Commenters identified as “conservative” often get unfairly, and generally absurdly, labeled by their opponents as “fascists,” but Buchanan is a rare one who deserves it. Why is he still a “respectable” media presence?
UPDATE: Let me clarify: this post is just one of many examples of Buchanan’s general fascistic mentality, not “proof” by itself of that mentality. As for those who don’t even see any racism in this particular column, what about this:
This means white folks on Medicare or headed there will see benefits curtailed, while new arrivals from the Third World, whence almost all immigrants come, get taxpayer-subsidized health insurance. Any wonder why all those tea-party and town-hall protests seem to be made up of angry white folks?
What the McDonnell, Christie and Brown victories teach is that the GOP should stop listening to the Wall Street Journal and start listening to these forgotten Americans.
Why would, for example, black American citizens be less angry than white Americans about subsidizing illegal immigrants’ health insurance? “Angry white folks” are the “forgotten Americans?” Aren’t there any black, Hispanic, or Asian people on Medicare?
Ichthyophagous says:
After reading your link, I would not say Buchanan is a fascist. A racist, yes.
January 22, 2010, 12:00 pmDavid says:
Buchanan, whether fascist or racist, is still welcome on the media precisely because he can be tagged as a conservative who is obviously fascist or racist (or both).
Jeez, the question almost answered itself.
January 22, 2010, 12:06 pmA. Criminal says:
Commenters identified as “conservative” often get unfairly, and generally absurdly, labeled by their opponents as “fascists,” but Buchanan is a rare one who deserves it. Why is he still a “respectable” media presence?
There’s nothing at all related to “fascism” at the link. I can conclude that David Bernstein is a liberal since he seems to claim that: a white person talking about racial issues = fascism.
“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.” — Thomas Sowell
January 22, 2010, 12:08 pmDavid Bernstein says:
His racism (and anti-Semitism) is of a typically fascist nature: supported the true volk against pushy minorities and urban elites.
January 22, 2010, 12:08 pmpmorem says:
I think he’s kept around as a foil or straw-man.
Personally, I agree with very little of what he says. I find him repugnant. Yet, for all that, it seems that people hold him up as some kind of caricature of my beliefs.
He does not speak for me. I question whether or not he speaks for anyone but himself.
January 22, 2010, 12:15 pmzuch says:
He’s racist … but he’s concomitantly honest. He believes this stuff and is not afraid to say so.
Cheers,
January 22, 2010, 12:15 pmArthurKirkland says:
What is a ten-word description of current Republican strategy, Alex?
January 22, 2010, 12:17 pmsam raimi says:
and of course you agree that talking about the the black vote or the hispanic vote, etc. is also racist. I think we need to be consistent here.
January 22, 2010, 12:20 pmliberty4all says:
The whole reason Buchanan is still considered relevant since his last Presidential runs is because of the illegal immigration issue.
January 22, 2010, 12:20 pmpete says:
For the same reason Al Sharpton is? They both say enough controversal things to get ratings and readers and are fairly skilled at communicating their ideas.
January 22, 2010, 12:21 pmMLS says:
What a crock! You choose to attack a person making comments without lifting even a single finger to address his “numbers”. Stop challenging and deriding messengers with whom you disagree and start addressing the merits/demerits of the message. Anything less is hypocritical and intellectually dishonest.
In 2008 I voted for Mr. McCain. I happened to disagree with many of his views, but I happened to disagree by a large margin with many more of Mr. Obama’s views. Am I a “racist” simply I vote based upon “issues”, not one of which has anything to do with one’s ethnicity?
January 22, 2010, 12:22 pmA. Zarkov says:
What in the essay you linked to is fascist? Some of Buchanan’s other writings might be characterized that way, but not this particular one.
In a recent essay Mort Zuckerman points out that non-whites give Obama a 76% approval rating, while whites give him 41%. That’s a pretty stark divide. Does pointing this out make Zuckerman a racist and a fascist? Why don’t we just stick to analysis and avoid the name calling for a change?
January 22, 2010, 12:23 pmRuth H says:
My observation is the only places he is seen as the “conservative” voice is on CNN and MSNBC where they want to put an ugly face on conservative thought. His only reason for being.
January 22, 2010, 12:24 pmpmorem says:
Arthur Kirkland wrote:
What is a ten-word description of current Republican strategy, Alex?
I believe you demonstrate my point.
He’s a caricature.
I believe the proper word for you would be “bigot”.
January 22, 2010, 12:32 pmbyomtov says:
The answer is that it’s very hard to get kicked out of the club once you’re in.
Buchanan should have been booted from polite society, much less the media, many years ago.
January 22, 2010, 12:32 pmManju says:
I have a soft spot for Pat Buchanan. He’s the last of the anti-capitalist right, and that makes him a rare voic, as well as reminds us that economic authoritarianism is central to fascism…which btw partially explains why the most fascist aspect of american political life–the segregationists and dixiecrats–found a home in the more left-wing party.
On the foreign policy front I admire his edmund burkean opposition to the iraqi war, which i attribute to his deep conservative understanding of the role religion and tradition play in all societies. His praising of Obama’s handling of iran’s emerging revolution was a highpoint–he bluntly recognized the role of American interventionism in the area leading to distrust–while the rest of the right blabbered on inanely with platitudes to freedom and democracy. McCain was particulary simple-minded.
January 22, 2010, 12:35 pmbw says:
What racism?
I’m just not seeing it. The column cited is a pretty clinical analysis of the demographic factors in the Massachusetts election as it relates to other recent votes. Also, since it closes with calls for more limited government, how can it be remotely fascist?
I’m no fan of Buchanan, because of his opposition to free trade, and for years I’ve looked for this racism of his that people keep talking about, but I just don’t see it.
January 22, 2010, 12:36 pmCheckEnclosed says:
Ummm … fascist? Such usage sends one scurrying back to “Politics and the English Language” (a not-un pleasant read).
Perhaps Mr. Bernstein has some evidence to support his accusation, but it is not really in the lnked article. His supportive reference to the true “volk” is not well grounded in Buchanan’s opposition to illegal immigrants, which is shared by many millions who nevertheless support and even mythologize the accumplishments of Americans who immigrated legally. Buchanan’s opposition to bail outs for Wall Street hardly seems fascist, unless you want to say that “Wall Street” is code for “Jewish Financiers”, which is a bridge too far. Likewise, there is nothing particularly fascist in railing against sending jobs to China, though it may be silly, populist protectionism. Paying attention to the largest racially identifiable block of voters as election strategy is also not fascist. So what is there to support the charge?
January 22, 2010, 12:40 pmMark Field says:
The segregationists found a home in the Democratic Party long before fascism was even a word, much less a political movement. And anyone who thinks that the Democratic Party of, say, 1870 was “the more left wing” is truly clueless.
January 22, 2010, 12:41 pmdvgrossman says:
David, while I appreciate your usual carefully researched and thought-out posts, I find nothing fascist or racist in the Buchanan column you link, and your characterizing him as fascist on the basis of this column is unworthy of you.
If polls keep track of voters in terms White, Black and Hispanic, please explain why it is improper to analyze elections by referring to such statistics?
January 22, 2010, 12:43 pmPer Son says:
MLS – have you actually read what Buchanan says? Referring to white people he said:
“In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.
They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.”
So let me understand, only white people have Christian faith, and enforcing the Establishment Clause is racist against white people. Only white people’s jobs were outsourced to other countries. Illegal aliens are somehow taking jobs at lower wages without for one second asking who is providing those jobs. They carry Mexican flags in American cities, but of course white people never carry flags supporting Italy or Ireland during various ethnic/national celebrations, and white people never carry around Israeli flags in support of Israel.
So white people never go into emergency rooms if they are uninsured?
His racism and anti-semitism are hardly new. Consider http://students.washington.edu/trevorg/pdfs/Nixon/Buchanan.pdf, where Buchanan supports affirmative action for Catholics in government. He said that orders should go to Agencies to hire ethnic Catholics not blacks. I guess he was for affirmative action before he was against it.
“Take a hard look at Duke’s portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks.” (syndicated column, 2/25/89)
Trying to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion that “white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this.” (syndicated column, 2/7/90) He referred admiringly to the apartheid regime as the “Boer Republic”: “Why are Americans collaborating in a U.N. conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions?” (syndicated column, 9/17/89)
Capitol Hill as “Israeli-occupied territory.” (St. Louis Post Dispatch, 10/20/90)
“There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East — the Israeli defense ministry and its ‘amen corner’ in the United States.” (McLaughlin Group, 8/26/90)
Buchanan said that despite Hitler’s anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was “an individual of great courage…. Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.” (Guardian, 1/14/92)
Writing of “group fantasies of martyrdom,” Buchanan challenged the historical record that thousands of Jews were gassed to death by diesel exhaust at Treblinka: “Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody.” (New Republic, 10/22/90)
Buchanan was vehement in pushing President Reagan — despite protests — to visit Germany’s Bitburg cemetery, where Nazi SS troops were buried. At a White House meeting, Buchanan reportedly reminded Jewish leaders that they were “Americans first” — and repeatedly scrawled the phrase “Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews” in his notebook. Buchanan was credited with crafting Ronald Reagan’s line that the SS troops buried at Bitburg were “victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” (New York Times, 5/16/85; New Republic, 1/22/96)
After Cardinal O’Connor criticized anti-Semitism during the controversy over construction of a convent near Auschwitz, Buchanan wrote: “If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O’Connor of New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him ‘there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic’…he speaks for himself. Be not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests ready to assume the role of defender of the faith.” (New Republic, 10/22/90)
The Buchanan ’96 campaign’s World Wide Web site included an article blaming the death of White House aide Vincent Foster on the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad — and alleging that Foster and Hillary Clinton were Mossad spies. (The campaign removed the article after its existence was reported by a Jewish on-line news service; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2/21/96.)
January 22, 2010, 12:44 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Let me clarify: this post is just one of many examples of Buchanan’s general fascistic mentality, not “proof” by itself of that mentality.
January 22, 2010, 12:46 pmNoesis Noeseos says:
Racist, fascist, or populist, or just old fogy and curmudgeon, at least Buchanan is correct in opposing affirmative action, for which there is no constitutional warrant whatsoever (on the federal level).
