Buchanan defends concentration camp guard

[Questioninggeller]

Buchanan actually managed to sink even lower. He is defending Nazi SS concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk and compares his trial to Christ's persecution. The article is on VDARE's website, which is a anti-immigration group.

Do people really take Buchanan seriously?

John Demanjuk And The True Haters

By Patrick J. Buchanan
VDare

On Good Friday, John Demjanjuk, 89 and gravely ill, was ordered deported to Germany to stand trial as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews—at Sobibor camp in Poland.

Sound familiar? It should. It is a re-enactment of the 1986 extradition of John Demjanjuk to Israel to be tried for the murder of 870,000 Jews—at Treblinka camp in Poland.

How many men in the history of this country have been so relentlessly pursued and remorselessly persecuted?
...
But if Germans wish to prosecute participants in the Holocaust, why not round up some old big-time Nazis, instead of a Ukrainian POW.

Answer: They cannot. Because the Germans voted an amnesty for themselves in 1969. So now they must find a Slav soldier they captured—and Heinrich Himmler's SS conscripted and made a camp guard, if he ever was a camp guard—to punish in expiation for Germany's sins.

The spirit behind this un-American persecution has never been that of justice tempered by mercy. It is the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago.
...

Full: VDare

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Pat Buchanan. ...words cannot express the scope of this man. I am... dumbfounded.

 

[Marc39]

Buchanan has been a vocal defendant of that Nazi for years. It's just that the Nazi is back in the news, and, so, too, is Buchanan. Buchanan has steafastly denied harboring pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic sentiments and claims his defense of the guy is based on constitutional grounds and a lack of evidence of the guy's prior Nazi ties. One nevertheless can't help wonder what drives Buchanan to go out of his way to vociferously support someone with apparent Nazi connections. The late William F. Buckley wrote a devastating article years ago, when Buchanan was a presiential candidate, making a convincing case for Buchanan being a rabid anti-Semite that Buchanan, himself, acknowledged was very damaging to him.

 

[Olowkow]

I heard him on Rachel Maddow's show ranting about Sotomayor. Christ, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. I think he is going off the deep end ever since Obama got elected.

 

[dudalb]

Buchanan has been cut way too much slack by the press because he was a journalist, and is a member of the "Old Boys Network". If any other public figure had said the things Buchanan had said , he would have been treated as a total wackjob the by media.

 

[Tricky]

I despise Buchannan too, but some things in that article make me wonder. Is it true that Germans cannot be prosecuted but Slavs can? If that is true, then this truly is grosslly unfair.

How much power did Demanjuk have? In spite of the rejection of the Nuremburg defense, I have to wonder how much responsibility the grunts have for the decisions of the brass. Some, yes, but in the case of a guard, what are his options? Run away? He'd likely be killed. Refuse to work? Also a death sentence. Call the press? Oops. No tweeter.

If he was in a decision-making role then I think he deserves whatever he gets. If not, then I am not sure what I would do differently in his position. Any suggestions?

 

[Marc39]

I can't locate the Buckley article making the case for Buchanan's anti-Semitism, but, this article alludes to it...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/124012

 

[Sir Robin Goodfellow]

Well, if I remember correctly, he was known for being exceptionally cruel and sadistic. If he had just been a guard, preventing escapes and such, then he may not have been so well remembered by prisoners at Sobibor, and he may not have even been guilty of any crimes. But if the surviving prisoners are correct about him, then he went way beyond simple guard duty.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

I don't like Buchannan either, but I have to assume that he is assuming Demanjuk is innocent of most if not all charges.

Knowingly defending "Ivan the Terrible", even for Buchannan, would be completely off the deep end.

 

[Improbable Joe]

Pat Buchanan is a white nationalist/supremacist who singlehandedly manages to disprove the whole "liberal media" myth. Buchanan has always been a huge and open racist and antisemitic creep.

In this case, he makes no claim that the Nazi in question is actually innocent, while comparing him to Jesus. Anyone defending him at this point is staining themselves with the same racist taint.

 

[Eskarina]

I despise Buchannan too, but some things in that article make me wonder. Is it true that Germans cannot be prosecuted but Slavs can? If that is true, then this truly is grosslly unfair.

