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Pat Buchanan: Anti-Semite
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/pat-buchanan-anti-semite/

Pat Buchanan was recently fired from MSNBC over his latest book. It is not as if MSNBC suddenly realized that it had an anti-Semite on staff. If they really cared about that, they would have fired him years ago. As I’ve written, they only hired him in order to use him as the cardboard cut-out conservative

Last week, Buchanan proved that point in full color. He did an interview on Russia Today – the Kremlin-sponsored channel that features radical leftists like Thom Hartmann – in which he tackled the issue of Israel and Iran. “There are people that want a war,” Buchanan said. He continued:

I mean, do not think no one wants a war. You don’t have wars unless someone wants it. And quite clearly the Israeli government would like to see the United States smash Iran’s nuclear program, which they think is creating the additions where Iran could, with one leap forward, get a bomb. The Israeli lobby would like to see a war. They support the Israeli government. Neoconservatives do. Many Republicans do. There are many Americans who genuinely believe that if Iran — they believe Iran is moving toward a weapon; and if it is, they would favor military action to prevent it. There are a number of people who want a war.

He went on to suggest that Israel’s position on this was a greater threat to the United States than Iranian nuclear weapons.

Now, Pat Buchanan has long been an anti-Semite. His repulsive publication, The American Conservative, is an isolationist tract featuring the writings of magazine co-founder and open Jew-hater Taki Theodoracopulos, who calls himself a “soi-disant antisemite.” He once characterized Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld as a “very homely, simian-looking Jew who couldn’t punch his way out of a nursery,” and remarked that the United States was in danger of becoming “Israel-occupied territory,” meaning that it would be controlled by “those nice guys who attack rock-throwing youth with armour-piercing missiles.” Said Theodoracopulos, “the way to Uncle Sam’s heart runs through Tel Aviv and Israeli-occupied territory.”

Buchanan himself is little better. He has engaged in Holocaust denial, stating that diesel exhaust couldn’t have killed 850,000 Jews at Treblinka; he’s criticized the U.S. government for its apology for sheltering Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk. William F. Buckley wrote of Buchanan: ”I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism.” As White House Communications Director, Buchanan urged President Reagan to visit the SS cemetery at Bitburg in Germany, providing an excellent photo-op for neo-Nazis everywhere. According to reports from the time, Buchanan had the unmitigated gall to lecture Jewish leaders who protested that they were “Americans first” and wrote over and over in his notebook one phrase: “Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews.” He wrote Reagan’s line that the SS officers were “victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps” – easily one of the most sickening presidential lines in American history. Buchanan wanted the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations closed down because it was “running down 70-year-old camp guards.”

... more at the link ...

” As White House Communications Director, Buchanan urged President Reagan to visit the SS cemetery at Bitburg in Germany, providing an excellent photo-op for neo-Nazis everywhere” - Ben Shapiro

That might be a good point if it were true. But it isn’t.

In fact the Bitburg visit was set up by Reagan’s media director Michael Deaver.

Deaver visited the cemetery while it was covered in snow and didn’t bother to see if any of the grave markers might prove embarrassing. It was sloppy advance work. Deaver’s role was well known at the time and isn’t hidden, the NY Times even mentions it in his obit:

“But on one occasion, Mr. Deaver’s advice and advance work failed Reagan. That was a visit to a German military cemetery in Bitburg in 1985, where 49 of Hitler’s elite SS troops were buried. Many Jewish leaders were furious, but Reagan would not alter the schedule, so Mr. Deaver added a stop at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.”

But a witch hunter like little Ben Shapiro isn’t really concerned with who did what, his real goal is to label his target a Nazi. Which he does. Didn’t a guy named Goebbels perfect this technique some years ago? The irony is priceless.

Thanks for that link. His Treblinka comments and those claiming SS officers are victims are clearly wrong and offensive. In fact they’re asinine. The rest of that article is short on specifics and long on innuendo.

I should point out that, in my opinion, disagreeing with or criticizing the actions or policies of a country does not mean you hate that country. And please don’t construe this as my stating that I disagree or agree with the actions or policies of Israel, or of any country, or that I agree with or support Buchanon. I am stating that disagreement and criticism does not equate to hate. If Buchanon, or any one else, disagrees with the actions or policies of Israel that doesn’t automatically mean they are anti-semitic. The article you linked to discussed his criticism of Israeli foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran, and Israeli influence in Washington. Disagreeing and being critical does not qualify as anti-semitic.

I’m not going to defend him, I think he can be a crank and an ass, but his idiotic statements are just that: idiotic. Even though offensive and bigoted, I don’t think his remarks necessarily qualify as anti-semitic. Now if he were making calls for violence, calls for segregation, or producing literature inciting violence or claiming such-and-such is “their nature”, etc, then the charge would be accurate.