January 22, 2010, 12:46 pmBama 1L says:
That makes him a racist, doesn’t it? Where is the part of the essay where he advocates establishment of a one-party state that will eliminate class conflict by means of an economic Third Way founded in corporatism and authoritarianism?
January 22, 2010, 12:46 pmdvgrossman says:
David, “just one of many examples” — a very poor reply for a lawyer. Again, what in this column (the only column you cite or link to) is fascist, and what exactly is wrong with analyzing elections in terms of the available polling statistics?
January 22, 2010, 12:54 pmMartinned says:
Indeed, fascism and racism are distinct, and it is very well possible to support each one without the other. Buchanan does not seem to have any obvious anti-democratic tendencies, so I don’t think the label fascist applies.
January 22, 2010, 12:59 pmzuch says:
The Republicans are the “more left-wing party”? Who wouldda thunk it….
Cheers,
January 22, 2010, 1:03 pmStrict says:
It’s good to define “fascist” before calling someone it.
January 22, 2010, 1:06 pmJay says:
“ArthurKirkland”
What’s a two-names-run-together-as-one description for “troll who populates almost every VC thread with off-topic, strident political jibes”?
January 22, 2010, 1:08 pmElliot says:
There certainly are blacks, Hispanics, and Asians on medicare. Maybe they are angry, too. But Buchanan was writing about the changed voting patterns of whites.
I don’t see how this column evidences either a racist or a fascistic mentality. Perhaps that is indeed his mentality, but this particular column offers no evidence of that mentality
January 22, 2010, 1:12 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Buchanan is claiming that white people, and only white people (“Any wonder why all those tea-party and town-hall protests seem to be made up of angry white folks?”) are angry about “third world” illegal immigrants getting subsidized health insurance at the expense of Medicare beneficiaries. The implication is that non-white people aren’t angry, because they support other non-white people even if it hurts their individual self-interest. So, e.g., apparently Asian Americans on Medicare will support reducing their own Medicare benefits to support Hispanic illegals in the greater interest of “Third World people” vs. the interests of whites.
January 22, 2010, 1:16 pmMLS says:
To Per Son:
One article was linked, with my comment limited to the one article.
To Bernstein:
You are obviously not a fan of Mr. Buchanan. I myself have no opinion on Mr. Buschnan.
Next time you are tempted to link to a single article in an attempt to make some sort of an unstated point that is in no reasonable manner supported by the contents of the article, try including other links to make your point more apparent.
January 22, 2010, 1:17 pmDavid Bernstein says:
[Edited] Given that there is no constituency for such views, and expressing such views would almost certainly mark an end to Buchanan’s lucrative career as a talking head, the fact that he hasn’t expressed such views is not much evidence that he doesn’t have them. Put Buchanan in the 1930s: Does he support FDR, the Republican opposition, or Father Coughlin?
January 22, 2010, 1:17 pmMLS says:
Is your obvious distaste for Mr. Buchanan so strong that you deem it wholly unnecessary to proffer even a single citation?
January 22, 2010, 1:22 pmDavid Bernstein says:
(“Any wonder why all those tea-party and town-hall protests seem to be made up of angry white folks?”) That’s directly from the piece, and it comes right after he talks about Medicare recipients being angry at subsidizing Third World immigrants. I guess quoting Buchanan’s own words isn’t enough of a citation for you.
January 22, 2010, 1:26 pmyankee says:
I see nothing remotely fascistic in that article. Racist, yes. Fascist, no.
January 22, 2010, 1:26 pmYankev says:
Buchanan made it clear on numerous occassions that he considers Jews an alien presence in America, so that might not be the best counterargument to his objecting to Mexican flags.
January 22, 2010, 1:27 pmPer Son says:
MLS:
I attached the one citation I have an E-link for. The rest are available on Lexis-Nexis. Have fun reading them and explaining how they are not racist and/or anti-Semetic.
January 22, 2010, 1:28 pmJK says:
But somehow you just know that if there was such a constituency Buchanan would be all over it? The ability to read minds must be a huge edge for you in litigation.
January 22, 2010, 1:28 pmLou Gots says:
Well, Buchanan is putting his foot in it again by not explaning what he mearns by “White.” If he means racially,geneticaly, white, with European DNA, he is an unAmerican heretic. However, if he is using the idea of “whiteness” as the sociologists use it when discussing cultural assimilation, he may be defended.
If by “white” he means virtuous, as Kipling sang about Gunga Din, the “better man,” who, “. . .for all ‘is dirty ‘ide, he was white, clear white, inside,” then what he says is understandable. Now for the most part, we don’t use that idiom any longer, out of consideration for our neighbors’ feelings. Nevertheless, there is something to it. It is a feeling that our own institutions are exceptional, and that others would be better off if they were more like us, an less like, say Haitians. If we believe in ourselves, and if we wish our fellow human beings well, what other position could we possibly take?
January 22, 2010, 1:29 pmdcp says:
I don’t think he’s relevant anymore.
Look no further than the fact that he was one of the harshest critics of the Bush administration. I mean, he really laid into Bush, the war, etc. on a daily basis, but the mainstream media and the left wouldn’t touch the guy with a ten foot pole, despite the fact that “former conservative bigwig and Republican presidential candidate pens yet another scathing, well reasoned attack on Bush administration” must have been tempting fruit for the left.
They knew what sort of fleas they would wake up with if they crawled into that bed. As soon as they gave him the microphone and a round of applause, he would go Borat on them and grab a stick and start smashing “jew eggs”.
January 22, 2010, 1:30 pmJK says:
So the burden is on MLS to prove the negative, not for you to demonstrate that there was anything actually racist, anti-semetic, or fascist in his writings?
January 22, 2010, 1:31 pmpete says:
Could you define fascism for us? Do you have any proof that Buchanan actually supports those views?
You can be a racist and extreme nationalist without being a fascist. One of the common defenitions of fascism usually includes supporting a belligerent expansion of the state into other countries. Buchanan is probably the most prominent isolationist in this country for the past few decades. So at least by that definition of fascism he falls short.
January 22, 2010, 1:33 pmben says:
I guess my eyes deceived me when I saw that those protests were made up almost exclusively of white people.
January 22, 2010, 1:36 pmneurodoc says:
How rare is it for a racist to belief the racism they spout?
January 22, 2010, 1:39 pmCal says:
I guess he didn’t pass the Volokh political correctness meter-GFY
January 22, 2010, 1:40 pmegd says:
I suppose if DB’s position means that the Revs. Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton are racist fascists, then this makes sense.
I think you should also apply it to any political commentator who discusses “the black vote.”
I also like the selective cropping of text:
Sounds very ominous. Except the preceding paragraph said:
For those claiming PB is discounting blacks, the argument is as follows:
1 – White people are 80-90% of Medicare recipients
2 – Obamacare will impose reduced benefits to Medicare recipients
3 – All Medicare recipients will lose benefits to illegal immigrants.
4 – White people will lose benefits to illegal immigrants.
Yes, PB omitted step 3, but I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to reason that out. The article is a comment on why the white vote is leaving President Obama. It doesn’t make sense to discuss blacks or hispanics in that context.
January 22, 2010, 1:40 pmneurodoc says:
Do you doubt that Buchanan, who believes that the US shouldn’t have entered WWII to fight the Nazis and has opposed the “persecution” of Nazis, qualifies as a racist and an antisemite?
January 22, 2010, 1:44 pmPer Son says:
JK:
I gave a list of racist/anti-Semetic quotes from Buchanan. If you think that they are not racist/anti-Semetic, I’d really like to know why. Buchanon, plain and simple, is a racist and anti-Semite. His behavior for most of his life demonstrates it. If someone disagrees, I’d really like to know the basis. Those quotes are just a few.
January 22, 2010, 1:46 pmneurodoc says:
You are aware, are you not, that Buchanan is a regular on the McLaughlin Group, where he is one half of the “conservative” team (unless you count the host, John McLaughlin, as part of that team too) pitted against the two-person “liberal” team?
January 22, 2010, 1:46 pmElliot says:
The idea that Tea Parties seem to be predominantly white doesn’t support the notion that whites and only whites are angry. Is a Tea Party the only available expression of anger?
Other writings by Buchanan may support your opinion of him. Perhaps you can cite some for us. This one doesn’t.
January 22, 2010, 1:52 pmMercer says:
The New Republic has articles by Tom Edsall and John Judis that offer analysis about white voters and Obama that are similar to Buchanan. Are the TNR, Judis and Edsall also fascist?
January 22, 2010, 1:52 pmneurodoc says:
Per Son, didn’t see your sampler of Buchanan’s telling pensees before posting. Had I seen it, I would have just said “amen,” though to be sure you didn’t exhaust the subject.
January 22, 2010, 1:53 pmneurodoc says:
Check out some of the “paleo-conservative” crowd he pitches his magazine to.
January 22, 2010, 1:58 pmPer Son says:
Ugh – DB did not say discussing racial trends is facist or racist. Rather, he criticized what was said, how it was said, and its implications and ommisions.
January 22, 2010, 2:01 pmneurodoc says:
You didn’t cite William Buckley’s 57 page essay on antisemitism which took up a whole issue of the National Review and focused on Buchanan, Joe Sobran, and Gore Vidal as exemplars of antisemitism, the first two of the Right, the last of the Left.
January 22, 2010, 2:03 pmSGD says:
I don’t see how he can be called a fascist, to the extent that term has any meaning. Buchanan does not support authoritarianism. Although he is against free trade and immigration, he does not support corporatism. He is not in favor of a powerful police state; just the opposite in fact.
His racism is pretty thinly veiled in his writings. If we need to call him names, ‘racist’ is probably a more accurate epitaph.
January 22, 2010, 2:14 pmTamerlane says:
Professor Bernstein:
You write:
But as other bloggers have pointed out, Buchanan is only reporting an obvious truth here. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians are supporting Obama and his ilk by overwhelming majorities even while these politicians support uncontrolled immigration, free-trade, and other policies that are demonstrably hurting the economic opportunities of US citizens within these minority populations. Self-interest would suggest that members of these minority populations would share the anger of their white counterparts but, as Buchanan points out, racial identity currently seems to be a more important explanatory factor for these racial and ethnic groups’ political attitudes and affiliations.
