Grassroots Organizing Took Down Pat Buchanan

Grassroots protests by groups such as ColorOfChange.org ultimately led to Pat Buchanan's dismissal from MSNBC, Jamilah King writes in a blog entry at ColorLines. Buchanan had long been a target of these groups for trying to present his racially extremist views as mainstream.

When MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan announced late last week that his time at the network had “come to an end,” he took special pains to call out the left-leaning online activist groups that had dogged him for years.

Among the groups on Buchanan’s list were ColorofChange.org and Media Matters, who the conservative talking head called “thought police” that “seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.”

But for the groups who took on Buchanan, his message wasn’t anywhere close to thoughtful dissent. In their estimation, it was hate speech, packaged and delivered for a modern network audience.

“While there’s political debate we may not always agree with, Pat Buchanan has a history of passing off white supremacist ideology as mainstream political thought,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorofChange.org and board member of the Applied Research Center, which publishes Colorlines.com.

Buchanan had long been a target for his extremist conservative views. He has lamented openly about the “end of white America” and called interracial sex “white genocide.” In 2008, he insinuated that slavery was the best thing to happen to black people. Buchanan’s startlingly anachronistic views were out of sync with MSNBC; the network had already begun its ideological drift to the left, and in recent years have offered groundbreaking shows to white and black liberal hosts like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Melissa Harris-Perry.

Read Jamilah King's entire blog entry at ColorLines.

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