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Why is Pat Buchanan Comparing an Accused Nazi War Criminal to Jesus Christ? |
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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a conference Pat Buchanan’s group, the American Cause, recently held. The conference featured a panelist who describes himself as a “white nationalist” and has argued that the Republican party should focus on its base: “white Americans.” Reading about the conference and Buchanan’s organization got me curious: what else is Buchanan up to? I went to the American Cause’s website, and started reading through Buchanan’s columns.
Turns out he is using his organization’s website to make wildly extreme, ultra-reactionary arguments against evolution and in defense of a man the Simon Wiesenthal Center says committed “unspeakable crimes” as a Nazi death camp guard. That man is John Demjanjuk. In 2002, a U.S. federal court found that reliable evidence supports the conclusion that Demjanjuk was an armed guard at Sobibor, a death camp where 250,000 people were murdered. German prosecutors say they have hundreds of documents and a number of witnesses that prove Demjanjuk’s involvement in the murder of 29,000 Jews in 1943. The head of the special German office investigating Nazi crimes says there is “no doubt” Demjanjuk is responsible for these murders. Demjanjuk was recently deported from the U.S. and is in a German prison awaiting trial on charges that he was an accessory to these 29,000 murders.
Now, it’s important to note that, in 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court threw out Demjanjuk’s conviction for war crimes committed by the notorious Ivan the Terrible at Treblinka, a different death camp. The Israeli court found that new evidence suggested Ivan the Terrible was another man–however, according to BBC News, the court was careful not to declare Demjanjuk innocent, pointing to “ample evidence that he had served as a guard in concentration camps other than Treblinka.”
I fully believe that Demjanjuk has a right to a fair trial, and he will receive one. However, these are very serious charges, and they hardly sound frivolous. It’s hard to say Demjanjuk is being railroaded or persecuted–unless you’re Pat Buchanan, that is. Buchanan wrote a column in April, entitled “The True Haters”, that implicitly compares Demjanjuk to Jesus Christ. Buchanan paints Demjanjuk as a victim of relentless persecution, focusing on the fact that Demjanjuk’s conviction in 1993 was thrown out. Buchanan leaves out crucial points: (1) the Israeli court that threw out Demjanjuk’s conviction did not say he was “innocent” and noted there was evidence he was guilty of other crimes (2) German prosecutors say there is “no doubt” that Demjanjuk is criminally responsible for 29,000 murders, pointing to hundreds of documents and a number of witnesses backing up their case and (3) the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has been involved in the Demjanjuk case for many years, has concluded he committed unspeakable crimes during the Holocaust.
Why does Buchanan completely ignore the evidence against Demjanjuk? Why does he paint Demjanjuk as a victim, grotesquely and bizarrely calling him “the American Dreyfus”? (Dreyfus was a French Jewish military officer who was convicted of espionage charges against a backdrop of anti-Semitism: Dreyfus’s name stands for injustice based on prejudice against Jews). Why did he go so far as to compare Demjanjuk to Christ, saying that Demjanjuk was the victim of “the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago“? (This is a particularly explosive comparison, given the centuries-old slander that the Jews killed Christ: is Buchanan suggesting that the Jews are similarly trying to kill Demjanjuk?)
I can’t say what motivates Buchanan, but his tendentious defense of an accused Nazi war criminal makes me ill. As I asked before, how is it that Buchanan is able to market himself as a mainstream commentator?
Update: hat tip to Philip Klein, who eloqently exposed Buchanan’s “vile defense” of Demjanjuk back in April.
Chris it%u2019s me%u2014My bs detector went off again and it led me to your article. Do you have a psychological compulsion to lie and misrepresent what Buchanan wrote? You make outrageous statements that ae simply debunked by checking your listed sources. Buchanan%u2019s entire article was about the flimsy evidence that our OSI and the duplicity of the Germans in pursuing Nazi war criminals. Did you not want an innocent man like Demjanjuk released and returned to his home? Now, Demjanjuk is again being pursued based on unsubstantiated charges from the KGB.
%u201CDemjanjuk is to be taken to Germany and prosecuted as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews at Sobibor - though not one living person can place him at that camp and not even the German prosecutor will say that he ever hurt anyone. One witness in Israel, who was at Sobibor and says he knew all the camp guards, says he never saw Demjanjuk there.%u201D
What is your beef with the article? As a Jew, I see what looks like an innocent man being railroaded for crimes he didn%u2019t commit. I think your ideology is so corrupted that you slant anything to prove a point%u2014WHY!
like Buchanan, you’re completely ignoring the evidence I pointed to, including the quote I referenced from German prosecutors who say there is “no doubt” Demjanjuk is criminally responsible as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews. My “beef” with the article and your post is that you ignore the 3 points I highlighted above, in my original post, as well as the fact that a US federal court found there is reliable evidence that Demjanjuk was an armed guard at the Sobibor camp. I’m not going to repeat myself again, and am probably making a mistake even responding to your comment. I’d refer you to my post above, as well as the Phillip Klein piece I linked to above in my update.
Your right Chris– the only article I consulted was the Buchanan piece. However, checking your other references give vague “ample evidence” against Demjanjuk without specifics. What is disturbing to me is his description of being a POW of the Germans as a captured Russian soldier. Sounds extremely plausible though not beyond shadow of a doubt. What really bothers me is the reliance of testimony from the KGB and the simple fact not one survivor can place him at any camp. I have relatives that survived and perished in these camps. There is no one more than I that want to see these criminals brought to justice– but I am not so vengeful as to want to convict what appears to be an innocent man. Courts will make that decision. Having said this however, my main problem is the way you portrayed Buchanan which is false based on the article you referenced.
I said that Buchanan ignored the evidence against Demjanjuk–he did. I don’t want to repeat myself, but if you look at the specific points I made, there’s nothing “false” about how I portrayed Buchanan. I gave very specific examples of the evidence against Demjanjuk, including what an Israeli and US court had to say, as well as the documentary and other evidence compiled by German prosecutors that led them to say there is “no doubt” that Demjanjuk is criminallly responsible for the murders of 29,000 Jews. There’s nothing “false” about that–I simply pointed out that Buchanan ignored these points.
I haven’t gone through the evidence against Demjanjuk and, as I said in my initial post, he deserves a trial. My point is that the charges against him are serious and, based on what 2 courts have found, as well as the German prosecutors and people from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the charges hardly seem frivolous. I can’t tell you for sure whether Demjanjuk is guilty without going through all the evidence–which is why he deserves and will have a trial. But I can tell you that several reputable bodies think he’s guilty–and the German prosecutors say there’s “no doubt”. Again, the trial will give Demjanjuk a chance to rebut this evidence and the charges, but I take these souces seriously, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
What bothered me about Buchanan’s article is that he simply ignored all of this, called Demjanjuk a persecuted man, and compared him to Dreyfus and Jesus Christ. It made me wonder why Buchanan is defending an accused Nazi war criminal without even acknowledging the sizeable body of evidence arrayed against Demjanjuk and the multiple courts and authorities who have found there’s reason to conclude Demjanjuk is a Nazi war criminal.