The Holocaust Memorial Shooting

WaPo coverage here.

Mark Blumenthal, the Mystery Pollster, offers a moving personal anecdote in tribute to the Memorial staff and security people.

The Wonkette captures the glee on the left.

And, of course, with the news that a white supremacist shot a security guard at the Holocaust Museum today, many liberal bloggers have noted that their first reaction to the shooting of a human was, “OOH, THOSE REPUBLICANS GOT PWNED FOR WHAT THEY SAID IN APRIL, SUCKAS.”

Matt Yglesias is an example of such delight:

Not a great deal more to say about this right now, but I hope that everyone who mau-maued the Department of Homeland Security for expressing concern about this kind of thing feels appropriately ashamed of themselves.

"This kind of thing"?  Which kind of thing was that - 89 year old nut jobs attempting suicide-by-cop (that's my theory, FWIW)?

The critics of the DHS report had two broad themes - the report was nearly fact-free, and it was painted with far too broad a brush, maligning all right wings groups in anticipation of possible bad behavior by a few wackos.  If Mr. Yglesias has evidence of prominent critics insisting that there are no right-wing nut jobs at all, we would all be fascinated and enlightened.

A sampling:

Captain Ed:

The DHS fails to provide any specifics at all, preferring instead to smear half of the country or more as kooks for criticizing the government’s handling of the economy.  As Eli Lake reports, the DHS has all but declared war on federalism, which used to be the founding concept of our republic...

Michelle Malkin:

By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.

I don't think the Holocaust Memorial shooter was recently recruited or radicalized, and his racist, anti-Semitic motivation is, sadly, timeless.

John Hinderaker:

Of course, there are crazies of all stripes, and it's possible that a small group of "right wingers" could pose a terrorist threat. In principle, there is nothing wrong with assessing such threats from whatever direction they may come. Still, this report is an odd document. It is almost entirely unmoTypePad - Compose New Postored to any empirical reality and appears to be heavily influenced by the political views of its (unidentified) authors. This is the central theme of the report:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.

The whole point of the report is that "right wing" extremism is undergoing a "resurgence" as leaders of extremist groups take advantage of the down economy and the Obama administration to recruit new members. Weirdly, however, the report makes no effort to document any such increased recruitment or extremist activity of any sort. As far as one can tell from the report, "right wing" militias and similar groups may be dying out rather than growing.

And here is Michael Steele, denouncing the DHS report with Sean Hannity:

STEELE: This is the height of insult here. I'm sorry, Sean. I just want to jump on this so badly because this is so — talk about arrogance. Talk about insult. I mean to segment out Americans who dissent from this administration, to segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration, and labeling them as terrorists and then to call into question the service of the men and women who are right now standing on that wall defending our freedom and linking them to terrorism while you refuse to call the terrorists — the real terrorists — terrorists, to me it's the height of insult...

Veterans groups and their supporters also joined in the criticism, and eventually Janet Napolitano apologized for labeling returning Iraq-Afghanistan vets as a security risk.  Yes, the Holocaust Memorial shooter was a veteran, but of WWII, which ought to be an important distinction.

As to yours truly, my criticisms were that the DHS report was too broad-brushed, and that it was factually challenged on some of the very few specific "facts" it offered - parts of the DHS "open source" research amounted to failing to Google a widely cited but easily debunked lefty media fantasy.

Only because I have a dark heart, I sort of hope Mr. Yglesias holds his breath while waiting for a wave of shame to wash over the right - I'm betting that blue is his color.

AND SPEAKING OF TOO BROAD A BRUSH:

De Nugent called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of "a loner and a hothead."

"The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."

Comments

[narciso]

This post, just carpetbombs that argument with daisy cutters filled with fuel air explosives, linked from Blackfive

[PeterUK]

If this were a general problem ,would it be the likes of Yglesias and the Wonkette who would be most at risk.Let's face it real right wing terrorists would be whacking liberal commentators.
This was an act by a,probably senile,old man and whilst it is a Holocaust Museum ,in all probability the victim is not Jewish.Just another ac of a madman.

[verner]

Great Job TM.

As I said yesterday, crazy Von Brunn was a convicted felon who was well known in both the Nazi and 911 truther community. He was no conservative, any more than LaRouchies are conservatives. And if he wasn't already on someone's watch list, then DHS is even more incompetent that I think they are.