On these grounds I think it’s a big stretch to call Buchanan racist. And you’re using fascist as an epithet rather than a meaningful political term when you use that word to describe Buchanan.
January 22, 2010, 2:21 pmluci says:
I usuaully like DB’s posts, and I can’t stand Pat Buchanan, but really:
“…the fact that he hasn’t expressed such views is not much evidence that he doesn’t have them.”
That’s quite a statment.
January 22, 2010, 2:29 pmJimCopland says:
Fortunately, nobody with any real power will be listening to Pat at this point. If Brown, Christie, or McDonnell had run on the platform Buchanan proposes, each would have lost.
January 22, 2010, 2:39 pmzuch says:
Not at all. But honesty is a more precious commodity nowadays, with PC and all….
Cheers,
January 22, 2010, 2:39 pmBruce Hayden says:
Keep in mind that Fascism (as well as Nazism) is nationalistic socialism. President Obama is far closer to being a Fascist than those typically called such, and, indeed, his economics appear to be closer to those of the Fascists and Nazis, than communist. Esp. similar in his crony capitalism. Some are just more equal than others, and the most equal are the friends of those in power.
January 22, 2010, 2:40 pmBama 1L says:
Well, since I am in a VC comment thread, please remind me which of these characters is fascist. All three have received this moniker. Assuming that you would (correctly I think) cast Fr. Coughlin in the role of fascist, then yes, Pat Buchanan fits nicely as a Fr. Coughlin figure: both Irish Catholics, both angry at the failures of capitalism, both mistrustful of socialism, both fiery media personalities.
But the thing is, it’s not the 1930s. Look, fascism was a response to historical contingencies that do not now preoccupy us. Fascists were looking for a solution to the problem of class conflict and proposed a solution that was not socialism or robber-baron laissez-faire. They turned instead to the resources of the state to control society and the economy. As it happened, liberal capitalism was able to moderate itself somewhat and avert the class-conflict problem. Also, fascism got kind of a bad reputation when its chief practitioners lost World War II.
So it is no argument to say that, in the 1930s, Buchanan would have been a fascist, so he is a fascist today even though he doesn’t mouth the fascist platform. He is absolutely a racist. It is amazing that he is still afforded so much opportunity to voice his opinions. But this does not make him a fascist any more than George W. Bush was a fascist for starting a war or Ronald Reagan was a fascist for standing up to a union.
January 22, 2010, 2:41 pmDana White says:
Extremely politically correct post. We can talk about black and hispanic voters until were blue in the face and that’s fine. But mention “white voters” and you’re a racist! Thanks Pat Buchanan and keep ‘em coming!
January 22, 2010, 2:49 pmManju says:
The south was monolithically democratic till at least 1964 and it wasn’t till 1994 that it became distinctly republican (counting state and local races). Surely the party was more left of center (as we define it now) by then. By the time we get to the 1900′s the republicans were generally representing moneyed interest–the wealthy industrialized north as opposed to the poorer agrarian south–and that helps explain how the democrats, the more liberal party, could provide a base for segregationists.
Indeed, the progressive era was one of the worst for African Americans as the movement was deeply infused with racism (eugenics). gun control and abortion have roots in anti-black racism and the most progressive prez at the time , woodrow wilson, was also the most racist…helping restart the 2nd Klan by pushing “birth of a nation.”
The Klan is seen by many historians as a proto-fascist organization, especially considering lynching which helped keep the south monolithically democratic. even jfk felt compelled to kill anti-lynching legislation as a senator (he inserted a provision calling for trial by jury, knowing damns well it would result in jury nullification). Jfk won the deep south.
The Klan was affiliated with the progressive movement, enforcing prohibition, controlling the democratic party, and engaging in various community activities. In short they were a right wing group serving the interest of left-wing politicians, like FDR.
Its a great historical irony no doubt. But one connection helping explain how this could occur is the economic populism that Pat Buchanan exemplifies, was my point.
January 22, 2010, 2:57 pmRowerinVA says:
I’m no fan of Buchanan but calling him “fascist” conflicts with the meaning of fascist as expressed by the various actual governments of the 20th Century that called themselves fascist. Buchanan would have a smaller, less powerful state, which would not intervene overmuch in social issues, simply due to the government’s lack of size. His government wouldn’t recognize gay marriage and might not protect gays, perhaps, but it wouldn’t have the manpower or interest to affirmatively clamp down on gay relationships — that’s just one example. Buchanan’s mantra is closer to laissez faire or social Darwinism than it is to the kind of command society represented by fascism.
I think David B. is mistaking populism and isolationism (tinged with racism or anti-immigration) for fascism. Buchanan might create a nasty little government, but it would be little. It wouldn’t march on Poland, etc. That’s a big difference from real fascism.
Fascism actually has a definition. And it’s fundamentally leftist, actually — “National Socialism” and all that.
January 22, 2010, 2:59 pmStrict says:
Tamerlane,
Obama supports uncontrolled immigration? That’s a ridiculous claim. It’s pretty clear he does not support uncontrolled immigration. In fact, Obama has done much to improve control over immigration. Look at the ongoing reforms in the US Citizen and Immigration Services bureau. Look at the border security improvement measures in the stimulus package. Look at the expanded program for immigration status checks on arrestees. Look at the new virtual border fence (first tried by Bush). Some things, like wanting to increase the quota of high-skilled Indian tech workers, hardly counts as “uncontrolled.” In fact, adjusting quotas is exactly what control is.
Obama supports free trade? Generally he does, but you don’t remember the tire tariffs? Also see the variety of food tariffs in place…
January 22, 2010, 3:02 pmStrict says:
“Fascism actually has a definition. And it’s fundamentally leftist,”
Great definition. Fascism is leftism. That’s useful.
January 22, 2010, 3:04 pmStrict says:
“President Obama is far closer to being a Fascist than those typically called such,”
Than who? Who are those typically called such?
“Fascism (as well as Nazism) is nationalistic socialism. ”
This is your definition of fascism? Not very useful. It’s just definition one vague term using more vague terms.
You guys have to get your criticism straight. First Obama is anti-America (and perhaps not even American!), now he’s an (ultra-)nationalistic fascist? Amazing…
January 22, 2010, 3:08 pmRowerinVA says:
Manju, what?
When you say “The Klan was affiliated with the progressive movement, enforcing prohibition, controlling the democratic party, and engaging in various community activities. In short they were a right wing groups serving the interest of left-wing politicians like FDR,” I think by “in short” you should have “this disproves that.”
The only way you can call the Klan “right wing” is if you buy into the view that “racism” is always “right wing.” That view is easily disproved. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (in deed) and the National Socialists (in word as well as deed) and various other leftist, socialist populist movements have been racist. This is a matter of economics as much as racial ideology — they (claimed to) represent workers whose economic interests are threatened by cheap labor inputs from poor people who tend to be of different races that the dominant blue collar class of their societies. The Klan was a social-control, largely blue collar organization. Right wing free-marketeers they were not. Free-marketeers want to pay immigrants, racial minorities, and anyone else what they are worth, and let labor move freely (whether or not this lowers blue-collar white wages is of no concern to free marketeers); the Klan wanted to prevent exactly that, and was even willing to kill to prevent it.
Perhaps this colloquy just shows that the concepts of “conservative,” “right,” “liberal,” and “left” have become confused, and people arguing about them in modern-day America often aren’t working from the same set of definitions, and certainly not the definitions that originally applied in the mid-20th century.
January 22, 2010, 3:13 pmMark Field says:
Yes, but that’s not at all why or how segregationists “found” a home in the Democratic Party. They “found” that home at a time when it was the right wing party; indeed, because it was the right wing party, and because their presence there made it the right wing party.
January 22, 2010, 3:13 pmkeypusher64 says:
Quite. Also, the very fact that the Tea Party demonstrations are overwhelmingly white is regularly cited as discrediting them.
Per Son “In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.
They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.”
So let me understand, only white people have Christian faith, and enforcing the Establishment Clause is racist against white people. Only white people’s jobs were outsourced to other countries. Illegal aliens are somehow taking jobs at lower wages without for one second asking who is providing those jobs. They carry Mexican flags in American cities, but of course white people never carry flags supporting Italy or Ireland during various ethnic/national celebrations, and white people never carry around Israeli flags in support of Israel.
None of your conclusions (the stuff starting with “So let me understand…”) follows from Buchanan’s statements. You can’t get from “White people have seen X” to “Only white people have seen X.” At most you can infer that the white people who have seen X are the people Buchanan cares about. This is elementary logic.
As far as the general topic of the thread, I think Buchanan is a racist, against Jews especially.
On the other hand, he is not a warmonger or a madman, like lots of respectable media-friendly people are. He generally seems to oppose going halfway around the world to blow people to smithereens. It’s my sense he lies less than most. If advocating for a particular race or ethnicity is supposed to disqualify one from polite discourse, well, the Sunday morning talk shows are going to have a real hard time getting their bookings done.
January 22, 2010, 3:15 pm24AheadDotCom says:
One of the things that Buchanan is saying is that non-elite whites don’t have real representation. Various racial and ethnic groups have organizations that represent them, but non-elite whites not only don’t have such groups, but aren’t “allowed” to have them.
Regarding BHO, I have a whole series of posts about Obama and immigration. See my front page and my archives for much more if you want to know the things you won’t hear from almost all bloggers.
January 22, 2010, 3:16 pmHercules says:
I’m even afraid to use the term “White Folks” now. Would anyone call Pat Buchanan a racist if he used the term “White Americans” or “White voters?”
I can tell you one thing: I’m mad as hell when I find out that immigrants get taxpayer money at any time. It kills me that many immigrants never worked a day while in America and get Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, iPods, LCD TV’s, computers, food stamps, etc., etc., etc., on my tax dollars.
Bankrupcy………….is the American future.
