No Bebop

It’s a severe hoot that right-wing websites have anything to say about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum that doesn’t involve a massive amount of embarrassed navel-gazing or about a cubic ton or so of self-examination. The idiot that is currently hovering between life and death in a Washington, D.C., hospital after he allegedly shot and killed a security guard is a type that is well-known in the melting pot of American archetypes — a conspiracy-theory-driven loon who blames his lot in life on people he hates.

In this case,  James Wenneker von Brunn despises the Jews, based in part on a lot of information he encountered early in life that was complete bullshit. Look up the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and you’ll discover they were forgeries. And of course, anti-Semitism has a multi-millenia history, starting with the peoples who enslaved the Jews and continuing onward from the long-running canard that “the Jews killed Jesus” — a canard often promoted by organized Christian denominations, and which probably is still held by a handful of the more extreme denominations to this day. As for the hating of black people, that he probably got from the predominant culture of his youth, since he’s 88 years old, but extending it to believing that Barack Obama is somehow hiding his birth certificate, well again, that’s just a weak-minded narcissist buying into bullshit because it suits his warped worldview.

But back to the wingnuts; RedState is in a screaming match with Markos at Daily Kos, which isn’t going to help obscure the fact that von Brunn is straight out of central casting for a right-wing lunatic. Then there’s Debbie Schlussel, who tried to defend the wingnutosphere’s first reaction to the news — that somebody attacking the Holocaust Museum had to be a Scary Muslim™? The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg smacked her down, noting that Jew-hating Muslims take all their cues from European and American anti-Semites, right down to the “Protocols.” Not to mention “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem,” which was written not by Osama bin Laden but by American plutocrat Henry Ford — the same guy who used to send Adolf Hitler $5,000 in a birthday card every year.

No, von Brunn’s not representative of all conservatives, but can anybody deny that it’s Wingnuts Gone Wild season? Consider von Brunn, then add to him Dr. Teller’s murderer, that numbnut who killed three cops in Pittsburgh because he thought Obama was coming for his guns, and the guy in Florida who provoked a domestic assault call and killed two sheriff’s deputies because his fear of Obama being president. Remember the Department of Homeland Security’s report on right-wing extremism that provoked all the shrieking and wailing in the wingnutosphere a few months ago? Was that report completely spot on or what?

Again, these bad actors are not representative of the RedState diarists, the Schlussels, etc., who simply want to root for their own side but are hampered by a combination of complete historical unawareness and compulsive logorrhea that forces them to shout out their prejudices before all the facts are in. But the folks who read and comment at such places as Free Republic essentially create a layer of support for people like von Brunn who ought to be, at the very least, held in conservatorship on a very short leash. Note too, that von Brunn and Scott Roeder, the guy who murdered Teller, are repeat offenders — von Brunn tried to kidnap Paul Volker in 1981 while Roeder served time for attacking abortion clinics. These people operate in circles wheir their aberrant beliefs and behaviors are accepted and encouraged. Just because they aren’t the actual presidents of their hate groups and anti-choice cells doesn’t mean those organizations shouldn’t be offering very public mea culpas, organizing sensitivity groups, the whole nine yards. Of course, they aren’t. The anti-choice establishment issued statements about Tiller’s murder that just barely stopped short of “Serves him right” while the comment thread about von Brunn at Free Republic — well, read the Kos diary , and spare yourselves the trip over there.

Ironically, the U.S. thinks nothing of spying on Muslim charities, setting up wiretaps without warrants on them and casing their offices, because we fear they may be supporting terrorism. Well, I hope the FBI is doing the exact same thing with the leading anti-choice groups — one of Operation Rescue’s officers was Roeder’s phone buddy , if the note police found on his dashboard was to be believed. And the idea that reputable organizations could say of the murder of a person who broke no laws that “he died as he lived” should be an indicator of sympathy for an accused felon — and a damn good reason to pay closer attention. Indeed, Roeder claims from his jail cell that other such “outreach actions” as his own are in the planning stages around the country. Maybe we need to waterboard him to find out who, what, when where and how? (Kidding about the waterboarding, of course, but I trust I made my point.)

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