Indeed, I would be shocked if all three of the murderers in our recent events had not been on the DHS list for a long time--and what good did it do?

As for the usual snarkie, mindnumb lefty media apologists--Do anything to tear apart and demonize conservative critics of the chosen, but by all means ignore the fact that the shooter in Little Rock was an actual terrorist who traveled to Yemen with a fake Somali passport.

[Jane]

by all means ignore the fact that the shooter in Little Rock was an actual terrorist who traveled to Yemen with a fake Somali passport.

From what I can tell they are ignoring the fact that it happened.

[Steve]

Excellent post - keep up the great work!!

COMMON CENTS
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
ps. Link Exchange??

[narciso]

I didn't know the Somali passport angle, verner, than again the FBI was searching for Al Midhar and Al Hamzi, in the summer of 2001; despite the fact they were living under their own name, and their landlord was an FBI informant. Lawrence Wright suggests in the "Looming Tower" that the CIA might have been trying to recruit them, but there's no indication of that. Von Brunn does appear to be a lone wolf attack,"Carlos Bledsoe" with his tie to the Columbus mosque, seems more akin to Al Nosair, the Kahane shooter tied to Omar Rahman's Brooklyn mosque.

[Jack is Back!]

Just out of curiosity, I wonder if they read Von Brunn his Miranda rights at GW Hospital?

[verner]

Not only that Narciso, they are downplaying the fact that with every hour, the crash of Air France 447 looks more and more like a bomb.

The Spanish pilot saw a bright flash of light, then six glowing parts fall into the ocean.

A bomb threat on the previous day.

And now, two high value A-Q's on the passanger manifest.

But Noooo. It wasn't terror.

Even though A-Q didn't take credit for 911 for months.

Planes fly through bad weather every hour of every day. And the pilot at the controls knew his stuff. On the whole the AB330 has had a pretty decent safety record despite a few problems.

My guess, A-Q did it as a trial run, but the powers that be are scared to death to let us know, because no one can figure out how they got the bomb on the plane.

And until they can, if the public finds out what really happened, global commerce will grind to a halt, and the already weak global market economy will fall even further.

[Parking Lot]

The discussion about the DHL report is a red herring imo.

The main story is how adroitly the left paints nazis as extreme right wingers. That is a public misperception that is in serious need of repair.

Why? because it's a big fat lie. The nazis were extreme left wing statists from the getgo.

[centralcal]

Let's face it real right wing terrorists would be whacking liberal commentators.

Isn't that the truth!

[Jack is Back!]

To the lefty's out there be careful how you structure the narrative.

[Captain Hate]

Parking Lot gets it exactly right. I guess we're supposed to ignore National Socialist German Worker's Party; no, that doesn't sound lefty at all::rolleyes::. What a bunch of disingenuous liars the left is made up of; fairly illiterate too as the trolls regularly prove.

[narciso]

I'm surprised no one has contacted Emily Benedek, the Dallas New Times reporter, who predicted this type of event, in her novel Red Sea, some years ago. It opened with a scene not unlike what would have happened if the Trans Atlantic AirLine plot wouldn't have been stopped.

[Warman]

Like most Ultra right wing fanatics The first thing this wacko did was arm himself with the most potent human killing device ever concieved (the weapon no one can defeat) the .22 caliber rifle and do his best to start WW3. Terrorists around the world are begging for this type of assault weapon and would gladly trade they're AK's AR's and all other weapons in their arsenals!!!!! Listening Obama????

[Sue]

I happened to catch a few minutes of Shepard Smith yesterday. Blogs. That is what he blamed it on. Blogs feed upon themselves. Haters go from blog to blog spewing hatred. Talk about an ::eyeroll::, ole Shep made me look like the Exorcist. He has no idea if the man read a blog and decided to go out and act. Just like he carried on in New Orleans. Journalists acting like buffoons.

[verner]

Hitler was no "conservative", nor was he a capitalist. You need the rule of law for a "free" market--that did not exist in Germany. The law was whatever Hitler wanted it to be, and the German people were nothing but cannon fodder.

He despised both the American and French Revolutions because of the emphasis on the individual, and personal liberty.

The only difference Hitler had with communists was their emphasis on an "internationalism" that included non-whites and Jews.(Though Stalin had his own purge of the remaining Jews in Russia prepared right before he died.)