January 22, 2010, 3:17 pmkeypusher64 says:
By coincidence, this happened to be on Steve Sailer’s website today:
The main Google searchbox on Google.com has a feature where if you start typing a phrase it tries to anticipate what you have in mind and offer the complete phrase in a drop down pick list based on what other users have asked. For example if you type into Google’s searchbox
How do I
Google offers ten suggestions for completing this entry, beginning with these three useful questions:
How do I find my IP address
How do I know if im pregnant
How do I get a passport
Commenter Victoria points out that if you type in, however, Pat Bu, Google offers you the following ten prompts:
Pat Burrell
Pat bus schedule
Pat Buttram
Pat Burrell stats
Pat Burns
Pat Burrell wife
Pat Burke
Pat Buckley Moss
Pat Buckley
Pat Burns cancer
Who are these people?
Using the power of Google, it’s easy to discover that Pat Burrell is a leftfielder, Pat Buttram was Gene Autry’s sidekick in 1930s singing cowboy movies and later Mr. Haney on Green Acres. Pat Burns is a former hockey coach. Pat Buckley Moss is a painter. Pat Buckley was the wife of William F. Buckley.
Somehow, I don’t think those are the most famous Pat Bu…s on the Internet today.
So Google, at least, seems to agree with Professor Bernstein.
January 22, 2010, 3:20 pmbpbatista says:
For the last 10-15 years Buchanan has been a conservative only in the same sense that Alger Hiss was a liberal.
January 22, 2010, 3:24 pmManju says:
This argument is meaninglessly circular: The segregationists were part of the right-wing party because their presence makes them right-wing. One wonders then if that makes the American founding a right wing, not liberal, event…since it institutionalized slavery. I understand the affiliation between segregationists and the democratic party is a great irony, but our regime itself was founded on that very irony.
January 22, 2010, 3:25 pmStrict says:
The “Nazism is socialism (and thus socialism is Nazism)” argument puts too much stock in the political party name. Just because the Nazis had the word “socialist” in their party name does not make them socialist. It’s a name they chose for political purposes – a “catch-all” to attract the most people.
The founding Nazis actually debated this. Many were against including the term “socialist” in the party name, including Hitler himself (he preferred “Social Revolution Party” – which has implications of social change, rather than socialism).
Look at Italy’s “People of Freedom” party. Look how Lenin called his faction the “Menshevik Party” (Majority Party) at a time when they were not a majority…
January 22, 2010, 3:25 pmbpbatista says:
Buchanan is just writing about what a typical white person thinks.
Hey, where have I heard that phrase before?
January 22, 2010, 3:27 pmkeypusher64 says:
Pedantry: “Bolshevik” meant majority. It is indeed true that Lenin chose that name when the Bolsheviks were anything but. The Mensheviks were Kerensky et al.
January 22, 2010, 3:28 pmRowerinVA says:
Strict says:
“’Fascism actually has a definition. And it’s fundamentally leftist,’
Great definition. Fascism is leftism. That’s useful.”
Oh come on. Let’s try to argue seriously and not punch straw men. That wasn’t a “definition” of fascism, and you know it.
You’re falling into the Wikipedia error (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism) of defining fascism as mutually-contradictory things. See that wiki definition: it claims that fascism is far-right, and “Fascism fashioned itself as the “complete opposite of Marxian socialism,” but then says (in the same paragraph!) that it “blames capitalism.” Um, it’s hard to be the “complete opposite” when agreeing on that fundamental tenet of communism.
Fascism in the early-and-mid 20th century, when it had actual governments, featured heavy state control and socialism. It was communism lite, with a heavy and open dose of nationalism and racism … whereas communism had a heavy but (often) not open nationalism and racism. Communism and fascism differed in the degree of state control over economic output, and on the question of whether to represent “all workers” or “our workers,” but neither was small-state, laissez-faire, or free market.
What’s your definition of fascism? What is “right wing” about fascism? The only thing I ever hear is that fascism is nationalist and racist but that doesn’t distinguish it from various other -isms on the right or left. Or perhaps you’re equating a strong state with being “right”? Again, that doesn’t distinguish it from various left government models.
Once you reject the false equivalency or “right” and “racist,” I don’t think you find much to claim that fascism is right wing.
January 22, 2010, 3:28 pmStrict says:
“Pedantry: “Bolshevik” meant majority. It is indeed true that Lenin chose that name when the Bolsheviks were anything but.”
My bad. I meant Bolshevik. Thanks for the correction. :)
January 22, 2010, 3:36 pmStrict says:
““Fascism fashioned itself as the “complete opposite of Marxian socialism,” but then says (in the same paragraph!) that it “blames capitalism.” Um, it’s hard to be the “complete opposite” when agreeing on that fundamental tenet of communism.”
Both the Red Sox and Mets agree that they hate the Yankees. That doesn’t mean the Red Sox and Mets aren’t different teams…
Anyway, even capitalists sometimes blame capitalism for social ills and other problems. e.g. Posner “A Failure of Capitalism”…
January 22, 2010, 3:45 pmkeypusher64 says:
Here are the opening paragraphs of Buchanan’s column:
If Republicans will study the returns from Massachusetts, then review the returns from Virginia and New Jersey, light will fall upon the path to victory over Barack Obama in 2012.
Obama defeated John McCain by winning the black vote 24 to 1, the Hispanic vote 2 to 1 and taking a larger share of the white vote, 44 percent, than did John Kerry or Al Gore. As the white vote was three-fourths of the national turnout, Obama coasted to victory.
Now consider Massachusetts. In the 2008 election, no less than 79 percent of the voters were white, and Obama carried them by 20 points, winning the state 62 to 36.
How did Scott Brown turn that 26-point deficit into a 6-point victory? By winning the white vote as massively as did Obama. While there are no exit polls to prove it, we do have exit polls from Virginia and New Jersey, which tend to corroborate it.
Bob McDonnell won the Virginia governor’s race by 17, while McCain lost Virginia by 6. As McDonnell did equally poorly with African-Americans, losing the black vote 90 to 9, while McCain’s lost it 92 to 8, what explains his Virginia landslide?
The white vote. McDonnell won Virginia’s white vote 68 to 32, though his opponent was a downstate Democrat more conservative than the Northern Virginia candidates he beat in the primary.
In New Jersey, same story. McCain won 8 percent of the black vote. Gov. Chris Christie won 8 percent of the black vote. How did Christie turn a McCain loss of New Jersey by 16 points into a 5-point victory?
The white vote. McCain won the white vote in New Jersey 50 to 49, but Christie won the white vote 59 to 34, almost 2 to 1.
Republicans have won three major races – two of them upsets and one a Massachusetts miracle – because the white share of the vote in all three rose as a share of the total vote, and Republicans swept the white vote in Reagan-like proportions.
This explains the paragraphs that Professor Bernstein objects to. The bulk of the column explains that it was sharply increased support among whites that carried Republicans to victory in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The remainder of the article — which the post quoted — explains (in Buchanan’s view, anyway) why the white vote shifted against Obama so sharply in these elections.
January 22, 2010, 3:59 pmBama 1L says:
Fascism is a Third Way. It is not capitalism-liberalism (“right”). It is not socialism (“left”). You don’t need to stick it on the right-left continuum, although when there actually were fascists in significant numbers no one had any trouble sticking them on the far right. This is because the fascists’ main enemies were socialists, who are uncontroversially on the left. Our heroes back then were at the center.
Using the fact that the fascists in Germany adopted the name “National Socialist” as evidence that all fascists were men of the left is flawed. That name is supposed to mark the party as a Third Way, because it unites the right (nationalist) with the left (socialist). Besides that, there were fascists other than German ones and they did not use this term. To the extent that fascists were fond of the term “social,” this reflects subordination of the individual to the group and an attempt to resolve issues of class conflict or the Social Question, which was the central political concern of the day.
To anticipate another “argument,” it is similarly unconvincing to say that, because some leading fascists such as Mussolini were socialists before they were fascists, fascism is a kind of socialism. I might as well say that, because neo-conservatives were by (the correct) definition once liberals, neo-conservatism is liberalism.
In fact, fascism was a direct response to and refutation of socialist dogma. Fascism rejected socialist materialism, abhorred internationalism, and in general held that there would be no revolution. (Although there were in fact fascists who believed in a fascist revolution, most did not and fascists usually came to power through nonrevolutionary means, most typically being granted extraordinary power by a center-right government worried about socialism.)
It is easy to see how a person interested in resolving the Social Question would drift from one position to the other, particularly as socialism in the early twentieth century seemed to be failing outside Russia. If you tried to preach socialism to workers and veterans in the countries hit hard by World War One, what you would often get back was their distrust of capital, essential conservatism, and nostalgia for national military glory. This would make fascism seem like a more successful position for upsetting the capitalist-liberal status quo.
January 22, 2010, 3:59 pmStrict says:
“Or perhaps you’re equating a strong state with being “right”?”
I’m not doing anything like that.
“The only thing I ever hear is that fascism is nationalist and racist but that doesn’t distinguish it from various other –isms on the right or left.”
It may. (Although I think the left/right dichotomy often doesn’t make much sense. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes not).
As far as nationalist, Marxism is internationalist, not nationalist.
As far as racism, you can find examples of racist Marxist leaders (Mugabe) and non-racist Marxist leaders (Castro). But the Socialist Party of America (~1900) was the first relevant party in the USA to espouse full racial equality, which at the time was unacceptable to both Republicans and Democrats.
January 22, 2010, 4:00 pmMark Field says:
Pretty much all definitions are circular. I’m talking about historical perception and usage. Your original post attempted to redefine that history.
January 22, 2010, 4:03 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Very late to the game here, but I guess I agree with many other commenters that “fascist” isn’t a good shorthand for “racist and anti-Semitic.”
Those who think Buchanan’s last bit of prominence was as an opponent of immigration reform, though, are forgetting the blip of popularity he had in liberal media markets as an opponent of the Iraq war. In the San Francisco Chronicle for a year or two there were not only regular Buchanan columns (something that would have produced furious reader backlash in ordinary circumstances) but letters to the editor chiming in in agreement. (To be fair, none of the letter-writers gave any sign that they realized they were agreeing with “that Pat Buchanan”; still…)
January 22, 2010, 4:05 pmsbron says:
Unfortunately, the Obama administration missed a great opportunity to ease up on racial preferences in Federal hiring and funding. If Obama had used the bully pulpit to preach self-reliance and individual rights, he would have changed the entire equation of race relations and progress within struggling groups.
