AlterNet: Why is Pat Buchanan Defending Hitler?

[marmar]

Why is Pat Buchanan Defending Hitler?

Posted by Aaron Keyak, AlterNet at 4:01 PM on September 2, 2009.

Buchanan posted a telling column on his own website and on Townhall that seems to blame Poland for World War II.




MSNBC conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has a history of insensitivity to issues surrounding the Holocaust. Yet again, with the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, Buchanan posted a telling column on his own website and on Townhall that seems to blame Poland for World War II.

In a piece titled "Just how crazy is Pat Buchanan," Ethan Porter writes on his blog, "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood," that Buchanan's latest comments reflect "revisionism that comes perilously close to denial:"

Despite his current position, as a friendly sparring partner with Rachel Maddow and in-house winger on MSNBC, the guy has been a very-thinly veiled fascist sympathizer for decades. And in his column this week, he all but removes that veil.

Available here, the column is titled "Did Hitler Want War?" Buchanan believes the answer to be no. He pins the blame for World War II on Poland, and Britain's guarantee of protection to it. As evidence, Buchanan points to a string of inexplicably dumb decisions made by Hitler-so dumb that, to Buchanan, they negate the myths about the war and the man thought by nearly all sentient beings to be its instigator.

You might think that Buchanan would have stopped using this sort of unrepentant rhetoric as his career moved from a Republican firebrand to a commentator on one of the nation's top cable news channels - but you'd be wrong.

Buchanan has the sort of history that has earned him an entire page on the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) website. The ADL goes so far as to describe Buchanan as one who "publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views." The site features a sampling of more than 2,000 of Buchanan's own words, but maybe more telling are the thoughts of the late conservative intellectual William Buckley, who was included in a Newsweek's article "Is Pat Buchanan Anti-Semitic:"

Buchanan also wrote that if the United States went to war, the fighting would be done by "kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown." Buckley, in his usual opaque writing style, argues that this amounts to charging Jews with starting a war they wouldn't fight in a genuine slur against them. He adds: "I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it: most probably, an iconoclastic temperament."

These are rough words coming from Buckley, who goes to great pains to distinguish between anti-Semitism and simply voicing criticism of Israel.

It is hard to be surprised by a man who has written many columns concerning World War II revisionism, but this may be his worst yet.

However, what may be most surprising is why Buchanan still has a job. Actually, there is a place on MSNBC where he may belong - you would have to ask Keith Olbermann about that one.



http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/142392/why_is_pat_buchanan_defending_hitler/

[jgraz]

1. Hey, I defend my role models too.

Give Unca Pat a break.


:D

[Lorax7844]

10. Um cause he's a Nazi

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. Professional courtesy. n./t

[Anti-Republician]

3. I knew it.

I kind of knew Pat Buchanan was a racist or Anti-semitic. I wish MSNBC would boot his ass from their network.

[mucifer]

4. It does piss me off that Rachel gives him a platform to speak. I'm sure if she

didn't want him on her show, he'd be gone.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. Yup, when Poland seized Austria, marched into Czechoslovakia, and

sent its armies into the demilitarized zone between France and Germany, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, clearly the Poles were to blame. When the raving Polish dictator wrote in his book about his life's struggle that the Poles needed to build a Slavic wonderland to the west, sanitized of all Germanic people, it clearly pointed the way to war. When Poland signed the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union so they could freely invade Germany without the interference of Russia, it was clear they wanted war and had planned for it. When the Poles invaded Germany by blitzkrieg with only World War I vintage bi-planes and cavalry, going up against German Messerschmitt 109s and tanks, it was clear that the Poles wanted war and went to any extent to instigate it.

[Johonny]

6. because Republicans have no respect for you intelligence

I mean only earlier this year on Darwins birthday he blamed Darwin for Naziism, now it turns out they weren't that bad according to Pat. What's that mean... it means he doesn't think you're smart enough to know actual history, even the history of his own column. I always wonder if conservatives ever catch on that their own party leaders have no respect for them.

[dgibby]

7. To paraphrase Mollie Ivans:

Pat's always better in the original German.

[daughter of liberty2]

8. Why is this idiot still on MSNBC?

+1 :wtf:

[Yuugal]

9. I liked his article

Its here: http://buchanan.org/blog/did-hitler-want-war-2068

He takes what appears to be the standard approach which is to point out inconsistencies with the accepted meme of how it all started and he offers up one possible answer. I disagree with him but I can't find anything racist in this piece.

Pat is my favorite hemorrhoid. He was against the Iraq war before alot of dems, but although he itches, bleeds and hurts less than the others, he still is what he is. We should probably be encouraging him since in his place they will put another bobble-headed Palin clone who will not only be wrong, but incoherently wrong.....which is always the right's answer to any issue/question they don't have a good response for.

[LeftishBrit]

11. Because he's a fascist, that's why.

I first became aware of him when he defended LePen some years ago, and my opinion of him hasn't improved since.

[oligarhy]

12. Because he has a tiny penis

and it doesn't work anymore.


It makes a guy grumpy.