by Bob Fitrakis, Sep 27, 1999

So, George W. Bush wants Pat Buchanan to stay in the Republican Party instead of bolting to the Reform Party and their $12 million "pot of gold" matching funds. Why? Because Bush says "I need every vote I can get," reported the Sunday Dispatch. Better a far Right Nazi apologist like Buchanan pissing out of the big Republican tent on Democrats than pissing in on Republicans.

I understand perfectly that Bush doesn't want to alienate the Holocaust deniers, cryptofascists and the all-important gay-bashers' vote clustered around Buchanan. The dirty little secret of the Republican Party in Ohio and nationally during the Reagan-Bush years, is the GOP's established ties to various old-time Nazis and fascists through its ethnic-outreach program. Russ Bellant's Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party (1991) and Martin Lee's The Beast Awakens (1997) are both fine sources. Bellant found ties between then-Governor, now U.S. Senator George Voinovich and former Eastern European fascist immigrants.

The Buchanan record is easier to document for those who care. As White House Communication Director under Reagan, Buchanan regularly assailed the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), an agency established during the Carter years to find and prosecute Nazis and fascists who had entered the United States illegally. Buchanan is on record as an admirer of the deceased fascist dictator Franco, the Chilean butcher Pinochet and the former South African apartheid regime.

During the Reagan administration, Buchanan equated the allies' treatment of German citizens after World War II to the Nazi's treatment of the Jews -- an absurd claim favored by German and American neo-Nazis. Reportedly, Buchanan scripted Reagan's infamous and shocking remarks when he proclaimed buried SS soldiers at Bitburg: ". . . victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." The rock group the Ramones immortalized Reagan's words, and his bizarre comparison between the executioners and the executed in their song "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg."

Buchanan believes Hitler was "an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier," a line usually advanced by neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic publications like the Spotlight and the Institute for Historical Review Journal. Expect Pat's new tome, A Republic, Not An Empire, that offers the thesis that Hitler was eminently appeasable, to get favorable reviews in neo-Nazi circles. Also recall during the Reagan presidency, his Department of Education rejected a proposed Holocaust curriculum for federal funding because "the Nazi point of view, however unpopular [was] not presented, nor [was] that of the Ku Klux Klan."

Both France's right-wing National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pat Buchanan masqueraded as free market Reaganomic fanatics during the 1980's. After faithfully serving Reagan, Buchanan changed his tune during his 1992 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Buchanan's program strongly mirrored the right-wing national populism of France's National Front. Buchanan's campaign allowed for the cross-fertilization of ideas between white supremacists and their less-overtly racist, but far more numerous, religious Right allies. Hatred of homosexuals, bashing of immigrants and fear of the mysterious "New World Order" brought them together in the Buchanan brigades.

Buchanan actually used the term "culture wars" during his speech before the Republican convention, the same phrase used by Nazis in the 1930's. He openly appealed to the Christian Right with calculated phrases like "our culture is superior to other cultures, superior because our religion is Christianity." As Adrianna Huffington pointed out in a recent column, last November Buchanan charged: "Non-Jewish whites -- 75% of the U.S. population -- get just 25% of the slots . . . . Now we know who's really getting the shaft at Harvard: white Christians." During the Reagan years, Buchanan argued against racial and ethnic quotas and insisted that people should be admitted to colleges based on merit, now he's hinting at the pre-World War II anti-Jewish quota system prominent in elite universities.

Not only was Buchanan endorsed by several prominent religious Right leaders, but the anti-Semitic Spotlight, published by the Liberty Lobby, noted that, "Buchanan's campaign platform reads like nothing less than a statement of the Liberty Lobby's positions on the issues."

In 1996, Larry Pratt served as Buchanan's presidential campaign co-chairman. Pratt heads Gun Owners of America, but more importantly, is a key figure in American militia circles. Pratt attended the infamous October 1992 militia planning session in Colorado hosted by the notorious racist Christian Identity pastor Pete Peters. Pratt has shared the stage at rallies with Aryan Nation Chief Richard Butler and former KKK leader and guerrilla warfare specialist Louis Beam. Pratt resigned after the media exposed his ties to the neo-Nazi and white supremacist fringe.

Part of Buchanan's appeal, like the Nazis in the 1930's, is populist economics. His willingness to scapegoat immigrants to appease the financial insecurities of the average U.S. citizen left out of the 1990's economic boom, fills a void created when President Bill Clinton led the "New Democrats" to the economic center.

Here in Columbus, you hear lots of talk from Democrat Michael Coleman and Republican Dorothy Teater on school and police issues, but nothing about the unconscionably high poverty rate of 17% in Columbus. Business First courageously called this "the dark side of the boom." The Northeast Ohio Research Consortium recently published a new study showing that while unemployment rates are abnormally low, creating theoretically a strong job market, average wages -- living wages for real workers -- have actually declined in Columbus and Ohio over the last 20 years. Adjusted for inflation, Columbus wages declined from $12.19 and hour to $11 an hour.

As long as local major party mayoral candidates like Coleman and Teater ignore the plight of workers, the specter of a right-wing national Third Party under Buchanan's control will continue to haunt us.