Jun 10 2009
Another Extremist Goes Violent
Update: Seems this nutter related with both fringes, since we now learn he is a 9-11 truther as well:
Holocaust Museum shooter von Brunn a 9/11 ‘truther’ who hated ‘neo-cons’, Bush, McCain
Wonder what drew this guy to the extreme fringes? What did he find he could relate to?  Hard to tell, since both extremes tended to hate Bush. – end update
Sometimes people are so extreme you just can’t place them on the left or right fringes. But if I was forced to put the latest racist, holocaust denier to go nuts and start shooting people onto one fringe or the other I would have to say he is certainly opposed to liberal policies and beliefs:
An 89-year-old white supremacist and Holocaust denier opened fire in Washington’s Holocaust Museum today, wounding at least one before being shot in the head by security officers.
…
He is clearly a Holocaust denier – a belief decried by Mr Obama during his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last week. Von Brunn bemoans that “Jews control all important sources of informationâ€, and claims that there is a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool. He also wrote: “America is a Third-World racial garbage-dump – stupid, ignorant, dead broke, and terminal. Whites LOVE their Enemies. Prepare to die, Whitey.†One of heroes he cites is World War II Real Admiral John Crommelin, a notorious anti-Semite who later ran for governor of Alabama.
Let me be clear, this whack job is not a conservative, nor would anyone on the right agree with his views, and definitely not his actions.
With that said, if I was working for DHS and was asked to place him on one extreme ‘wing’ or the other, he would have to go to the right side of the ledger. Which is why the drama queens on the right who felt the DHS report was an attack on law abiding conservatives were being totally ridiculous in pretending our security resources where targeting. This is another example of violent extremists which the DHS is rightfully concerned about, and SHOULD BE monitoring and alerting local law enforcement to be on the lookout for.
Sadly, I don’t think this will be the last (left or right). The rhetoric has become so unnecessarily heated between left and right that these whack jobs think the time is now to become the hero they always fantasized they would be. This is why responsible people keep their debates cool headed and reasonable.
I will admit that I occasionally check out various Socialist/Communist websites and white supremacist whacko sites. Not because I subscribe to any of the views, but just to see how the most extreme of both sides perceive various issues. I have been doing this throughout the Bush years. I assure all of you, that the racist neo-nazis HATED Bush. And they were strongly opposed to the Iraq war. To them, the Iraq war is a war on Israel’s behalf. Many of their blog posts called for Bush to be impeached, just like many on the left. So how could sane thinking person atempt to tie this kook to the right wing? Probably our friends on the left are either too lazy to check on these background facts, or too eager to score political points.
This tragic incident reminds me of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Helping victims is not of any importance to various talking pinheads on TV or in the blogosphere. What is more important, is using a national tragedy in order to smear political opponents.
My prayers go out to the fallen security guard’s family.
There have been unconfirmed reports that James W. von Brunn was registered as a Democrat in the state of Maryland
AJ:
I don’t agree with everything Jesse Walker says about DHS, but this was exactly right I think:
Why did the DHS report come under such fire? It wasn’t because far-right cranks are incapable of committing crimes. It’s because the paper blew the threat of right-wing terror out of proportion, just as the Clinton administration did in the ’90s; because it treated “extremism” itself as a potential threat, while offering a definition of extremist so broad it seemed it include anyone who opposed abortion or immigration or excessive federal power; and because it fretted about the danger of “the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities.” (Note that neither the killing in Kansas last month nor the shooting in Washington yesterday was committed by an Iraq or Afghanistan vet.) The effect isn’t to make right-wing terror attacks less likely. It’s to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the right, just as the most substantial effect of a red scare was to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the left. The fact that communist spies really existed didn’t justify Joseph McCarthy’s antics, and the fact that armed extremists really exist doesn’t justify the Department of Homeland Security’s report.
There are people on the left who are already saying that the Tea Parties are the same kind of extremism. I wonder if Obama’s DHS will do a “report” on them?