Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel Statements
Buchanan makes no attempt to hide his anti-Semitic and anti-Israel views, which have become more virulent in recent years.
In his 2011 book, Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan makes offensive statements regarding Jews. He claims that the Jewish population in the United States is shrinking because of the "collective decision of Jews themselves" to promote and have abortions.
In a May 2010 column, when President Obama nominated Elena Kagan, who is Jewish, to the Supreme Court, Buchanan wrote, "If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this Democrats' idea of diversity?"
Buchanan also turned his attention to Israel in his columns in 2010. In a June 2010 article, "Lift the Siege of Gaza," about the Israeli offensive in Gaza, Buchanan wrote that it "was the inevitable result of Israel doing what it always seems to do: going beyond what is essential to her security, to impose collective punishment upon any and all it regards as hostile to Israel." In a May 2010 column, "Poodle Biden Gets Kicked," about Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, Buchanan cited Biden's comment that "there is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security." Buchanan then claimed that Biden "was played for a fool" when Israel decided it would build new homes in disputed areas. Buchanan called Americans "grovelers" when it comes to dealing with Israel and claimed that the U.S. responded like a "battered spouse" to Israel's "public slap across the face."
Another of Buchanan's assertions is that Israel controls the United States government. Specifically, he has expressed his anti-Semitism via anti-war statements; he has argued that Israel/Jews (or the "neo-Cons," a term he associates with Jews) have the power to dictate U.S. foreign policy. He paints a conspiracy of a U.S.-Israel alliance not only readying to attack Iran, but to shield its decisions from an American public kept in the dark, as Israel allegedly masterminds "our next war." Buchanan often voices these anti-Semitic views in weekly columns, posted to the Internet.
In a February 27, 2009 article, Buchanan reiterated his previous claims that Israel and the neoconservatives are pushing for an unnecessary war with Iran. He asserted that America is not under enough of a threat from Iran to declare war, and the only reason for "the hype, the hysteria, the clamor for ‘Action This Day!'... is to divert America from her true national interests and stampede her into embracing as her own the alien agenda of a renascent War Party."
In a July 2008 column entitled "A Phony Crisis – and a Real One," Buchanan argued that "Israel and its Fifth Column in this city [Washington, DC] seek to stampede us into war with Iran." In "Who's Planning Our Next War?" a June 2008 column, Buchanan asserted that the decision to attack Iran is not one that Bush can "outsource to Ehud Olmert." Alluding to meetings between Bush and Israeli officials, Buchanan rhetorically asked, "Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?"
“Israel and its Fifth Column…seek to stampede us into war with Iran.”
From a July 2008 column
In a January 2007 column, Buchanan advanced anti-Israeli rhetoric, couched in anti-war sentiment, in his comments concerning the 2007 Herzliya Conference, a yearly forum in Israel comprised of academics and politicians to discuss strategic and political issues. Buchanan stated that "Israel's war is to be sold as America's war." He went on to argue that "there is no need for war [with Iran]. Yet, Israelis, neocons, and their agents of influence are trying to whip us into one."
Reaching to blame the Iraq war and an anticipated conflict in Iran on Israel, Buchanan argued in "Who Is Planning Our Next War?" another January 2007 column, that the Israeli government and those loyal to it will deceive the public to enter another war. He wrote, "A propaganda campaign, using Israeli agents and their neocon auxiliaries and sympathizers, who stampeded us into war in Iraq, is being prepared to stampede us into war on Iran."
In 2005, Buchanan authored a chapter for neo-Conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq, a book co-edited and published by anti-Semite John Sharpe. (In March 2007, the Navy released Lieutenant Commander Sharpe from his duties as Public Affairs Officer due to his leadership of two anti-Semitic groups.) Buchanan titled his chapter "Whose war?" and answered that question by arguing that America's involvement in Iraq is due mainly to its alliance with Israel. He writes, "Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon."
“Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.”
From Buchanan's chapter in a 2005 book published by John Sharpe, another anti-Semite
Buchanan went on to criticize those who believe his views are anti-Semitic. He also advanced the anti-Semitic charge that Jews in the United States harbor a dual-loyalty to the United States and Israel. He wrote, "They charge us with anti-Semitism... The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a ‘passionate attachment' to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is good for America." Buchanan asked, "Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud." He went further in his comments about Likud, arguing that it "has dragged our [America's] good name though the mud and blood of Ramallah... "
Defense of John Demjanjuk
In a May 2011 column, Buchanan repeated his very vocal defense of Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk who that month had been convicted in Germany for assisting in the deaths of 28,000 Jews during World War II.
Earlier, in an April 2009 column which appeared in several places on the Internet, including the Web site of MSNBC, Buchanan again unearthed his defense of Demjanjuk for whom he attempted to arouse sympathy. Buchanan described Demjanjuk as "relentlessly pursued and remorselessly persecuted."