The Justice Department is pursuing some idiotic disparate impact lawsuits. The appointments of Sotomayor and Holder further solidify the administration’s support of such preferences. These actions only give ammunition to people like Buchanan and will increase the number of whites who view themselves as a beleaguered minority in minority-majority parts of the US.
January 22, 2010, 4:09 pmcvd says:
Professor Bernstein,
You ask why blacks would be more likely to support insurance for illegal immigrants than whites. An obvious answer comes to mind. The same politicians who support insurance for illegals also support race-based preferences in favor of blacks. Why is this hard to understand?
Politicians giving preferences to certain groups to obtain their votes is a practice that goes back at least 2000 years. When we study Roman history, we call it what it obviously is “patronage.” For some reason when we see it happening in our own time, we refuse to call it patronage. Instead, anyone who calls it what it is (patronage) is called a “racist.”
If you disagree with Buchanan cite some statistics to show he’s wrong. Do not blacks and hispanics – overwhelmingly – tend to support politicians who favor transfer payments to illegals? If so, Buchanan’s statement is factually correct – racist or not. Perhaps reality is also racist? I await your condemnation of it.
Wishing that it were not so, does not make it not so.
January 22, 2010, 4:38 pmneurodoc says:
So you’re commending him for not dissembling about his racist and antisemitic views? But I have heard him deny that he is an antisemite, or sidestep the question, and I doubt he would acknowledge being a racist.
January 22, 2010, 4:40 pmMJ Bradford says:
I think Buchanan just referenced “angry white Americans” because all the
January 22, 2010, 4:41 pmmainstream(all liberal) news outlets referred to the tea partiers as all
white, when they were in actuality not all white nor all conservatives.
This was his context, I believe.
ricky says:
Very late to the game here, but I guess I agree with many other commenters that “fascist” isn’t a good shorthand for “racist and anti-Semitic.”
But Pat Buchanan is an “anti-semite”, which is shorthand for not being sufficiently pious on the subject of Israel and WW2, which means that people like Bernstein will hurl any invective at him they can come up with. So it is completely understandable that Bernstein would call Buchanan a “fascist”.
January 22, 2010, 4:45 pmA. Zarkov says:
Did I say his other writings might be characterized as racist or fascist? I guess you want me to say it explicitly. Ok I do think Buchanan is anti-Semitic. As for racist– probably. I’m less explicit here because that term is less defined and overused.
January 22, 2010, 4:46 pmneurodoc says:
Expressing sympathy for Nazi concentration guard camps and indulging in what might be seen as Holocaust denial amounts to “not being sufficiently pious on the subject of…WW2″? Yes, thank you for making clear where you are coming from.
January 22, 2010, 4:59 pmkeypusher64 says:
This explains the paragraphs that Professor Bernstein objects to. The bulk of the column explains that it was sharply increased support among whites that carried Republicans to victory in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The remainder of the article — which the post quoted — explains (in Buchanan’s view, anyway) why the white vote shifted against Obama so sharply in these elections.
This of course makes no sense at all. The things Buchanan complained about (affirmative action, immigration) have hardly changed in the one year of Obama’s administration, so they would not explain a drop in Obama’s white support. Rather, Buchanan proffered these things as reasons why white voters were not enthusiastic about McCain in 2008.
Can’t help but be a little sad that no one pointed out my stupid mistake. :-)
January 22, 2010, 5:00 pmSandy MacHoots says:
Wow, you’re seriously overreacting. I really dislike Buchanan for various reasons (including opposition to free trade) but he’s describing how the “white vote” was important in some recent elections. Claiming someone is fascist because they talk about the perceptions of white voters while not specifically noting that blacks and Asians may share the same views is bizarre. (Leaving aside the question why it’s racist to cater to white voters but not to black voters.)
I suspect this is another symptom of the “I’m a conservative in academia so every once in a while I’ve got to attack Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or Pat Buchanan or Glen Beck to show my colleagues that I’m not really a right-winger.”
January 22, 2010, 5:01 pmneurodoc says:
Since I think it is fairly commonplace for antisemites to regard Jews as a “racial” group, I think antisemitism can be counted as a form of racism, though it has so many distinctive features as a form of bigotry. Accordingly, I will convict him of “racism” on the strength of his antisemitism alone, though his antisemitism may relate more to his religious views than to racial ones. As for “fascist,” I’m not sure what exactly we would have if it were all up to Buchanan, but I’m quite certain it would not be a very tolerant or pluralistic place.
January 22, 2010, 5:10 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
But Pat Buchanan is an “anti-semite”, which is shorthand for not being sufficiently pious on the subject of Israel and WW2, which means that people like Bernstein will hurl any invective at him they can come up with. So it is completely understandable that Bernstein would call Buchanan a “fascist”.
Um, ricky, could you maybe go play somewhere else? (Preferably some thousands of miles away, which is anyway where they stow the punctuation outside the quotation marks?)
Anyone who considers acknowledging the nature of the Holocaust an act of “piety” belongs himself to a very particular church, and it’s not one I would like to be seen worshipping in. Thanks ever so.
January 22, 2010, 5:11 pmThales says:
I have to agree with David–the evidence of Buchanan’s fascist views, both of the anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant/anti non-white ethnic group variety, has been clear and compelling for decades. As well, he is an economic populist, but seems to want to reserve the benefits of social largesse for his chosen worthies. I suspect that he is kept around by the news media because he seems folksy and grandfatherly, and his White House experience makes him an astute political observer (being smart in some areas and also having reprehensible social views are, alas, not mutually exclusive). Also, he generally does not highlight his most extreme views as a talking head on TV, but saves those for his books or for audiences on his few nutty presidential campaigns.
January 22, 2010, 5:11 pmHm says:
outside of his racial views, pat buchanan has some good ideas regarding interventionism and the like.
January 22, 2010, 5:16 pmneurodoc says:
No racism in that?
January 22, 2010, 5:17 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Hm,
outside of his racial views, pat buchanan has some good ideas regarding interventionism and the like.
“Outside of his racial views” (or even including them, for that matter, though he was practically alone in his long campaign for Demjanjuk), Pat Buchanan has essentially no ideas, good or otherwise, that haven’t been articulated at least as well by other people. There really isn’t any reason to use him as the go-to boy for anything, unless you find the whole package somehow attractive. I don’t.
January 22, 2010, 5:30 pmkeypusher64 says:
None that I can see. Religious particularism, yes. What do you see there that is racist?
I think even back in 1945 Orwell wrote that “fascist” had come to mean nothing more than “bad.” But for those here who say Buchanan is a fascist, why do you think so? I assume you will agree that neither badness nor racism is sufficient.
January 22, 2010, 5:30 pmricky says:
“No racism in that?”
I don’t know. Can something so obviously true really be considered racist? I mean, racist in more than the “he said a bad word!” sense.
January 22, 2010, 5:41 pmneurodoc says:
Oh, here’s another Buchanan gem:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32264
January 22, 2010, 5:45 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
keypusher64,
What Buchanan said there was not “racist.” But it fell into the category of things way, way better left unuttered.
It is true that it is (in general) much more comfortable to be a descendant of West Africans in the United States than it is to be a descendant of West Africans in West Africa; it is also true that most descendants of West Africans in the United States are, at least in part, descendants of people originally brought here as slaves.
What is, at the least, extreme discourtesy is to tell people that they ought to be thankful for their great-great-great-grandparents’ capture, forced transport, labor coerced by the lash, and outright possession as the equivalent of farm animals, on the grounds that the descendants themselves gained a materially better lifestyle thereby.
January 22, 2010, 5:49 pmkeypusher64 says:
Thanks, doc. I can only conclude that one of us (at least one of us) has no idea what he’s talking about.
January 22, 2010, 5:51 pmkeypusher64 says:
Was it “not ‘racist’” or just plain “not racist”? Do the quotation marks around “racist” in your post change the meaning of the word?
As for the rest of your post, once I would have agreed unreservedly with it. But, particularly in the context of the national “conversation about race” (which was what Buchanan was writing about in the quote from neurodoc) the talk tends to get a little bit one-sided. Observations like Buchanan’s are a useful corrective.
January 22, 2010, 5:59 pmPer Son says:
I love it. A guy complements David Duke’s policies, praises Hitler (only the good aspects of Hitler . . . ), refers to Congress as “Israel Occupied Territory”, and doubts at least one major well-proven fact about the Holocaust (said diesel engines could not have killed people) and people cry bloody murder when he is described as an anti-Semite.
To meet the exacting standards here of anti-Semitism,does one need to actually commit a pogrom?
January 22, 2010, 6:10 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
keypusher64,
I will remove the quotation marks if you like. It was not racist. What it was was rude, to a degree that makes it somewhat incredible that Buchanan is still considered an inhabitant of civilized society.
You mention the “conversation on race.” Well, in an ordinary conversation, what would be the reaction if you were to say to a light-skinned black, “Wow, you are so lucky so many of your ancestresses were raped by their owners? You could almost pass!”?
Truths here: It is easier to be light-skinned in America than to be very dark, unless you are identifiably a first-generation immigrant (accented and so on); and an awful lot of light-skinned blacks with long ancestries in this country in fact are that way because in their ancestry there are white men in what can hardly be called consensual relationships with black slave women.
The fact remains that if you say to anyone, “Gee, how lucky you are that your great-great-great-great grandmother bore her owner’s child!,” you are very unlikely to emerge with less than a bloody nose. It’s not that it’s untrue, it’s that as a general rule you just don’t remark on how well someone’s relatives’ great suffering happened to work out for them. If that’s your idea of honest “conversation,” I can’t imagine you’re a popular dinner guest.
January 22, 2010, 6:18 pmricky says:
Okay Michelle, I’ll agree that Buchanan can be extremely discourteous at times. And yes, he says a lot of things that many people believe should be left unuttered. But unpleasant truths are still truths, and I am pro-truth. No one should ever be demonized for being factually correct but politically incorrect.
January 22, 2010, 6:20 pmPer Son says:
But Ricky – he is rarely correct.
January 22, 2010, 6:23 pmricky says:
Do you dispute the numbers he provides in the article referenced in the original post?
