I teach a graduate seminar called “Theory and Ideology in International Relations” and one of the things I have the students do is review two books for presentation to the class. One is supposed to be from a commentator/pundit/ideologue and the other from a practitioner/academic. The idea is to provide an opportunity for the students to examine and discuss the ways in which ideology and theoretical assumptions made by authors affect their analyses.
One of my students chose for their commentator book Pat Buchanan’s State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. The book, about which I have commented before, contains the following passage:
America faces an existential crisis. If we do not get control of our borders, by 2024 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built. No nation has ever undergone so radical a demographic transformation and survived.
[…]
In 1994, Sam Francis, the syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times…volunteered this thought:
“The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted by a different people.”
Had Francis said this of Chinese civilization and the Chinese people, it would have gone unnoted. But he was suggesting Western civilization was superior and that only Europeans could have created it. If Western peoples perish, as they are doing today, Francis was implying, we must expect our civilization to die with us.
There was also a passage, noted by the the student in question, as to how the US was edging closer to becoming “a Third World” nation because 24% of the population was going to be of Hispanic origin by the middle of the century. In short: “white” = “American” and “Western Civilization” and “Hispanic” = “Third World” according to Pat Buchanan.
So, keeping that in mind, the story continues.
Now, it ends up that yesterday we were also examining fascism and National Socialism in the context of national ideologies. And we were looking at some passages from Hitler’s Mein Kampf which includes the following gems:
Everything we admire on this earth today – science and art, technology and inventions – is only the creative product of a few peoples and originally perhaps of one race. On them depends the existence of this whole culture. If they perish, the beauty of this earth will sink into the grave with them.
[...]
All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.
The ultimate cause of such a decline was their forgetting that all culture depends on men and not conversely; hence that to preserve a certain culture the man who creates it must be preserved.
[...]
If we were to divide mankind into three groups, the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture, only the Aryan could be considered as the representative of the first group. From him originate the foundations and walls of all human creation, and only the outward form and color are determined by the changing traits of character of the various peoples. He provides the mightiest building stones and plans for all human progress and only the execution corresponds to the nature of the varying men and races.
In short: culture and achievement come from the type of person (i.e., race) in question.
As we were discussing the text, the similarity with Buchanan’s argument was quite striking and disturbing. It isn’t that I hadn’t considered Buchanan to be on the reactionary side of things, or that I had failed to notice that he brushes uncomfortably close to anti-semitism (among other things). However, it is difficult to look at his comments on culture, race and immigration and not see someone who deserves to be considered as having, for lack of a better term, neonazi leanings. I don’t know what else to call it.
And, I would note, that Godwin’s Law doesn’t obtain when the person you are speaking about can legitimately be compared to Hitler.
The disturbing part, ultimately is that while his voice isn’t what it once was, Buchanan still maintains a great deal of influence in some segments of US politics.
September 21st, 2024 at 2:33 pm
However, it is difficult to look at his comments on culture, race and immigration and not see someone who deserves to be considered as having, for lack of a better term, neonazi leanings.
Well, at least he doesn’t call anyone Macaca in his book.
September 21st, 2024 at 3:32 pm
This just in: Pat Buchanan and George Allen are racists…
Schocking. Schocking, I say!
(Thanks to PoliBlog for the juxtaposition of quotations from Buchanan’s version of Mein Kampf, as well as the original, and other relevant information, including an interesting WaPo link on Allen.)
……
September 21st, 2024 at 6:44 pm
And his book is #49 at Amazon. That depresses the hell out of me.
September 21st, 2024 at 6:45 pm
Was it 1988 or 1992 that Buchanan’s speech drew the comment from one female tv comentator, “I liked it better in the original German.”