Buchanan, Hitler, America, and The Winds of Change
I have encountered the complacent American attitude
toward the Shoah again. To be interested in
the holocaust, or consider it worthy of study and remembrance
in this culture, is considered either ghoulish reactionary, or grandiose.
Most believe it could never happen here--Or again. We are too civilized. We are too
open. We believe in our ethnocentricity that we are far too sophisticated
to encounter the societal moral decay that is already at our doorstep.
The winds of change have begun to blow, unnoticed in our comfortable
apathy.
Pat Buchanan, a candidate on the Reform Party, campaigns for the highest office
of the land. He is showing as high as 17% in the polls.
Close to one-fifth of American voters offer willing support of this man's candidacy, and hence his positions.
Buchanan is though, ardently anti-semitic. Statements such as this
will no doubt be met with a barage of defense, positing the extremity of the
of this allegation. The charge is significant, and the evidence must be
examined.
William F. Buckley, the arch-conservative political analyst, and once Buchanan's mentor
in 1990 stated that it would be impossible to defend Buchanan
against charges of anti-semitism. (MTSU/Report) That a candidate openly espousing radical views of anti-semitism
and holocaust- denial would be seriously considered for public office, speaks to
the dangerous times in which we live: even Hitler's National Socialist
Party, "the brown shirts" in the early days of Germany's destruction
mustered only 3% of the vote, among the fractioning of german political parties.
Is Pat Buchanan so extreme, to allow the degree of concern and comparison suggested?
Consider the following:(1-5)
Buchanan on Israel and the Jews
1990 In an MTSU Report, the following is quoted:" In the New York Post, March 17, 1990,Buchanan referred to a " so called
Holocaust survivors syndrome" which he described as involving " fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.""
3-13-91 Israel called "strategic albatross" around the neck of the US( in his syndicated column)
1995: American Online"Buchanan Aides beat up Jewish Protestors"
Three rabbinical students beaten and thrown down stairs, assault charges filed
by the students against Mr. Buchanan's campaign
1995-6: Several statements regarding Buchanan's doubts that Jews were gassed
at Treblinka
Buchanan applauds Hitler as a great soldier and man of courage
Jews blamed for having the primary interest in the Persian Gulf incident
Buchanan runs as featured columnist in "Spotlight" the Patriot Newspaper endorsing segration and racism. The Spotlight is one of the primary anti-semitic publications in this
country today.
Buchanan, as communications director in Reagan White House, aids in diminishing prosecution
of Nazi war criminals, intervening for Demanjuk, refusing to take hard stand against Klaus Barbie
1998-99 Pat Buchanan announces a historical revisionist position including writing a book
on the topic called
The position Mr. Buchanan espouses is placed under the rubric historical revisionism.
Historical Revisionists, or those who deny the events, numbers and suffering of the holocaust,
are considered a new breed, but are not new at all. They are also almost always anti-semitic ,
seeking to undercut, underplay, and eventually undermine Jewish political interests.
Rewriting history and arguing numbers instead of human value, is an ancient art.
Our first historical revisionists dealing with the Shoah*, were the Nazis themselves.
In a recent reading of the transcripts of Israeli police interviews
with Eichmann, one is struck by the issues revolving
around numbers and incidents: the police ask about a death march involving
50,000; Eichmann says he remembers 10,000. They say," 50,000." Ok, then 50,000, but
Eichmann says he does not remember. The numbers debate has gone on a million times since
:was it 250,000 who died? or 2,500,000 at Auschwitz ?
The late senator Everett Dirksen , when speaking of the budget, once said,"a million dollars here,
a million dollars there, eventually it adds up to real money." Use the same analogy:
a million lives here, a million lives there, sooner or later, it adds up to real lives..."
Buchanan and the revisionists argue numbers.
Buchanan does not believe so many could be killed based upon an incident of
school children trapped in a tunnel with diesel exhaust and other patriot-cited experiments. Buchanan is capable of better research. Careful and intentional experimentation was done to determine the best means of annihilation of the Jews leading to and stemming from the Wannsee Conference. Mental patients were used as subjects to determine exactly
how many could be killed quickly and efficiently, since the einsatzgruppen were
growing weary of mass executions and burial. There was too much manpower expended.