January 22, 2010, 6:25 pmPer Son says:
I do not dispute his numbers, but instead his comments about Jews, Congress, the Holocaust, David Duke, Adolf Hitler, and others.
I also believe he omits non-whites and sees America as a place for only “traditional Americans” – white Christian people.
January 22, 2010, 6:30 pmricky says:
Oh, so by “he is rarely correct” you meant “I rarely agree with his opinions”. Sorry, I have a bad habit of confusing correct/incorrect with objective reality.
January 22, 2010, 6:34 pmKen Arromdee says:
But it does mean they’re not complete opposites in their viewpoints.
January 22, 2010, 6:35 pmPer Son says:
Not sure what you are talking about, nor understand it. I cannot say I 100% disagree or think he is 100% wrong, because I do not know everything he has ever said. Indeed, I have heard him on the news say that he is happy about a given matter. Who am I to say that he is not happy.
Now instead of being so pedantic, why don’t you address the actual merits. Although, if you agree with him on those fronts that I mentioned, just say so.
January 22, 2010, 6:38 pmkeypusher64 says:
Thanks. And I will agree with you that Buchanan’s remark was rude, and not fit for a dinner party conversation. But the “conversation about race” isn’t really a dinner party conversation, is it? It’s a series of embarrassed silences, evasions, obfuscations, lies, and occasional half-truths. (Hmm, maybe it is a dinner party conversation.)
Anyway, I can’t hold up my end of this any longer, as I need to get back to work. Do you still have a blog? You are such a fine writer.
January 22, 2010, 6:39 pmKen Arromdee says:
So? Lots of things in politics, and especially related to race, are rude. Pointing out that someone’s benefited because their ancestors did bad things is just as rude as pointing out that they benefited from having bad things done to their ancestors. Demanding that someone give you something because of something your ancestors did to their ancestors is certainly rude. Even boycotting and picketing is rude. Why all the sudden concern about being rude?
January 22, 2010, 6:43 pmleo marvin says:
The Nazi-friendly positions and comments of Buchanan, a past GOP Presidential advisor, convention speaker and candidate for the party’s presidential nomination, expose the absurdity of the “Fascism is Socialism” meme. That some commenters here dance around what Buchanan is while continuing to advance the meme is no favor to any Republicans or conservatives who’d rather confront and rid themselves of the taint that comes with a Buchanan fringe.
January 22, 2010, 7:20 pmleo marvin says:
Wait, are you saying “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” doesn’t mean…? Funny but the Germans, both left and right, seem to have had a knack for that kind of ironic self-identification. First the Nazis were “Socialist,” then the East Germans were “Democratic.”
January 22, 2010, 7:24 pmbyomtov says:
As neurodoc has pointed out, Buchanan has consistently opposed the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. He is an admirer of Hitler and a borderline Holocaust denier.
OK folks, he’s not a fascist, he’s a Nazi.
January 22, 2010, 7:24 pmbyomtov says:
“No racism in that?”
I don’t know. Can something so obviously true really be considered racist?
Obviously true???
Are you insane?
January 22, 2010, 7:39 pmA. Zarkov says:
Not on the basis being opposed to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. I oppose the prosecution as being a show trail without a real basis in law. I would have just shot them, but Stalin liked show trials so the US and UK let him have it. Of course Buchanan might have different reasons from mine.
January 22, 2010, 8:04 pmbyomtov says:
Not on the basis being opposed to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. I oppose the prosecution as being a show trail without a real basis in law. I would have just shot them, but Stalin liked show trials so the US and UK let him have it.
Zarkov,
Though I disagree with you about Nuremberg, that’s not what I was talking about. I was referring to more recent events.
January 22, 2010, 8:16 pmkeypusher64 says:
Show how it is untrue.
January 22, 2010, 8:18 pmzuch says:
OK, OK. Relative honesty (and forthrightness). He makes it less a secret.
Cheers,
January 22, 2010, 8:22 pmArthurKirkland says:
Last laugh department*: America becomes less white every day.
* Except for the dead-enders. They already don’t have much to laugh about, and they might even know it. Might even explain some of their behavior and utterances.
January 22, 2010, 9:35 pmbyomtov says:
Show how it is untrue.
It’s easy to say it’s true if all you count are benefits.
There are just a few costs you might consider.
Countless deaths on the slave ships.
Centuries of all sorts of misery as slaves.
A century of only slightly less misery under racist laws.
So how do you weigh this history against the current status of African-Americans in the US?
And even if you think the currnet status – not all that great, by the way – outweighs history, don’t you think history bears a mention in assessing whether the US has been a great country for African-Americans?
Anyone who simply waves all that past away is a racist. Including Buchanan.
January 22, 2010, 9:45 pmbyomtov says:
I am pro-truth.
Good. This sets you apart from Buchanan.
January 22, 2010, 9:48 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Ken Arromdee,
So much to respond to there, and so few tools with which to do it. (Speaking of “tools,” I don’t doubt that I handed you a nice rhetorical one right there, and that you’ll make use of it. So be it.)
I’ll confine myself to this:
Pointing out that someone’s benefited because their ancestors did bad things is just as rude as pointing out that they benefited from having bad things done to their ancestors.
It’s not; it’s really not. If I say that you’re rich now only because your great-grandfather stole from the poor, you have some reasonable options in front of you. You can, of course, deny that the charge is true; you can say that the charge is true; but that you obviously can’t be responsible for what you neither did nor knew about. You can make restitution to the poor people it’s alleged your great-grandfather stole from, or their descendants. Or you can say, reasonably, that although you regret the wrong, it’s not practical for such wrongs to cross so many generational lines, and the matter needs to be laid to its own rest.
But if someone says that you’re a hell of a lot better off now than you would have been if someone hadn’t kidnapped and enslaved your ancestors, what are your possible responses? The person saying this is not, presumably, someone to whom you owe recompense, on any theory; so why is (s)he saying it? And what are you supposed to do?
People who raise claims of transgenerational debt for slavery have at least the understandable motive of trying to get money. People who raise claims of transgenerational debt for the positive benefits of enslavement are trying to get nothing more than the satisfaction of a rhetorical lash to the enemy’s face. This is not anything I want a part of.
January 22, 2010, 9:58 pmkeypusher64 says:
Countless deaths on the slave ships.
Centuries of all sorts of misery as slaves.
But he’s not talking about slavery as a whole. He’s not talking about the Middle Passage. He’s talking about the United States…in which slavery existed for less than a century after independence.
You do know, I am sure, that every slave imported to America was first a slave in Africa, sold to whites. So it is not a choice between freedom in Africa or slavery in America. It is a choice between slavery in Africa (where slavery has existed for thousands of years, remember) or the U.S.
A century of only slightly less misery under racist laws.
Suppose you were black in 1890 and could live as a sharecropper in Georgia or a miner in Congo. Which would you prefer? How does life in Africa between 1865 and 1965 stack up against life in the U.S. for black people over the same period of time?
So how do you weigh this history against the current status of African-Americans in the US?
I don’t know. And neither do you (even leaving aside all the history you are forgetting) because it’s an impossible question to anwer. Yet you think that what Buchanan wrote is so wrong that to agree with it manifests insanity. Why is that?
January 22, 2010, 10:08 pmSarcastro says:
Boy, all that sympathy Jews now get from the Holocaust, the survivors are so much better off these days!
January 22, 2010, 10:19 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
keypusher64,
You do know, I am sure, that every slave imported to America was first a slave in Africa, sold to whites. So it is not a choice between freedom in Africa or slavery in America. It is a choice between slavery in Africa (where slavery has existed for thousands of years, remember) or the U.S.
Except that you do know (right?) that supply increases with demand. Were there not a slave trade, there would certainly have been fewer slaves conveniently for sale at West African ports. The indigenous-to-the-continent slave market was large, sure (and, for that matter, vestiges of it are still there); but it’s obvious that a large fraction of the people who ended up as slaves in the American colonies would not have been enslaved at all but for the cross-Atlantic demand.
This is all so obvious that I am a little ashamed to spell it out here.
January 22, 2010, 10:19 pmbyomtov says:
He’s talking about the United States…in which slavery existed for less than a century after independence.
And all it took was a minor skirmish to end it. And excluding pre-1776 history is a bit disingenuous don’t you think? It’s not as if the American Revolution had much effect on slavery.
You do know, I am sure, that every slave imported to America was first a slave in Africa, sold to whites.
And is it possible, just barely, that the existence of a market for slaves encouraged African slavers?
So how do you weigh this history against the current status of African-Americans in the US?
I don’t know.
If you don’t know why do you consider Buchanan’s conclusion “obviously true?”
January 22, 2010, 10:21 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Sarcastro,
Boy, all that sympathy Jews now get from the Holocaust, the survivors are so much better off these days!
No, you don’t get to post as snark arguments that people have built entire careers upon. (I am not going to add to hits of the person who comes to mind here by naming, um, him/her.)
January 22, 2010, 10:23 pmStrict says:
Michelle, count me in among those who like your writing.
I understand your point about rudeness. Imagine if I told a Jewish friend “Man, you should really be grateful for all that European anti-semitism. That was the impetus for your grandparents to immigrate to the US, and see how successful you are now in America?”? That would be weird.
As broadcasted to a wide audience, there are two ways in which Buchanan’s comments could be considered racist:
1. They are simply meant to antagonize black people. A “racist” comment is not necessarily something that is derogatory about a group, or something is that meant to stir up hatred toward a group, but it could be simply something that is targeted at a group simply to piss them off. It’s basic racial antagonism. “Hey buddy, you know actually slavery was good for you?” is simply going to piss someone off.
2. The comments could be seen as apologetic. “Yes, slavery was bad, but in the end, ultimately, it was good for that group of people.” Maybe this was intended to reduce black anger about slavery (think on the bright side / every cloud has a silver lining / be thankful for what you got), or to reduce white guilt about slavery or about modern poverty (hey, I don’t need to feel so bad about the conditions of black people now, because at least conditions are better than in Africa where they came from).
