Racists regard Buchanan as path to power Jane Martinson in New York Monday July 24, 2000 White supremacist groups are being attracted to the Reform party - until now known for its centrist stance - by the presidential campaign of the former rightwing Republican Pat Buchanan. Far-right organisations such as the National Alliance, the Liberty Lobby and League of the South, and American fans of the British National party have pledged Mr Buchanan their support at rallies and on websites. They have also held fundraising events and collected petitions for the "gopatgo2000" campaign, according to the Washington Post. Mr Buchanan is a practising Roman Catholic who frequently denounces homosexuals and the "Israel lobby". He is widely expected to beat John Hagelin, a little-known physicist, for the Reform party nomination at next month's party convention. But evidence of far-right support for Mr Buchanan is likely to worry members of the Reform party, an umbrella organisation which has largely eschewed involvement in social policy debates in order to focus on campaign-finance reform and free-trade issues. Mr Buchanan, who tried to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996, has already clashed with Reform party members over his stand on many social issues. He has insisted that he is neither racist nor anti-semitic. But his attacks on third-world immigration, and talk on his website of restoring "traditional American values" have attracted extremist support. An editorial in a newsletter of the American Friends of the British National party said that a Buchanan-led nationalist party was the closest thing America had to the BNP. "Our type of people - nationalists - have been joining the Reform party all across America and this is going to almost guarantee that Buchanan will be its candidate in November," it said. "The Reform party could soon become an American nationalist party in all but name." Buchanan supporters are reported to have solicited petition signatures at "white rights" meetings. Will Williams, a leader of the National Alliance movement, wrote in an email to a US reporter that he was "interested in the Reform party becoming the party of the white". Mr Williams, who has become active in the North Carolina branch of the Reform party, had rallied his alliance supporters in an earlier email, saying: "It's our job to get out there in our areas, to raise consciousness, attract and radicalise 'those very people' - OUR people - then organise them into a majority. "Many good people will have joined a much more radicalised, white-friendly Reform party come November... It is going to be a very interesting year with the Jews constantly screaming 'NAZI!' at PB [Pat Buchanan]." The Liberty Lobby, an anti-semitic organisation, is understood to have established a fundraising committee called Independent Americans for Pat Buchanan. There was no response from the Buchanan campaign team yesterday but Angela Buchanan, his sister and senior campaign adviser, issued a statement. It said: "My brother Pat does not now and has never belonged to any organisation or group that preaches or practises intolerance or hatred... And if any member of any such group has gravitated to our campaign, it was without our knowledge, or consent. "But if they have, they probably did so because they came to believe the malicious lies about my brother spread by such institutions as the Washington Post." The Post had reported that Mr Buchanan was supported by Don Wassell, campaign manager for David Duke's far-right presidential bid in 1988 and head of the American Nationalist Union. Mr Wassell wrote in the Nationalist Times: "It's now or never for rank-and-file conservatives to prove they are patriotic Americans first, and party supporters second. "Pat Buchanan has methodically and effectively... taken over the Reform party with the intention of making it into a genuine America First alternative to the two-party tyranny." The Guardian, July 24 2000 ############################################################ ############################################################