I don't know where Buchanan got his wisdom from, but I suppose it involves his rectum. Everyone suspected of participating in the Holocaust can be prosecuted in Germany, regardless of their nationalty.

There have been fierce debates in Germany in the past over the statute of limitation on murder and genocide and one of them happened in 1969. So this might be what Buchanan mistakenly referred to. And as of 1979 there is no statute of limitation on murder and genocide over here.

Nationality, however, has never been an issue in these debates.

ETA: I have just found something that might contributed to Buchanan's confusion:

Völkerstrafgesetzbuch

Someone tell Rumsfeld he'd better not come over here, please.

 

[epeeist]

Buchanan actually managed to sink even lower. He is defending Nazi SS concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk and compares his trial to Christ's persecution. The article is on VDARE's website, which is a anti-immigration group.

Do people really take Buchanan seriously?



Full: VDare

To ignore an argument merely because you dislike the source is irrational.

According to the article - I have no idea whether these things are true - Buchanan's defending him because he's NOT a former concentration camp guard. Or at least, in Buchanan's view, there are reasons to strongly suspect the evidence against him. He was previously sentenced to death for being a totally different camp guard at a different camp, which was eventually accepted as mistaken identity though not before he was sentenced to death:

"...To its eternal credit, Israel's Supreme Court threw aside the verdict and stopped Demjanjuk from being the first man hanged in Jerusalem since Adolf Eichmann in 1961.

A humiliated OSI, through its Israeli friends, now asked the court to authorize a new trial, charging Demjanjuk with having been a guard at Sobibor—during the same time they previously charged he had been at Treblinka.

What OSI was admitting was that its case against Demjanjuk, to see him hang from the gallows as "Ivan the Terrible," had been based on flimsy or falsified evidence and worthless or perjured testimony.... [emphasis added]

 

[ddt]

I despise Buchannan too, but some things in that article make me wonder. Is it true that Germans cannot be prosecuted but Slavs can? If that is true, then this truly is grosslly unfair.

I don't know where he got that. There may be some truth in it, but not so much Germans vs. Slavs but Germans vs. non-Germans. A couple of years ago, a case of a Dutch war criminal came into the news here. He had been tracked down living in Germany. However, as he had joined the SS, he had gotten the German nationality, and Germany wouldn't extradite him to the Netherlands. I've forgotten his name and the severity of his crimes, the latter may have to do with it.

How much power did Demanjuk have? In spite of the rejection of the Nuremburg defense, I have to wonder how much responsibility the grunts have for the decisions of the brass. Some, yes, but in the case of a guard, what are his options? Run away? He'd likely be killed. Refuse to work? Also a death sentence. Call the press? Oops. No tweeter.

If he was in a decision-making role then I think he deserves whatever he gets. If not, then I am not sure what I would do differently in his position. Any suggestions?

As others noted, it depends on how he fulfilled his task. Charges are that he went way beyond the call of duty.

I'm no fan of Buchanan either, and I think it's right that there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, but the German prosecutor better have a damn good case against Demjanjuk - after all, he already has been prosecuted on false grounds.

 

[HansMustermann]

To be honets, the whole thing reads to me like a good dose of poisoning the well, plus a pinch of argumentum ad lazarum. The whole Germans-vs-slavs, or the ridiculous idea that courts do whatever OSI asks them to, looks to me like just an attempt to paint the other side in advance as, pretty, much the evil guys.

If he has any evidence that German courts can be bought or ordered around that easily, I think nobody would be more interested than the German people. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't even make it to the next election, before some heads roll. (Figuratively speaking. Heads don't roll well)

 

[Questioninggeller]

To ignore an argument merely because you dislike the source is irrational.

What argument? He ignores the evidence to declare him not guilty while providing no evidence of him being just a Soviet soldier.

According to a 2002 US district court ruling, reliable evidence suggests that Mr Demjanjuk was in fact an "an armed guard at Sobibor, where 250,000 men, women, and children were murdered; at the Majdanek concentration camp, where at least 170,000 civilians died; at the Flossenbuerg concentration camp, where some 30,000 civilians perished; and a member of a unit trained at the Trawniki Training Camp to implement 'Operation Reinhard', the Nazi programme to dispossess, exploit, and murder Jews in Poland".

and this was based on pieces of evidence including:

"Our experts from the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation had only recently verified the validity of Demjanjuk's identification card, which puts him in the Sobibor camp, a death camp in then Nazi occupied Poland," Winkler explained.

