that he did not believe that Jews had been murdered in gas chambers during World War II. In sharp contrast, Buchanan has been given a pass by both his employers and his colleagues at MSNBC.

Even though Buchanan has appeared repeatedly on at least three MSNBC news programs since his Web site's Holocaust denial forum became a matter of public record, he has not been challenged about it even once.

When Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) questioned the patriotism of her fellow members of Congress on Hardball with Chris Matthews during last year's presidential campaign, Matthews cross-examined her mercilessly. However, Matthews has not asked Buchanan to explain why he provided a platform for Holocaust deniers.

Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, has been sharply critical of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's contention that certain right-wing talk show hosts and columnists have given "aid and comfort to dangerous extremism." But Scarborough has not confronted Buchanan with the anti-Semitic, Holocaust denying screeds that were posted on his Web site.

Speaking at the Buchenwald concentration camp five days before the Holocaust Museum shooting, President Obama said that Holocaust denial is "a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful. This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts; a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."

So far, MSNBC has shirked this duty. Buchanan has a constitutional right to hold offensive, even reprehensible views, and the news channel's executives have the right to retain him as a fixture on their programs. MSNBC does not, however, have the right to insulate Buchanan from hard questions that risk shattering his veneer of respectability. He must once and for all be held publicly accountable for facilitating the dissemination of toxic hate speech that, as the Holocaust Museum shooting reminds us, can have tragic consequences.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School

(This article was first published in the New York Jewish Week)

 

Comments

[GHARDY]

MSNBC has long been a supporter of Buchanan's, I was home during the day on vacation from work, and tuned in to Alex Witt. While watching Buchanan was brought in for commentary, and introduced by Witt as one of her boy's. Well Ms. Witt your boy as you call him, is a old man, still hating after all these years. The sad part is that Buchanan is held up as someone fair minded and knowledgable in politics. In other word MSNBC makes Buchanan acceptable. I watched as the anchors, on that network, totally rip, others apart for making racist statements, and then turn around and Witt come out smiling and doting on Buchanan, teasing him about being Palin's boy friend. I have not watched MSNBC since that day, and will not watch until Buchanan is gone, and ditto for CNN and Lou Dobbs.

[cliffhammond]

Buchanan has a sour face and Reagan was handsome -- they represent the same ideologies. Yet Reagan is called by some "our greatest president.­" Right wing is right wing. Now I want to hear what Rosensaft has to say about another right-winger: Benyamin Netenyaho.

[EagleFliesInSky]

Does anyone take Pat Buchanan seriously? He's so 'yesterday' in the news and I truly think that people watch him for the comic effect. He's Bruno in a suit. Just gets outrageous-er and outrageous-er.

[GrammieJ]

I am 65 years old and I think Buchanan's views are older than dirt. He looks through issues like disgusting tunnell vision and speaks so on tv. He is damaging to the US and should not be allowed on ANY news programs.
I turn him off and have made it a vow to NOT watch Morning Joe, they disgust me also.
Buchanan is an old man with ancient ideas,,,,,,,sad sad
just my thoughts

[JerryLevy]

Nice column and mostly true, but you insist on ignoring another bastion of anti semitism because it is not politically correct to call attention to it. The websites of the Muslim Students Union and other Muslim advocasy groups. Buchanan is hardly alone and he is much less vitrioulic than others

[BrwnSknGurl4]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your column. I had no idea this racist man was also an anti-semite, but given who his boss was in the White House, I'm not surprised since he too was an anti-semite. (BTW, has anyone asked Kissinger how he could stand working with that man??!!)

It's even more interesting that MSNBC fell down on this job since the Nixon tapes were recovered noting Nixon's anti-semitism and racist thinking..­.I noticed that Buchanan was never a guest on these shows to defend his former boss. MSNBC must be held to account for this. This Klansman in a suit needs to be exposed for who he is, and MSNBC allowing him to appear on shows when it's "convenient" for him is shameful..­. No wonder Lawrence O'Donnell clearly despises him...