Calling the accused death camp guard an "American Dreyfus," Buchanan went on to assert that Demjanjuk "is to serve as the sacrificial lamb whose blood washes away the stain of Germany's sins." Even more troubling is Buchanan's comparison of Demjanjuk's experience to that of Jesus Christ. Buchanan argued that the "spirit" behind the "un-American persecution" of the alleged Nazi death camp guard is "the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago."
Buchanan's defense of accused Nazi war criminals is nothing new. Since 1983, he has devoted over ten nationally syndicated columns to the defense of Demjanjuk. These articles form part of a larger picture in which Buchanan has defended other accused war criminals and Nazi collaborators.
Anti-Immigrant Statements and Conspiracy Theories
Buchanan also advances a deeply-seeded anti-immigrant ideology, specifically targeting Latinos, Muslims, and Asians. He derides what he alleges are cultural differences between non-white immigrants and white Americans, which he believes threaten to alter the "character" of the United States. Buchanan goes further by alleging the existence of a Mexican conspiracy to annex American land, praising border vigilantes as heroes, and blaming "diversity" for the April 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech. He has also cited research from the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant think tank.
In his 2011 book, Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan refers to the "Mexican nation within a nation," in the United States and asks whether "our passivity in the face of this invasion imperiled our union?" In another section of the book, he writes, "What motivates people who insist that America's doors be held open wide until the European majority had disappeared? What is their grudge against the old America that eats at their heart?"
In various columns, Buchanan decries not only the disintegration of white America due to the influx of immigrants, particularly Latinos, but also the destruction of Europe due to immigrants from South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. In an August 2010 column, Buchanan wrote, "What were the British thinking when they threw open their doors to mass immigration from the Third World?...With no common faith or culture to hold the nation together, Britain is coming apart." In a column a month earlier, Buchanan commented on the Norwegian terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik. Even though Buchanan called Breivik a "cold-blooded, calculating killer," he sympathized with Breivik's anti-immigrant ideology. Buchanan asserted that the threat in Europe does not come from the far right. Rather, he claimed, "that threat comes from a burgeoning Muslim presence in a Europe that has never known mass immigration, its failure to assimilate, its growing alienation, and its sometime sympathy for Islamic militants and terrorists."
Although Buchanan has turned his attention to Europe, he mostly focuses on immigration in the United States. In 2009, Buchanan was no exception to the rash of media pundits that exploited the H1N1 flu to advance their anti-immigrant ideology. In an April 2009, column "The Obama Flu?" he suggested the possibility that Obama was pandering to the "open-borders crowd" by refusing to close the American-Mexican border and thereby risking American lives. Buchanan, who has a history of blaming non-white immigrants for societal ills, went on to exploit the outbreak of what he termed the "Mexican swine flu" to reiterate his long-held allegation that "an invasion of illegal aliens" has imported a "raft of diseases never seen here before... multiple drug resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, measles, syphilis, Chagas disease, dengue fever and new strains of hepatitis." He finished off the paragraph by implying that undocumented immigrants are responsible for the "bed bugs [that] have invaded half the American states."
Another of Buchanan's most widely-employed arguments is that undocumented immigrants, specifically from Mexico, are secretly plotting "La Reconquista," a conspiracy to "invade" the United States and conquer its Southwestern territory, also referred to as "Aztlan." He argued in his 2008 book Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart, that "Mexicans bear an ancient grudge against us as the country that robbed Mexico of half her land... " and demonized Mexicans as an enemy of United States sovereignty.
In State of Emergency, Buchanan declared, "Paralyzed by guilt, we are inviting La Reconquista, the reconquest of the Southwest by Mexico... What Mexico's elites have in mind, what they are systematically pursuing, is a sharing of sovereignty in these lost lands and their ultimate recapture, culturally, linguistically, by Mexico, no matter which nation holds title to them."
Buchanan went into even greater detail and spells out what he calls the "Aztlan Strategy":
endless migration from Mexico north, the Hispanicization of the American Southwest, and dual citizenship for all Mexican-Americans. The goals: Erase the border. Grow the influence, through Mexican-Americans, over how America disposes of her wealth and power. Gradually circumscribe the sovereignty of the United States. Lastly, economic and political merger of the nations in a bi-national union. And in the nuptial agreement, a commitment to share the wealth and power. Stated bluntly, the Aztlan Strategy entails the end of a sovereign, self-sufficient, independent republic, the passing away of the American nation. They are coming to conquer us.
Buchanan does not confine his anti-immigrant beliefs to demonizing Latinos; he also advances an anti-Muslim ideology, which he also spelled out in his 2002 book, Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization. He wrote, "The day of Europe is over. The coming mass migrations from the Islamic world will so change the ethnic composition of the Old Continent that Europeans will be too paralyzed by a threat of terrorism to intervene in North African, the Middle East, or the Persian Gulf... As their populations become more Arabic and Islamic, paralysis will set in."