...Demjanjuk was a member of the so-called Vlasov Army, a group of Russian volunteers who did the Nazis' dirty work in the death camps in the occupied areas of Eastern Europe.
...

To ignore evidence to defend someone of murder is irrational, and then to compare him to Jesus as well as accuse the German government of protecting, er refusing, to arrest Germans is disgustingly untrue.

If you want to presume he's innocent for the trial, fine. If you want to assert he was just a Red Army soldier and not a SS Guard, like Buchanan, let's see evidence.

PS This is the same man who

Why is Pat Buchanan's website playing host to Holocaust deniers?
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Special to NYDailyNews.com
Tuesday, May 12th 2009, 4:00 AM

...
Patrick Buchanan, a devout Catholic, might want to reacquaint himself with these declarations by the leader of his church, because the MSNBC political commentator and one-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is currently enabling Holocaust deniers.

Buchanan.org, his official Web site, hosts, on a "Buchanan Brigade Forum" for registered members of the site, a long discussion thread in which Holocaust revisionists compare notes with each other and heap venom and vitriol on Jews. It's titled "Discussion about 'The Holocaust' " (with The Holocaust in quotes, of course).
...
These opinions are not inconsistent with Buchanan's own. In a March 17, 1990, syndicated column, Buchanan wrote that it would have been impossible for Jews to die in the gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp, and referred to a "so-called Holocaust survivor syndrome," which he described as involving "group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics."
...

 

[Cleon]

I remember when Buchanan first made a "serious" run for the Presidential nomination, in 1996. He made a fair amount of noise, and looked like a serious contender. Then various advisors and high-ranking people in his campaign turned out to have connections to various white-supremacist groups, and his campaign started to stall.

 

[dudalb]

Actually 1992 ,not 1996 was Buchanan's first serious run. He did not have a chance to win the nomination, but his New Hampshire win against Bush Sr sent shock waves through the GOP, and electrified a right wing movement in the GOP which forced Bush Sr further to the right then he probably would have gone otherwise, and gave Ross Perot the idea that Bush might be vulnerable to a third Party Candidate.
Buchnan.on the strength of his movement, was given the keynote address spot on the GOP and proceeding to deliver an over the top, hard right diatribe which even the GOP commentators on network news said was a disaster for the GOP. It did severe damage to the GOP in November.
In fact, I would argue that Buchanan 1992 antics had a greater impact on politics then his 1996 run did, since it collapased fairly early.

 

[Cicero]

It's as if people have to rediscover PB&J's predilection for Die Aryan Volk when he can't resist inserting himself, again, whenever Demjanjuk's name is mentioned in the news.

B&J was once considered for the position of ambassador to South Africa. Ford squashed that proposal since he had no wish to exceed the embarrassment of Joe Kennedy's ambassadorship to Britain.

It is no accident that he is the resident "conservative" at MSNBC. They like his attacks on Israel, his attacks on every member of the GOP, and his defense of Putin. What a guy!

His latest book,"Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World ," provides an insight into the squirrel cage that is PB&J's mind.

 

[boloboffin]

Pat Buchanan is a white nationalist/supremacist who singlehandedly manages to disprove the whole "liberal media" myth. Buchanan has always been a huge and open racist and antisemitic creep.

Which is why MSNBC is happy to give him a platform, or in the words of Atrios, will never take his cot out of the green room.

I mean, let's get real.

 

[Brainster]

Buchanan has been cut way too much slack by the press because he was a journalist, and is a member of the "Old Boys Network". If any other public figure had said the things Buchanan had said , he would have been treated as a total wackjob the by media.

He also has tremendous personal charisma; even many of his political foes like him even though they disagree strongly with what he has to say. I met him at a campaign event in 1996, and was completely bowled over even though I had zero intention of voting for him (I went with Steve Forbes).

He's wrong about Demjanjuk, although I would remind people that he was right about him not being Ivan the Terrible. And if you think that anti-Semitism might have informed his beliefs then and now, I'd say you're not far off the mark.