If you take "internationalism" out of the equation, I can't see one whit of difference between Stalin and Hitler.

[GMax]

This guy was both a rabid Bush Hater and Anti Christians too! Sounds like both metally deranged and lefty to me ( or is that simply redundant? ).

[Sue]

Who sat in a church for 20 years and listened to a pastor blame the Jews for everything? Who marched with Farakhan, the most rabid anti-semite out there? Who attended a luncheon honoring a Palestinian where tape of the event will never be aired? Why yes, class, that would be the president of the US.

[Captain Hate]

Shep is seriously stupid; if he had a pornstar moustache he'd be a metro Geraldo.

[Sue]

Which party has the former KKK member as 4th in line to the presidency?

[verner]

Narciso, only an idiot would not recognize that Obama is trying to turn the "War on Terror" into Barney Fife issues parking tickets. He thinks that by kissing the Arab world's behind, he can stop A-Q, probably because he believes that A-Q is a product of America's arrogant, imperialist policies that keep the po folks in the third world in squalor.

Reading Miranda rights to captives in Afghanistan? You have GOT to be kidding.

After all his good works, apologizing for the Evil Empire, the last thing Obama wants to see is a plane blown up over the Atlantic by A-Q.

And Sarkozy's motive in squashing the truth for as long as he can? Probably because he doesn't want to see blood in the streets, and a return to "Le Pin-ism." I think there is a gowning outrage in France over islamification--kind of a powder keg waiting for a spark. And if 477 is truly the result of terror, this will be their first big hit.

[centralcal]

Sue: Miss Prissy (Shepherd Smith renamed by JOMers) was also upset by his email commenters. If ever there is a breakdown by a newsy, live on television, I am sure it will be Miss Prissy. He is an erratically emotional powder keg.

[clarice]

To the left everything--with a minor tweaking of the facts--is politically useful.

[Sue]

Miss Prissy. Suits him. I'm sure he had a melt down over the Muslim convert killing a soldier on US soil? I'm sure he said it was blogs causing the hatred. No? Well, there you are.

[Jack is Back!]

With Shep and Alan Colmes you get Fox News "Fair and Unbalanced"!

[narciso]

Shep is a fool, as with everything, we have a little to do with it, here in South Florida, he and Rick Sanchez, two of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, "I apologize unreservedly" Yes, a "Fish called Wanda" is certainly called for.

[Ignatz]

This is a perfect example of the result of tepidly allowing the left to demonize the right by refusing to play tit for tat.
The right deplores racism and advocates a colorblind society and yet is invidiously blamed for every crackpot nutter who goes off the deep end even though what he believes is diametrically opposed to what the right advocates.

However the left constantly nurses and encourages the theme that racism is alive and well and blacks are horribly oppressed and have unredressed grievances and often make excuses for the most horrendous crimes. Every year there are thousands of racially motivated black on white crimes and yet virtually never will anyone from the right attempt to place even a modicum of blame on the race hustlers on the left. When anyone does it is almost invariably in the manner of some "we don't really mean it, we're just letting you know how it feels to be unjustly blamed" crap.
Similarly mainstream leftists repeatedly use Nazi terminology and the most over the top rhetoric to demonize anyone who opposes their environmental causes. Every year there are numerous acts of sabotage and bombings by whacked out greens and the left never pays a price because it would be unseemly for any important person on the right to make the connection.

It isn't morally equivalent.
I don't know of anyone on the mainstream right who encourages or excuses this kind of thing and so something like Yglesias' smear is just that.
But there are plenty on the mainstream left who either encourage criminal behavior through victimization BS or make excuses for it and they almost never pay a price for it.
The left plays hardball, the right plays whiffle ball.
Only Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin has the guts to play their game and when they do they are jumped on more heartily by whimps on the right than they are by the left.

Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?

[Cecil Turner]

Not only that Narciso, they are downplaying the fact that with every hour, the crash of Air France 447 looks more and more like a bomb.

I'd advise caution on that conclusion. Details are sparse (and reporting sucks as usual), but it appears that the plane flew into an area of severe thunderstorms, the pilot deselected autopilot, and the plane had suspect airspeed sensors. Absent other data, inflight structural failure (as a result of high altitude stall, overspeed and gust loading, or some other mechanism) looks to be the odds-on favorite. The probability of terrorists engineering or taking advantage of such a scenario seems minimal.