[dogdiva]

Thanks for this. There ought to be a lot more of this. I'm so tired of seeing hosts like Chris Matthews sit there and chuckle about Buchanan's views. I've heard Matthew's say more than once something to the effect of "I gotta love you Pat!". No...you don't have to.

[arvay]

Buchanan's views are mostly from the Jurassic, but I don't think anyone can produce a single incitement to violence from him. He represents a fading set of ideas, some of which are offensive to some people -- and free speech is the right to be offensive, among other things.

Let's be clear. "Holocaust denial" is ahistorical and ignores the evidence, but isn't criminal, at least while we still have the First Amendment. People are free to be stupid and ignorant, and make asses of themselves.

Frankly, I think Rosensaft's outcry is Judeo-centric -- that all he really cares about are Buchanan's well-aimed darts at AIPAC and other parts of the Israel lobby. Even the most strident people can be right about something, and Buchanan is right about that.

[lagumbo]

Bucannan is one of the reason I stop watching Chris Matthew's show. One reason I stop watching Moring Joke and the door mat Mika, if he ever appears on Maddow again or Obermann I will stop watching their show. Boycott the shows Bucannan appears on .

[pene]

we cancelled our tv last week. already i've read 2 books. and i don't have to listen to chris matthews drool over sarah palin or try to figure out what keith olberman is saying by recording and slowing down the tape. I miss rachel maddow's intelligence, but that is what you tube is for.

all tv news outlets are basically corrupt. stop watching them and see how much better you will feel!

[kindGSL]

Ah ignorance! The most relaxing drug of all.

[stagebandman]

You listen to people who know these guys personally and they all say the same thing, "he's a real nice guy", "very personable", "likable", etc., etc., etc. Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity, Dennis Miller, even Rush all get that, and from people who are way on the other side. Rachel Maddow calls him her favorite uncle. That leads me to think that they don't really believe all the bile and vitriol that they espouse. And maybe that's even worse than if they bought the whole right wing schtick. Because if it were really their nature, then there may be a way to ultimately get through to them, logically. But if they are simply "playing a role", then in many ways that makes them even more dangerous, because they don't care about the effect they're having on the public. And that creates some very bad thinking.

[AvalonMike]

There is an old saying, Methinks you doth protest too much. At any instance of negative thought on Jewish activities, past or present, the big guns of antisemitic hate accusations unfurl. Nowhere in history are Jewish groups guilty of ANYTHING. That being the truth there certainly must be a multitude of lies being told.

[kindGSL]

Gaza?

[pons1595]

I have longed known Pat is a racist, anti-Semitic, and a traitor. MSNBC continues to utilize this wastrel. Why not give him a program like they did with Joe Scarborough and attract the extreme right loonies and make money like Fox.

[dogdiva]

Oh god no! At the rate MSNBC is going that is probably EXACTLY what they will do! MSNBC's theory is that anything that riles people up is a money maker. I can't listen to Olbermann's screeds any more when he has sat there all this time without ever putting up a "worst person" comment by Joe, Mika, or Pat. We all know they belonged there about once a week. Some courage.

[kindGSL]

Because he is more effective as a propaganda tool used the way he is.

I heard him explain how he is informed when Nixon tapes are going to be released. If the news is bad for him he calls in sick at MSNBC that day. He knows no matter what it is, by the next day or two it will all blow over.

[Budokan]

Why would he be held accountable now? He's never been before. You think the milquetoast news media which echoes RNC talking points is going to shut him down? If you do then you must also believe trees are made of ice cream and frogs wear funny hats.

[kindGSL]

You can tell by all the respect they give him that he is a Big Player in politics.

[marignymitch]

Buchanan's Barcalounger has a permanent place in MSNBC's green room.

[gs425]

"James von Brunn's hatred for Jews and African-Am­ericans...­."

Pssst, you forgot that he hated the last 3 republican administrations as well. 2 out of those 3 are trademarks of the.....le­ft.

[apoyo]

Buchanan is an equal opportunity hater.

The only acceptable people are whites of European descent.

[marignymitch]

Not if they're gay.

[kindGSL]

Or Hippies.