April 26, 2009

Mestizo leaders = "scrub stock"?

Conservative "thinker" Pat Buchanan proves once again how racist he is:

Buchanan:  Nicaraguan Leader Is "Scrub Stock"[E]very now and then, the centrality to Buchanan's worldview of racial difference rises to the surface. In addition to his frequent MSNBC appearances, where he plays a mostly well-mannered, if hardline, conservative, Buchanan also writes a column for the far-right web magazine, Human Events. And that's where he gets himself into trouble.

His most recent effort, "The Rooted and The Rootless," takes as its premise the notion that there's a "blood-and-soil, family-and-faith, God-and-country kind of nation" that's competing with a minority represented by the "rootless" Obama and his "aides with advanced degrees from elite colleges who react just like him."

Already, we're in National Socialist territory here, but let's leave that aside (with Buchanan, once you start down this path, it can be hard to stop...). What jumped out at us was Buchanan's contention that the "blood-and-soil" part of America...

does not comprehend how the president could sit in Trinidad and listen to the scrub stock of the hemisphere trash our country--and say nothing.
The posting explains that "scrub stock" means "inferior breed."[L]et's look again at who Buchanan is calling "the scrub stock of the hemisphere" who "trashed our country" at the recent meeting Obama attended in Trinidad. The leader who most prominently did so was Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, who, aside from being a left-wing former Sandinista, is, like many Latin-Americans, mestizo--meaning he's part Amerindian and part white.

Buchanan may also have had in mind Hugo Chavez, the leader of Venezuela, who was on relatively good behavior in Trinidad, but who has frequently "trashed America" and whose handshake with Obama in Trinidad was blown up by the right into an example of the president kowtowing to America's antagonists. Chavez, of course, is also mestizo.

That's not incidental. The leftist social and political movements of Latin America--against which Buchanan has been fulminating since at least the Reagan era--have traditionally been led by mestizos, and many have been defined in part through their efforts to mobilize non-whites against the often European-descended conservative elite power structure.

With that context, the notion that Buchanan used "scrub stock" to refer simply to ineffective or morally bankrupt leaders, with no racial connotation, becomes, frankly, implausible.

So what does all this amount to? Buchanan referred--not in a heated moment while speaking, but in print--to the mixed-race leader of a foreign country with a phrase that's used to denote an animal or person of inferior stock. There's really no getting around that.
No doubt Buchanan also meant to include Evo Morales, who is not merely a part-Indian mestizo but a true Indian.

For more on Buchanan's racist ignorance, see Buchanan:  Helping Indians = "Pigout" and Pat Buchanan on Jamestown.

The conservative hypocrisy on the phony "handshake with Chavez" issue may surpass the conservative hypocrisy on the phony "tax increase" issue--if that's possible. Here's a clue, dopes: Not only did George W. Bush shake hands with the leader of Communist China, he held hands with and kissed the tyrannical, terrorist-supporting leaders of Saudi Arabia. Even worse, Donald Rumsfeld shook hands with Hitler-of-the-day Saddam Hussein. Yet you witless idiots didn't utter one word of protest about these handshakes.

If there's ever been bigger hypocrites than today's right-wing Republicans, it's hard to imagine them.

Below:  Members of the Stupid Conservatives Hall of Fame.



4 comments:

dmarks said...

This is the same Pat Buchanan who last year claimed that the allies caused the Holocaust by attacking the poor innocent Nazis in the 1940s.

I find plenty to criticize about Nicaragua's current president and former blood-stained dictator without getting into anything racial.

One little fact that TPM appears to have gotten wrong: "Daniel Ortega, who, aside from being a left-wing former Sandinista"

According to a couple of web sites I checked, Ortega is still a Sandinista. Or did he quit the party very recently?

Jon said...

The term is "Hitler of the week", as in "villain of the week". (If you've seen the old Hannah Barbara cartoons with Bird-Man or Space Ghost, you know abut the villain of the week.) But yeah.

I'm not surprised by Buchanan. He, and his fellow Reaganites, have always hated Indians.

dmarks said...

Buchanan is no Reaganite... he's kind of out on a limb on his own. His views on Natives are probably more related to his pro-Nazi views, hatred for Jews, and race-based anti-immigration views.

Reagan, with his big amnesty bill, was not anti-immigrant. Nor was he pro-Nazi. I can't think of any "legitimate" political figure of the modern era who was blatantly pro-Nazi as Buchanan is.

Anonymous said...

WHAT DOES THIS ALL HAVE TO DO WITH THE NATIVE VIEW OF THE WORLD? WHAT IS A WHITE MAN DOING COMMENTING ON WHAT IS RACISM TOWARD INDIANS? THIS IS THE ULTIMATE COLONIZATION OF NATIVES BY THE MEDIA. GO FIND A NEW HOBBY, INDIANS ARE NOT A HOBBY.