January 22, 2010, 10:25 pmStrict says:
Again Michelle, your post at 9:58 is very well written. I haven’t thought about it in that way. You raise the point as to WHY someone like Buchanan is making such rude comments. Makes you wonder, huh. While there is nothing explicitly racist about it [I agree], there may be a racist motive [or something] to those comments.
January 22, 2010, 10:29 pmkeypusher64 says:
I don’t. I think you are confusing me with Ricky. It is not so obviously untrue that it is insane to believe it, though.
You are right that Western Hemisphere slavery increased the demand for slaves. On the other hand, I think the number of slaves imported to North America (as opposed to the Caribbean) was fairly small.
January 22, 2010, 10:34 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Strict,
Jeez, if I get any more compliments maybe I will have to start a blog.
I think what we have here is a variant of your (1.). The comments are meant to look as though they are designed to antagonize black people. Actual black people are not the audience; the idea is more that white people who are themselves irritated by black people will think, “Hah, that’ll show them” — even though the putative targets are not going to encounter this material at all, except second- or third-hand.
And the white people who are the real audience aren’t necessarily “racists,” just people weary of charges of racism, who experience a small satisfaction at a mild tweaking of black people.
None of this is pretty, but it’s about the mildest the dance of racial antagonisms gets anywhere in the world. Honestly, pretty much everywhere (Europe included) they wish they had our “problems.”
January 22, 2010, 10:36 pmkeypusher64 says:
I think your #2 is exactly Buchanan’s objective, particularly about reducing white guilt. But I don’t see why that is racist, either.
January 22, 2010, 10:38 pmMark Field says:
It was roughly 650,000. I personally wouldn’t call that “small”, particularly since it by definition excludes those who died on the Middle Passage.
January 22, 2010, 10:45 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
keypusher64,
You are right that Western Hemisphere slavery increased the demand for slaves. On the other hand, I think the number of slaves imported to North America (as opposed to the Caribbean) was fairly small.
Um, yeah. The numbers imported to what became the United States pale beside the numbers sent to plantations south — where also survival rates were far lower.
But that doesn’t change the point. The reason that so many slaves were there conveniently ready to be bought on the Western coast of Africa was that there were a lot of people anxious to buy slaves and ship them across the Atlantic. You talk as though “slaves” were a natural stratum of West African society, and we just picked up goods for sale. In fact, the colonization of the New World created a damned enormous market, and a hell of a lot of people ended up in slavery whom no one would have bothered to enslave had there not been eager buyers.
January 22, 2010, 10:52 pmSarcastro says:
[I would say that when one can (successfully) use someone's career-making argument as snark, it bespeaks how discredited the argument is.]
January 22, 2010, 11:31 pmleo marvin says:
If someone robs me, beats me and leaves me for dead in a ditch, where I find a lottery ticket worth $100,000,000, does my new financial condition mitigate the heinousness of the crime? Is there an excuse for implying the two have anything but an entirely unintended, coincidental relationship?
January 22, 2010, 11:41 pmkeypusher64 says:
Yes, that is Buchanan’s figure, approximately.
When someone uses the term “relatively small” I personally wonder “relative to what”? If you go back to my post, you can see “what.” You can then go back to your own link and see how numerous “what” was. Then you can decide whether I used the term “relatively small” correctly.
You talk as though “slaves” were a natural stratum of West African society, and we just picked up goods for sale.
Yes, I did, didn’t I? But Mungo Park, writing around 1800 from the Gambia, estimated that three-quarters of the Mandigoes were slaves. On the other hand slaves exported to Europe (which by that time, in the dying days of the trade, were down to about 1,000 per year via the Gambia River) were brought from the interior. What their state was before they were brought, no one knows.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/mng110h.htm
January 22, 2010, 11:43 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Sarcastro,
Except that we’re talking a really piss-poor career here. (I didn’t mean Buchanan’s. Someone thankfully much less well known, whose “career,” I trust, pays rather less than most ordinary folks make ringing up customers at Safeway. I hope.)
January 22, 2010, 11:47 pmMark Field says:
The fact that the number was small relative to those brought to, say, Brazil, strikes me as irrelevant.
January 22, 2010, 11:57 pmKen Arromdee says:
I’d think a more plausible reason could be figured out just from the symmetry: the reason to say this isn’t to attack the other guy for no reason, the reason to say this is as a counter to claims of the other type–to say “actually, no, you don’t deserve any money”.
January 22, 2010, 11:59 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Urgh. The problem with Buchanan, as should be obvious by the end of this thread, is that whenever he happens to light on an actual good argument, he leaves his nasty fingerprints on it. There are good arguments against racial preferences, and Buchanan knows and uses them. There are good arguments for protectionism; I don’t agree with them, but there are sensible people who do agree, and Buchanan uses their material too. There are good arguments against permissive immigration reform, many of which I agree with, and there again is Buchanan.
And the worst of it is that he wraps it all up into a single package, wherein A means B and B means C and you really can’t believe any part of his nicely-wrapped parcel unless you believe all of it (and you really do, don’t you?), so that you end up having to explain all sorts of perfectly sensible beliefs with a prefatory “Of course, I’m no follower of Pat Buchanan.” Among people who actually know one another it does sort itself out fairly quickly, but it’s still a pain in the butt.
January 23, 2010, 12:18 amkeypusher64 says:
Irrelevant to what? What I originally said, and what I thought you were responding to, was that the number imported to North America was small relative to the number imported to the Caribbean. Do you disagree?
January 23, 2010, 12:24 amManju says:
Being a free marketer is not essential to the right. Indeed, free markets are an integral part of classic liberalism. The Klan is essentially right wing because they are social conservatives, preoccupied with nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and authoritarianism. indeed, they are proto-fascists, ie right wing collectivists.
Now, they became affiliated with the democratic party and the progressive movement; linked by economic populism and the racism (eugenics) that happened to dominate the progressive movement during the turn of the century. But IMO that doesn’t make them a left-wing movement. They were historically a right-wing movement enabled by the left, which includes JFK and FDR. Hezbollah arguably occupies a similar space in today’s politics.
January 23, 2010, 2:32 amRicardo says:
The south was out of the mainstream of the Democratic Party well before even 1964, though. It was Harry Truman’s embrace of civil rights that led Strom Thurmond to run as a third-party candidate and win Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. JFK lost Alabama and Mississippi to the South’s own segregationist candidate Harry Byrd so his winning of the deep south was hardly unqualified.
Then in 1964, we of course get to the phenomenon of Barry Goldwater completely sweeping the Deep South states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina. The only other state he carried was his home state of Arizona. I’m not sure when the last time a Republican pulled that off had been.
Then if we look at the Civil Rights Act vote also in 1964, Democrats not from the southern states voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill. Wikipedia helpfully tabulates the votes by party and by region:
House:
Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)
Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)
Senate:
Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%)
Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%)
Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%)
Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%)
In short, the rift between southern segregationists and northern Democrats was wide and growing well before 1964. The Civil Rights Act — as Lyndon Johnson himself predicted — turned the rift into a permanent and irreversible split. Calling the south “monolithically” Democratic obscures the extreme tension and hostility between the Southern Democrats and everyone else.
January 23, 2010, 4:51 amRicardo says:
On Pat Buchanan and Holocaust denial, this piece is extremely damning. It’s a kind of forensic examination of Holocaust denial memes that argues Pat Buchanan likely used as a source for the claim that the murder of Jews by diesel exhaust is a myth was the newsletter of an ostensible “German-American” association that frequently publishes articles containing typical Holocaust denier talking points. Furthermore, Buchanan’s claim that “half the 20,000 [Holocaust] survivor testimonies in Jerusalem are considered ‘unreliable,’ not to be used in trials” is traced back to yet another Holocaust denier meme that had been circulating around the lunatic fringe for several years before his editorial.
The only defense of Buchanan as a non-fascist at this point is if someone can point out a non-fascist source that he may have used when he wrote his ignorant editorial containing these claims. Especially in 1990 before the internet became a big deal, it looks as if his most likely sources were pamphlets or individuals associated with the Holocaust denier movement.
January 23, 2010, 9:10 amPersonFromPorlock says:
The question of Buchanan’s ‘fascism’ rests on whether he believes in a centrally-controlled, privately-owned economy run on authoritarian lines. Rampant bigotry was a peculiarity of Nazism and not a defining characteristic of fascism, so Buchanan’s alleged bigotry doesn’t make him a fascist – and if he’s not a fascist economically then he isn’t a Nazi, either, just a bigot (if the allegation is true).
So, is he a fascist? The statist Right has little trouble with quite brutally interfering in (centrally-controlling) private business when it comes to things like pornography, drugs or immigration. To be sure, the interference tends to prohibit rather than require, but prohibit enough things and you effectively require what’s left. Buchanan certainly has no trouble with government’s prohibiting things he sees as pernicious. Few of us do.
But to call Buchanan’s views fascism is to leave us with no word to describe the statist Left, which not only prohibits but requires, broadly and with a great sense of Doing Good. It seems to me that he’s a very minor star in the fascist firmament, if he’s there at all.
January 23, 2010, 9:21 amRicardo says:
See this article. Pat Buchanan has made bizarre arguments in the past about the supposed unreliability of Holocaust survivor testimony and about the supposed impossibility of committing mass murder with diesel exhaust. The author traces these discredited claims back to the extremist Holocaust denier movement.
As far as I know, Buchanan has never publicly rescinded his false claims nor has he explained why he wrote what he wrote and has also been very coy about the sources he relied upon.
January 23, 2010, 9:51 amMark Field says:
Irrelevant to anything Buchanan said. The fact that even larger numbers of slaves were taken to Brazil and fared even worse is NOT grounds for claiming that American blacks received some benefit from slavery.
January 23, 2010, 11:11 ambyomtov says:
Michelle Dulak Thomson,
I get your point about rudeness vs. racism, but disagree. The fact is that lots of immigrant groups are much better off in the than their compatriots who stayed home. Over the century plus since the great immigration waves around 1900, Eastern Europeans in the US, to take an example, have been vastly better off in the US than in Poland, Romania, etc. And that was without enduring centuries of mistreatment.
So why shouldn’t they be grateful to “non-Eastern Europeans” in the US for all that? Could it be because they are white?