Further,(perhaps Buchanan is not aware,) the records of numbers and experimentations
were not kept by Jewish interests or bias, they were kept by the Nazis, as a record
of their own perverted prowess.
Perhaps the most convicting evidence is often ignored:
Revisionists are correct in one vein: the krema or crematoria handled far more
deaths than imagined, but not all: towards the end, with krema burning night and day
at Auschwitz and other killing centers, it was not enough to meet the toll of the gassings
of Zyklon-b which they were so proud of: they began in the end to burn great pyres of
bodies, to create mass graves and to try any way they could to rid the evidence of how
many deaths they had caused, except for there own bizarre records. For the couple of
years after the Shoah, health problems were caused as the ground literally bled and moved
with the result of decaying bodies.
Mr. Buchanan, this is the result of hardheartness,
the natural end of man left alone without God: both persecutor and persecuted. This is
the natural result of your philosophies.
Shoah scholars may be mocked and ridiculed at their suggestion that such an event
could happen even in this country, even now. There are several points that should
be considered:
Winds of Change
Hitler's meteoric rise to power as a small unattended politician took only 10 years
He had far less support initially than Buchanan.
The Spotlight and other anti-semitic publications, have grown from small,
radical, and strange little periodicals to widely subscribed newspapers/letters
which appeal to conservative family-oriented, law-and-order political groups.
(Angelfire does not permit the linking of sites involving hate literature;
American Nazi Party's (old name) site and the Spotlight's site may be found through any search engine.)
Members of such groups as Militia, Patriots, White Aryan groups(i.e. KKK) and
so forth are beginning to be represented in most even mainline churches, especially
among bible-based denominations and fellowships. Whether this is intentional, or
serendipitous, I do not know, but their representation is there nonetheless, and
those few often seek leadership positions.
Israel is receiving less and less popular political support: a Jewish Homeland
is not a ready assumption any longer. this is true in politics and in large Catholic/
Protestant denominations.
A law and order and nationalistic hubris platform was developed as a campaign base for both.
Doctrines and dogma of Reconstructionism and Replacement Theology are prevailing over doctrines of God's sovereignty leading to a conservative religious "manifest destiny" policy and a degrading of the Jews in prophecy, identity and christian politics.
Higher Criticism influential then as now, has in its reductionism demeaned scripture to moral tales instead of divine truth, thus destroying the notion of the Jews as a people of an eternal covenant, making them dispensable to the secularized, visible, political church.
Lastly, Buchanan's campaign is well-funded, and Jewish concerns are hidden and
hushed.
It must be remembered that as Hitler and the Third Reich took hold of Germany and
Europe, it was never thought or conceived of that millions of Jews and other
persons not acceptable to the Aryan zeitgeist would be brutally and horrifically
murdered. There were only discussions of political disempowerment and "resettlement".
There was a time such as now. Mr. Buchanan, lives are real, then and now.
A line of a song remarks that on each side of the rifle, we are the same. There is
nothing trite in learning from history. The wound on the earth left by the holocaust
is barely scarred. It it in Mr. Buchanan's hand to recall that before he opens
the wound with his rhetoric. He includes in his own book the following quote:
The price of empire is America's soul and that price is too high. J. William Fulbright
Empires always develop
from Republics based on hatred and the demeaning of others.
May Buchanan consider, that although he has believed God is on his side,God is not on his side, and has
never been on the side of those who do not bless the Jewish people. This is the clear teaching of scripture, which Mr. Buchanan need to add to his reading list.
May he consider in his rhetoric and position, that those numbers, however debated,
were mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and dearly loved ones. Those numbers are written small and insignificantly on our hearts when they are not our own
Elizabeth K. Best copyright 1999 all rights reserved
*Shoah is the hebrew word for holocaust, meaning gale or destruction.
