Oops, there goes the narrative:
Two other sources said two FBI agents arrived shortly after 5:00 p.m. Thursday at the 17th Street offices of the magazine. They told staffers that they had found the address of the magazine on a piece of paper associated with the shooter, James von Brunn, and asked whether the Standard had received any threats…
…
Law enforcement sources told WTTG/MyFoxDC.com that during a search of a car that is believed to belong von Brunn, investigators found a notebook with information about six to nine locations in the D.C. area, including the National Holocaust Museum. Other locations on the list included the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Washington Post, and a FOX News location.
He also hated Christians, neocons, and Bill O’Reilly, and believed Bush was behind 9/11. Hopefully now we can dispense with the ridiculous notion he was driven to his crime by popular mainstream conservatives.
It’s tempting to point out the number of lefty tropes he seems to have been driven by, but the truth is this guy was clearly a free-range racist lunatic with little connection to any mainstream.
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Besides, I like to think there’s at least a small difference between “being in favor of smaller government” and “actively trying to reduce the size of government via guns and bombs”.
The damage has already been done. Just check out the vomitous segment by Chris Mathews:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2009/06/10/hardball-journalist-links-rush-limbaugh-holocaust-museum-shooting
If I hadn’t known this event had happened I might have thought the video was produced by The Onion.
I’ve said it before, though it appears I didn’t coin the term, we are in the middle of a new “Red Scare”
It’s idiotic that a man lost his life and a valued institution was attacked but all anyone on the left can do is attempt to score points by blood-libeling their opposition. sad.
That should read “recoin” the term.
No, Dave, you don’t understand. This means a civil war is breaking out among the right wing!
Edited to add: Yes, of course I’m being facetious
Eric, you’re being facetious, right? A lone, socialist, neocon-hating and christian-hating wack-job goes after the neocon network and magazine and that’s a civil war? More like a left on right hate crime.
There shouldn’t even be a “narrative” here, other than terrible man did a terrible thing at the Holocaust Museum.
Let me amend that — if there is a narrative, it should be that anti-semitism remains ugly and comes in all sorts of different varied forms.
–HB
It seems to me von Brunn was mostly an antisemitic white supremacists. His hated of Jews seem to be his strongest guiding principal. Since Bill Kristol, the founder and editor of the Weekly Standard, is Jewish, it is not surprising that the Weekly Standard was on his list.
He seems to have had both the supposedly liberal Washington Post and the supposedly conservative Fox News on his list. Looks like von Brunn was an equal opportunity hater.
Racists like von Brunn are associated with the right mainly because the right in the US has attempted to appeal to those harboring racial or ethnic prejudices while the left in the US has attempt to appeal to racial and ethnic minorities. However, von Brunn’s believes are no where close to mainstream conservatives just like the Earth Firster that bomb logging equipment are no where close to mainstream liberals.
but the truth is this guy was clearly a free-range racist lunatic with little connection to any mainstream
The truth is, there have been a series of homicidal attacks that have been carried out by people who share many of Von Brunn’s views, general political outlook and connections. Aziz linked to that list, and it’s important to note it.
Jim D. Adkisson went into a church and shot and killed Unitarians because he didn’t like their liberal views. Richard Poplawski gunned down three Pittsburgh police officers because he hated the government and he was afraid of the liberals taking away his guns. Joshua Cartwright killed two sheriff’s deputies in Florida because he hated Obama, the government and he didn’t want the liberals taking his guns. Like Adkisson, Scott Roeder entered a church and killed an abortionist.
Roeder and Von Brunn posted and communicated frequently with Freepers. All of these men were anti-government, most likely all had contempt for both Republicans and Liberals and most of them were interested in joining or learning more about McVeigh style militias.
This really isn’t a left or right issue (although both sides love to grab poo to fling whenever they can). But it is a trend that resembles the events that led up to the Oklahoma city bombing, and therefore, it does deserve more investigation.
Since Republicans have built a reputation for being opposed to crime and terrorism, it’s disappointing to see them go into CYA mode when these sorts of crimes occur.
Actually, almost instantaneously after the Tiller murder most pro-life organizations denounced the killing and denounced the taking of life in their cause. And they didn’t do it the way many Islamic groups “denounce” things like the Muslim wh0 rampaged through a college in his SUV. i.e. They spend one short paragraph denouncing it and 5 paragraphs explaining how this had nothing, nothing to do with Islam and how the real problem is “Islamophobia”.
They just announced that it was a horrible murder and that they do not want murder carried out in their name.
Mary wrote:
Since Republicans have built a reputation for being opposed to crime and terrorism, it’s disappointing to see them go into CYA mode when these sorts of crimes occur.
You didn’t notice Chris Matthews immediately start railing against conservatives being responsible for this?
You don’t think we’re under attack for this?
What would you have us do? Should we round up all the nutcases and put them in mental institutions? If you think that, say it.
As I said in the other thread, don’t just criticize our not screaming for the government to “do something”. Say what you think we should be calling for, and we can discuss that.
Otherwise, your comments are just ad hom and caricature.
In the meantime, I’ve run out of patience fwith illiberals who want to fling insults, abuse and fists at me without even the slightest interest in knowing who I am.
What would you have us do? Should we round up all the nutcases and put them in mental institutions? If you think that, say it.
I think that Republicans should join Democrats in demanding investigations of these crimes. If there are connections between militant groups and these criminals, we should treat them the way we should treat CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood. We should prosecute the leaders of these groups under RICO statutes.
RICO helped the American government dismember the mob, and it could be equally effective against political organizations that have a history of criminal activity, like the Muslim Brotherhood, Earth First and Operation Rescue. Hopefully, we could dismantle these groups before they cause some large-scale damage.
You don’t think we’re under attack for this?
Define ‘we’.
RICO helped the American government dismember the mob, and it could be equally effective against political organizations that have a history of criminal activity, like the Muslim Brotherhood, Earth First and Operation Rescue. Hopefully, we could dismantle these groups before they cause some large-scale damage.
Besides Operation Rescue which Organization would you point to? Which organization would you prosecute for the holocaust shooting? Freepers because they allowed him to post on their blog? Is it a crime now to associate with someone who later takes your ideology way too far? You want to start that precedent?
That’s the point, Mary. This was a lone nutcase. MAYBE you can connect him to Pat Buchanan as Paleos overlap with Brunn more than any other right-wing group on ideology (and about as much as many left-wing groups); but blaming Rush Limbaugh, mainstream GOP and mainstream libertarians groups is absurd and asinine as they have the least in common with the nutcase compared to Paleos, Leftists, Liberals etc.
No, this horrible event is just callously being used to attack and libel the critics of President Obama (see Chris Mathews. He and his guests brought up Obama-hatred first even though this never had anything to do with him or his critics.)
Besides Operation Rescue which Organization would you point to? Which organization would you prosecute for the holocaust shooting? Freepers because they allowed him to post on their blog? Is it a crime now to associate with someone who later takes your ideology way too far? You want to start that precedent?
I would like to start a precedent of gathering evidence before bloviating about crimes and possible connections to extremist groups.
There’s a trend here, and there have been several similar crimes committed within a relatively short period of time. It’s absurd to ‘blame’ bloviating partisan hacks for these crimes, but it’s also absurd to demand a solution to a problem when we don’t know what the problem is yet.
Mary wrote:
Define ‘we’.
The immediate context was Republicans, and conservatives. That’s what I meant, particularly referring (as Mike noted) to Chris Matthews and guests.
I’m not really even a conservative or a Republican, just vaguely somewhere “right of center”, and I’m feeling it.
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