MSNBC's Deafening Silence on Patrick Buchanan's Association with Holocaust Deniers

[spiritual_gunfighter]

MSNBC's Deafening Silence on Patrick Buchanan's Association with Holocaust Deniers by Menachem Rosensaft


One week ago, I outed Patrick Buchanan, the former senior White House official in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, erstwhile reactionary candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and now a highly paid political commentator on MSNBC, for sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on his website. Within hours, the forum in question, entitled "Disinformation, Deception and Other Tricks: Discussion about 'The Holocaust'" (with The Holocaust in quotes, of course), mysteriously vanished from Buchanan.org, and the link to it was disabled.


The Buchanan website's forum followed the standard Holocaust deniers' playbook, complete with such gems as "Most historians believe it was LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GAS 6 MILLION JEWS AND REDUCE THEIR BODIES TO ASHES;" "We have known for some time that the Auschwitz myth is of an exclusively Jewish origin;" "The same blinded people that believe that the Germans intentionally killed Jews -- also believe the myth of the Anne Frank Diary;" and "Rightly or wrongly -- the Jew was blamed for a lot of the problems that Germany suffered. The Jews were given years of warnings that they were unwelcome in Germany. A lot of Jews fled Germany in the late 1930s. The United States was not very anxious to accept very many. This was when White Christians still had a little control of our Nation."

One might have expected the disclosure of this forum to at least raise some eyebrows at MSNBC. After all, two years ago, the news channel summarily fired talk show host Don Imus for making a racially insensitive remark about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on one's website strikes me as no less offensive. But not a single member of MSNBC's management has deigned to publicly address Buchanan's association with anti-Semites, White supremacists and other assorted bigots.

One would also have expected Buchanan's MSNBC colleagues to take him to task for aiding and abetting Holocaust deniers. They have not done so. Not once.

article continues at


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/menachem-rosensaft/msnbcs-deafening-silence_b_205071.html

[sam sarrha]

1. what about his self professed Fascism..??

[Berry Cool]

2. I beg to differ with this author's presumption.

"One would also have expected Buchanan's MSNBC colleagues to take him to task for aiding and abetting Holocaust deniers."

No, one would NOT. At least not on air.

Think of it this way. Let's say you work in an office. The guy in the next cubicle has a blog he works on when he's not in the office. You know this by sheer accident--you learned about it in your own off hours. You discovered that amongst other political statements your coworker made on this blog, he said things that make it clear he's a Holocaust denier.

Now, is it your job to go to your boss and tell him or her this? Should you be "expected" to? Should you be "expected" to bring it up at a meeting? Or when your coworker is due for a promotion?

Unless you both work for, say, a Jewish organization, I don't see how or why.

Your coworker's opinions are his crappy opinions (or, should I say, if he can't even TELL the difference between opinion and fact, that's his problem, not your employer's).

I fail to see why certain personalities on MSNBC are always being berated and chastised by liberal bloggers for not calling out their colleagues. For crying out loud, people, it's a workplace. When's the last time you yelled at one of YOUR coworkers that he was a bigoted, clueless asshole...and still kept your job?

As much as I'd love to see Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz or even Mika Mouse tell Pat Buchanan to "shut your bigoted racist anti-Semitic piehole," I don't expect to ever see it happen. Not, at least, unless he starts professing Holocaust denial on TV. But I don't expect that to ever happen...and so long as it doesn't, their hands are tied.

MSNBC does have the choice of whether or not to keep him around, if they know what he does. Blame the management...but don't blame his coworkers.

[Buzz Clik]

3. Excellent post. A lot of DUers have a very bizarre concept of the role of the media.

[spiritual_gunfighter]

4. I agree that it may not be Keith Olbermann and the gang's place

to call out Pat Buchanan's racist history on air. It IS the place of the MSNBC management to not continue giving a forum to a guy that has a long and sordid history of racist statements and views. They were very quick to fire Imus as the article states so I am not sure why the double standard for Pat Buchanan. Olbermann is very quick to call out pundits on other networks when they have views similar to Pat's and you maybe right it may not be the forum to go after a fellow coworker but I think it is interesting that he doesn't hold the same standards for a guy that is just as hateful but he happens to be on the same network.

[dorkulon]

5. What does that mean, "sponsored a forum"?

Does that mean someone posted a thread on his website forums? Because that's not him doing anything. Especially if it was taken down, it doesn't seem very fair to act as though he said these words. I doubt Skinner would like to take responsibility for some of the inanities professed on DU, for instance.

[IndianaGreen]

6. K&R

:kick:

Just listen to Buchanan rant, and you'll see him for the crypto-nazi that he is.