The thrust of Buchanan’s column is that what blacks have achieved is due to the munificence of White America, while black problems are mostly of their own making and have little to do with the terrible history of their treatment by whites. How is that not racist?
January 23, 2010, 12:11 pmricky says:
How is it racist?
January 23, 2010, 12:20 pmricky says:
Oh, and was it also racist when Bill Cosby said basically the same thing? That would be important to know.
January 23, 2010, 12:25 pmjb says:
It seems to me that he referred solely to angry white folks as those are the only ones who have been so labeled. Further, commentator after commentator made reference to the “whiteness” of the tea-party movement and the angry white male is now a firmly ensconced image in the American psyche. I have long thought that the rhetoric on the right sometimes seems more extreme than it would otherwise seem given its nature as a response to statements on the left. Perhaps Buchanan’s comments fall into that category.
January 23, 2010, 1:19 pmA. Criminal says:
Aren’t there any black, Hispanic, or Asian people on Medicare?
Buchanan broke the liberal rule of “‘inclusiveness’ in everything you say or do” = he’s a fascist.
Therefore The Race, er, La Raza, ADL, CAIR, NOW, NAACP (even the SBA!) etc., are all fascist organizations, and David Bernstein is wondering why they’re still “respectable” media presences but just hasn’t gotten around to mentioning his concerns.
CheckEnclosed: So what is there to support the charge?
Failure to conform to the left’s script: political correctness and other hypocrisy.
January 23, 2010, 1:20 pmChris Travers says:
Right, and Iraq had WMD’s prior to the Second Gulf War….
I am sorry, but I would have expected to see some evidence of this, or an argument that a pro-democratic viewpoint can still be fascist. That is, unless one’s threshold to see fascism is as low as it was for Wilhelm Reich* and the I am not sure it is a useful accusation in terms of politics.
* In “Mass Psychology of Fascism,” Reich (a self-described Marxist and anti-Communist) argued that fascism is a human tendency which is inherent in all groups. The question then becomes how we recognize and control it rather than how we eliminate it. But by that argument we can call all politicians fascist, even though Buchanan seems to manifest more of the tendencies Reich points to, because we only have scales of gray, not any firm criteria. At least Buchanan is no Effie Eitam….
January 23, 2010, 1:24 pmricky says:
“Right, and Iraq had WMD’s prior to the Second Gulf War….”
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as they say. And that is certainly relevant when you are guilty until proven innocent before Inquisitors like David Bernstein.
January 23, 2010, 1:52 pmricky says:
To be clear, I’ll quote one of my fellow conspirators: “How is that not racist?”
Yes, you must prove that you’re not racist. The burden of proof is on you. If you can’t prove that you’re “not racist”, then you’re a racist and you will be excluded from polite society – aka you will be unemployed or underemployed for life.
But do not despair! There is a very easy way to prove that you’re not racist. Just Vote Obama in November 2008! Even if you completely disagree with everything he believes, and you want to completely disavow him immediately afterwards, you must vote for him to prove that you’re not racist. If you didn’t vote for Obama, then you’re a racist and, frankly, you should be gas-chambered ASAP. The New World Order has no place for knuckle-dragging reactionaries like you.
Anyway, it’s okay to criticize Obama now if you voted for him. You’ve already proven that you hate him for non-racist reasons. We’ll figure out the reasons behind your irrational hatred of Obama as soon as possible – maybe you’re some kind of capitalist or Christian. There is a cure for your idiotic common-sense beliefs, but we will need to save and create many jobs to re-educate you on the correct way of thinking. And to pay for those jobs, we will need to confiscate more funds from “the rich” and anyone else who earns money that we don’t think they deserve.
The bottom line here is that we have a bunch of fascists in charge who think that someone’s thoughts should be demonstrably fascist or racist before we lock them up for crimethink. The vast majority of people I know think that these people should be sent to the gulag immediately if they cannot prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they have no racist or anti-semitic attitudes. It is better to send 100 innocent men to jail than to let one guilty man go free, as we all know. If people like Pat Buchanan are allowed to speak, at all, it should only be to utter their last words in front of a firing squad.
By the way, Israel should be for Jews and Jews alone, and Israel should be allowed to do whatever it wants to screw over anyone else. Diversity is strength, but Israel is the exception to the rule. God told us that non-Jews can go fuck themselves.
January 23, 2010, 3:57 pmD.R.M. says:
Buchanan’s racism was easy enough for me to detect back in high school, when I was reading the Washington Times. In a column for that paper, Mr. Buchanan was talking about the demographic decline of Western Civilization . . . and explicitly excluded Mexico from the West while explicitly including Russia. His later book on the subject took the same approach. In terms of religion, language, history, legal code, and even geography, there is no basis for considering Russia more Western than Mexico. We can thus conclude that either Buchanan is a total idiot, or Buchanan’s actual concern was racial, not cultural, with “Western” being used to mean “white”.
January 23, 2010, 5:27 pmChrisTS says:
ricky:
No; the claim was that a quotation from Buchanan was racist and that it is clearly so. No one is suggesting that, as a general matter, we should assume that everyone [or all white people] is racist until proven otherwise. There might be those who would recommend that stance, but it is not entailed by the comment stream in which you have been participating.
Really? I did not know this. Nor can I find it anywhere in the OP or the comments.
To the extent that I can make sense of this, I applaud the view that we should demonstrate criminality before locking anyone up for it.
You need to find new friends, or just expand your circle of aquaintances.
Now you’ve just gone off the rails. But, thanks so much for the vulgarity.
January 23, 2010, 6:15 pmDavid says:
What’s more disturbing than anything Pat Buchanan has said is the number of people on the right who go to great lengths to defend him. These people reveal themselves to be much more concerned about accusations of racism than racism itself.
January 23, 2010, 7:01 pmricky says:
“These people reveal themselves to be much more concerned about accusations of racism than racism itself.”
Since accusations of racism have been skyrocketing while actual racism has plummeted, this is the proper stance.
January 23, 2010, 7:12 pmChris Travers says:
Bernstein would have a point if Buchanan, or any other individual involved as a cabinet secretary or presidential advisor calls Mexican-Americans who are citizens of this country (or any other ethnic minority) a “ticking time bomb” or a “cancer” on our country.
Really, if Buchanan is the worst we have, we are doing pretty well.
January 23, 2010, 8:00 pmElliot says:
I have yet to see a VC thread on racism, anti-semitism, or fascism where anyone could define those terms. We do see lots of articulate, well informed, and well educated people commenting and name-calling, but since nobody can define the terms, I have to wonder if any of them has a clue of what they are talking about.
But, maybe I’m wrong, or have just missed the right threads. If so, can someone define racism and fascism?
January 23, 2010, 10:59 pmTGGP says:
I recall in the context of Social Security reform President Bush pointed out that it was in-effect racially discriminatory because some groups (black men in particular) have lower average lifespans, which means they subsidize others when paying payroll taxes but don’t receive that much in return. Since Medicare works similarly, it’s not surprising that it’s beneficiaries are disproportionately white. Blacks and whites are basically on the same ground when it comes to immigration, but asians & hispanics (technically an ethnicity rather than race, but generally thought of as distinct from “white” in America) are more likely to be immigrants themselves. Other commenters have provided numerous examples of offensive things Buchanan has said over the years, but the link in the original post hardly compares. Disaggregating the vote by racial/ethnic/religious groups is nothing new. Nobody blinks an eye when pollsters or political scientists discuss the black/Cuban/Catholic vote.
January 23, 2010, 11:21 pmranger says:
I was in law school in ’96 and vividly recall Buchanan’s presidential announcement at the National Press Club. A group of activist Jews tried to upstage him by leaping onstage and denouncing him. As they were hustled off, Buchanan, an alleged candidate for president, actually helped push them off physically in a rage.
We were LOLing. It was just too much- Beer Hall Putsch all over again.
His positions typically lead him to elevate ethnocentrism over all other concerns; and we are never to oppose a war of conquest by a marauding volk. Thus, we should if anything, support the Russians in their attempts to dominate and cleanse the volk of the Near Abroad; and, most famously, we had no business siding against Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
And thus David said it best. You can slip and slide around his various statements if you like, but his fascistic, nativistic worldview is impossible to deny.
January 24, 2010, 12:40 amricky says:
If Pat Buchanan is “fascist”, then what is Japan?
January 24, 2010, 4:45 pmBill Stewart in Silicon Valley says:
I’m puzzled by this whole discussion. Most of the anti-”illegal immigrant” agitation I’ve heard has been from white people who are concerned about immigrants from Latin America, south Asia, and to a lesser extent east Asia. They don’t complain about Irishmen and Canadians illegally coming here to go on welfare, they don’t complain about Italians any more, they may not like East Europeans as much – they complain endlessly about Mexicans. Yes, there are probably some black Americans who complain about illegal immigrants, and there are some Mexicans and Asians who complain that their families waited in line for ages to immigrate legally and who are these upstarts who don’t want to behave themselves, but it’s still primarily a white obsession.
I’ve always found Pat Buchanan difficult to listen to. During the early parts of Bush 43′s Iraq War, he gave some impassioned speeches about how evil this dishonest aggression against other countries was, and how we shouldn’t be sending our brave troops to conquer other countries or protect dictators over there, and I’d be starting to wonder if I’d been wrong about Pat, and then he’d get to his point about how we ought to bring all those soldiers home and line them up along the Rio Grande to keep the wetbacks out, and I’d have to resist throwing things at the TV. And yet, for all his faults, he’d have done less evil in office than Bush and Cheney did. But I still don’t want to have to see him on TV.
January 25, 2010, 2:27 amkeypusher64 says:
The only defense of Buchanan as a non-fascist at this point is if someone can point out a non-fascist source that he may have used when he wrote his ignorant editorial containing these claims. Especially in 1990 before the internet became a big deal, it looks as if his most likely sources were pamphlets or individuals associated with the Holocaust denier movement.
This shows he’s a holocaust denier or semi-denier. It doesn’t show he’s a fascist. Mel Gibson and his dad are both nuts, but they aren’t fascists.
No one ever claimed otherwise.
January 25, 2010, 11:40 amzuch says:
When you’ve looked all over and found nothing, it is.
Cheers,
January 26, 2010, 12:48 pm