Shep is seriously stupid;

Are you suggesting television journos are selected for something other than smarts? Say it ain't so . . .

[Parking Lot]

((To the left everything--with a minor tweaking of the facts--is politically useful.
))

that nazis are right wing extremists is an article of faith among the vast majority of leftists

that particular big lie is one of their most pernicious successes

it is a lie that creates tremendous fear, timdidity and forboding about conservatism

[Parking Lot]

((and when they do they are jumped on more heartily by whimps on the right than they are by the left.))

truer words were never spoken

[Sue]

If they hired Shep for eye candy they struck out. If they truly want some eye candy, fire Shep and hire Steve Hayes. Oooolalala

[centralcal]

Off to work, but first please watch this video clip (from Michelle Malkin) of Ralph Peters on Neil Cavuto putting the lie to Smith and Herridges outrageous claim that the shooting validated the DHS report:

He wasn't career military, he was a career nut.

scroll down for the video clip - you will be glad you did.

[clarice]

Given his age I suppose he had been drafted for the service, how many draftees remain alive..should we put them all in preventive detention?

Mr PUK How are those Afghani "Don't Ask for a Lawyer" leaflets coming?

[jean]

Shep would be be better looking if he weren't the color of peanut candy.Wish he would quit talking about Ole' Miss. the school has a hard enough time

[Janet]

Thank you for the link centralcal...without the JOM threads, Powerline, American Thinker,... the biased coverage would be too much for me.

[Ignatz]

--Shep would be be better looking if he weren't the color of peanut candy.--

When he's moonlighting as the GEICO ghecko he's actually a lovely shade of green.
I believe PUK does the voiceover.

[PaulL]

If you go to the LUN, the third post should dissuade anyone from the terrorist angle on the Air France crash.

Excerpt:

"For those of you insisting on the terrorism angle give some actual evidence to how this could be the last step... Did the terrorists somehow get thier crystal ball out and devise a way to get the ice crystals or moisture up to 35,000 so they could carry out an act of terror?Huh And then did these terrorist go "You know what we are going to play with this disaster a little and not blow up the plane at the first opporitunity!!" and wait for everything to fail (BTW after all the sensor faults there is no forseeable way this flight could have been saved) to blow up the plane???"

[verner]

Paul, if you look at the history of the Lockerbie bombing, the problem was that it went off prematurely. The terrorists WANTED it to explode over the ocean, so that it would be difficult to investigate.

As I said before, as far as weather goes, pilots deal with similar conditions every hour of every day somewhere in the world. They have not proven any of the speculative theories about ice crystals etc., they are just guesses, and what you would expect if they were trying to avoid the T word.

I'm waiting to see proof, and at this point, with the circumstantial evidence that they are just now releasing, terrorism is more probable than ice crystals.

[glasater]

hire Steve Hayes. Oooolalala

Bad has dibs on Hayes.

[Ann]

Correction, Ann has dibs on Hubba Hubba Hayes!

[verner]

To heck with all this dibs stuff.

All's fair baby....hehehe

[centralcal]

Photo by Carrie Hayes. Hhmmm, would that be Mrs. Stephen Hayes (and, I don't mean his mom)?

[MayBee]

This is interesting, from Ben Smith at Politico:

Weekly Standard may have been shooter target

FBI agents visited the offices of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine yesterday after a shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and told employees they'd found the magazine's address

A senior Standard staffer confirmed the visit but declined to discuss it in detail. An FBI spokeswoman, Katherine Schweit , also declined to comment on the investigation.

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.

The magazine is about a mile north of the Holocaust Museum, and there's no other indication that von Brunn had targeted it. Von Brunn's published rants included attacks on "neocons," and the Standard has been at the heart of the neoconservative movement.

The suggestion that the Standard may have been a target complicates any view of the racist shooter in contemporary left-right terms. Von Brunn's white supremacist roots put him under the rubric of a "right-wing extremist," but the substance of his views -- which included everything from believing that President Bush may have been in on the September 11 attacks to denying that President Obama is an American citizen -- are too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification.

The focus on the Standard, though, appears to be of a piece with his central motivation: Anti-Semitism. In one essay, Von Brunn attacked "JEWS-NEOCONS-BILL O’REILLY," and the suggestion that neoconservatism is a specifically Jewish conspiracy is common on the racist fringe.

