Cliven Bundy: The man no one wanted to return is back

Cliven Bundy is a US cattle rancher who has a penchant for saying controversial, seemingly outwardly racist things.

Bundy became a cause célèbre of the American right because of his two-decade fight with the federal government over grazing rights, including his refusal to pay grazing fees and ignoring court orders to remove his animals from land owned by the state.

The dispute came to a head in April when several armed protesters confronted officials who were seizing his cattle.

However, he quickly lost support when he was filmed asking whether black Americans would have been better off “as slaves, picking cotton”.

“If I say 'negro' or 'black boy' or 'slave,' I'm - If those people cannot take those kind of words and not be offensive [sic], then Martin Luther King hasn't got his job done yet. They should be able to - I should be able to say those things and they shouldn't offend anybody.”

In the video, Bundy and Kamau Bakari challenge outgoing attorney general Eric Holder (whom they label a “race baiter”) to come to Las Vegas to debate with them. As they saddle a horse, Bakari calls Bundy a “brave white man” for speaking his thoughts about race.

Those thoughts include such hard-hitting statements as: “I know that black folks have had a hard time with uh... slavery. And, you know, the government was in on it.”

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