Buchanan proves himself to be an equal-opportunity bigot. In addition to his continued attacks on Latinos and Muslims, Buchanan blamed Korean immigration, as well as "diversity" in general, for the tragic April 2007 shooting spree at Virginia Tech, in which a Korean student murdered 32 students and faculty. In Day of Reckoning Buchanan wrote, "... the most recent reminder of diversity in Virginia... was the massacre of thirty-two students and teachers at Virginia Tech by an immigrant madman."
In "The Dark Side of Diversity," a May 2007 column, Buchanan argued that the shooter, born in 1984, "was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history... " He claimed that the shooting "cannot be divorced from what's been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores... " Buchanan wrote that the source for many of the article's statements was VDare, a "Web site that covers the dark side of diversity." VDare regularly features the work of anti-immigrant figures, racists, and anti-Semites.
Racist Statements
In addition to his anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant views, Buchanan has also made a number of racist statements and stereotyped characterizations of minority communities.
In Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan cites statistics about minorities from Heather Mac Donald, who works for a conservative think tank. Buchanan asserts, "If Mac Donald's statistics are accurate, 49 of every 50 muggings and murders in New York are the work of minorities. That might explain why black folks have trouble getting a cab. Every New York cabby must know the odds, should he pick up a man of color at night. They are forty-nine to one that if he is assaulted or never makes it home his assailant will be a man of color."
Buchanan has also focused a lot of anger on President Obama. In an August 2011 column, "Obama's Race-based Spoils System," Buchanan suggested that the president is a racist who is trying to fill federal jobs with minorities, to the detriment of qualified white workers.
He also attacked Obama with racist vitriol during his campaign for the Presidency. Although Buchanan praised a speech that Obama made during the August 2008 Democratic National Convention, he stated that Obama received media attention and votes because of his race and that there was truth to a depiction of the Obamas as Muslim terrorists.
In an August 2008 column entitled "Whitey Need Not Apply," Buchanan expressed anger about what he alleged was media favoritism towards Obama due to his race. Buchanan also argued that Obama's race was earning him more votes, ignoring any merit-based qualities that would attract votes for any candidate. Buchanan asked, "What, other than race, explains how Barack rolled up 90-10 margins among black voters while running against Hillary Clinton... ?"
In "The Untouchables," a July 2008 column, Buchanan characterized the controversial New Yorker cover that depicted the Obamas as Muslim terrorists as "an exaggeration that contained no small kernel of recognizable truth." Buchanan suggested, "Put glasses on him, and Barack could play Malcolm X in the movies." Buchanan also stated of Obama's allegedly preferential treatment by the media, "Barack gets the special-ed treatment [as] our first affirmative action candidate."
“Barack gets the special-ed treatment [as] our first affirmative action candidate.”
From a July 2008 column, discussing Obama's allegedly preferential treatment by the media
In addition to his focus on Obama, Buchanan has made racist statements about the black community as a whole. He has also re-cast American history to temper the brutal experience and aftermath of slavery in the United States with what he alleges are the benefits that "White America" has since provided for the black community. In "A Brief for Whitey," a March 2008 column, Buchanan purported to speak for the "Silent Majority," or "White America," and he lists its "convictions, grievances, and demands":
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known... Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans... Where is the gratitude?
Buchanan also defended racist statements made by others, specifically Don Imus, a radio talk show host who has a long history of making racist and anti-Semitic remarks. In April 2007, Imus faced national criticism following a program during which he called the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." In a column published the following week, Buchanan downplayed the severity of Imus's comments by suggesting that "outrageousness is part of the show." Buchanan also dismissed the notion that Imus's words could have any lasting effect by questioning, "Who, after all, believed the slur was true? No one." Buchanan even praised Imus as "among the best interviewers in our business" and suggested that the members of the basketball team "are not 5-year-old girls, and they are capable of brushing off an ignorant comment... "
True to form, Buchanan also argued that as a white man, Imus was actually victimized. Buchanan asserts that Imus faced a "lynch party" not because of his comments, but because he is a "white man, who used a term about black women only black folks are permitted to use with impunity and immunity."
In his 2006 book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, Buchanan revealed his racist and anti-immigrant agenda, explaining that "the new Orthodoxy teaches as dogma that race does not matter, that to treat people of different creeds, colors, or cultures differently is immoral in principle and intolerable in practice. The crisis of the new orthodoxy is that it is rooted in an ideology few truly believe. For creed, culture, and ethnicity do matter, immensely."
Buchanan's racist statements earned him the "Thumbs Down Award" in July 2008, given by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) "to an individual or organization for especially insensitive, racist or stereotypical reporting, commentary... "