Pat Buchanan has always been recognized for his outspoken, often suspect public statements. This time, however, a minority advocacy group has had enough and is rallying for MSNBC to relieve him from his position on the network.
He claimed that a Klan leader stole his ideas; he defended Hitler; his new book talks of the “End of White America.” Yet, somehow, Pat Buchanan is still a commentator for MSNBC — but not if a civil rights group can finally have their way.
Color of Change, an advocacy group that sets out to “strengthen Black America’s political voice,” is calling for MSNBC to relieve controversial conservative host Pat Buchanan of his long-standing hosting duties on the network, citing a list of grievances against the commentator in an email published online this week.
“For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it,” the group writes in a letter this week. Before listing a laundry list of remarks Buchanan has made over just a few short years, Color of Change adds that the host “has the right to express his views, but he’s not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions.”
“If MSNBC wants to be seen as a trusted, mainstream source of news and commentary, it needs to fire Buchanan now,” they add.
In the past, Color of Change has campaigned against former Fox News host Glenn Beck for similar complaints.
Among the complaints are recent remarks made by Buchanan while promoting his latest book, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive Until 2025?” While the contents on the pages of the book are as controversial as what the host spews regularly on MSNBC, his media appearances this week to hype his new release have opened a whole new can of worms, particular since the host of radio program The Political Cesspool has said in the past that “MLK’s dream is our nightmare,” and “interracial sex is white genocide.”
The Political Cesspool, a syndicated show hosted by James Edwards, touts itself as propagating “a philosophy that is pro-White” and writes on their website that they “wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.”
Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips defended Buchanan’s choice to appear on the show, firing back at Color of Change for being “left wing racist nuts” and “a danger to America” on his blog.
Prior to Edwards’ chat with Buchanan recently, the host defended former KKK Grand Wizard and Louisiana politician David Duke as a “friend” for whom “that there is not a single negative thing” he could say about him. On his own part, Buchanan himself has previously attested that Duke was guilty of stealing his own ideas, telling The Washington Post at one point, “I have a mind to go down there and sue that dude for intellectual property theft.”
Michael Wolraich, author of “Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual,” notes in his book, however, that “according to intellectual property experts, you can’t trademark racism.”
“If Buchanan didn’t have a powerful media platform, he’d be just another person with outdated, extremist ideas,” notes the civil rights group. “But it’s irresponsible and dangerous for MSNBC to promote his hateful views to an audience of millions.”
MSNBC has yet to offer an official response.