[Good Lt.]

So let me get this straight-

This lone neo-Nazi 9-11 Truther whackaloon is somehow a "Republican/conservative terrorist" who hated neocons (read: The Bush Administration), Christians, Jews and blacks?

Huh.

Sadly, the left's ability to reach a conclusion by connecting events and facts logically appears to be degrading to a level as submoronic as the Obama Administration's arithmetic and number crunching.

Not surprising, that.

[centralcal]

MayBee: Rush just read the Politico piece. Darned "whackaloons" (to quote Good Lt.) just screw up the liberal media narrative, don't they?

[Rob Crawford]

Dunno, MayBee. Hates Republicans, Christians, 9/11 Truther, then add in birth certificate truther and it sounds like a Hillary voter to me.

[Lefty]

Makes sense to me. A "right-winger" who hates Fox News, Neocons, Bush, McCain, Reagan, Capitalism, Christianity and Israel.

This fellow is the same guy who attends your church on Sunday, protests at Tea Parties and listens to Rush on his way home from work.

[jimmyk]

And of course, over at LGF Charles Johnson was making hay of this, gloating about how this vindicated the DHS report (and, of course, himself). Even if this guy was genuinely right wing, the DHS report was not about some lone lunatic. Charles even mentioned that the perp is a veteran, as if the DHS report was referring to 88-year-old WWII vets. I know we've been over how LGF has jumped the shark, but this is just plain dishonest.

[MayBee]

I don't want to go out too far on a limb, but I'm going to say this guy was just a hater.

[Watcher]

The guy was a racist asshole who hated everyone but Adolph Hitler... how does worshiping at the altar of National Socialism make someone a right winger?

[narciso]

Well he was in advertising, if he was a few years younger, he would have been part of the "Mad Men" crew.

[centralcal]

I think we should all focus on his claim to having obtained a "journalism degree" from a "mid-western college."

A journalism whackaloon. Works for me.

[Jane]

Who attended a luncheon honoring a Palestinian where tape of the event will never be aired? Why yes, class, that would be the president of the US.

Psssssssst: I heard that the President was celebrating yesterday's killing in a secret phone call to Reverend Wright. (Pass it on)

[Howie]

You have a link to the typepad composer in your post.

[Charles Johnson]

With the Tiller shooting and now this — the DHS report that caused such an uproar has been vindicated.

The report was a heads-up to law enforcement, warning of a risk of increased attacks from right wing extremists, and with two attacks in two weeks (in addition to the cop killer in Pittsburgh, the white nationalist with components for a dirty bomb, the plot by skinheads to assassinate Obama, and more) it looks like the heads-up was well warranted.

[Pofarmer]

Wow, half a dozen instances, in a country of 300 million people. Look out folks, it's heading for anarchy.

[glasater]

For Charles Johnson:

Jihadwatch

and

DC Flunks Jihadism 101

[Ignatz]

--With the Tiller shooting and now this — the DHS report that caused such an uproar has been vindicated.--

No, the standard part regarding extremists, which no one objected to, is vindicated and was never in doubt.

The part which was objectionable was the apparent conflation of recent veterans and people who hold ordinary mainstream views regarding abortion etc, with violent extremists. That part is a smear which is why Napolitano apologized for it.

Kind of odd to have people defending something that even the people who wrote it gave up defending and apologized for some time ago.

[Stephanie]

Auntie Em, Auntie Em, it's Charles and his "right"eous indignation... but he forgot to mention the jihadist in Ark, ELF, the kook in LA and all those churches bombed and burned in the south and graveyards desecrated... seems to me it's whackos period, not just left or right... but that doesn't satisfy the craving for mounting that cross and screeching about his particular obsession.

[EBJ]

"the DHS report that caused such an uproar has been vindicated"

unless the DHS report was, in part, motivation for these incidents. Funny, that, you poke the crazies in the eye and they act crazier. Who would have thunk it?

[Captain Hate]

Go away Charles. I don't bother with your delusional site any more so stop coming here and being a pat-yourself-on-back douche. Go play with Sully, Keifums, Tweety, Kos and your fellow boring musicians. I always held back from telling you that even though a lot of other guitarists are politically as stupid as you are (Joe Morris, Derek Bailey [sadly RIP], Nels Cline, Bill Frisell among others) they at least play exciting music. Unlike you.

[narciso]

Maybe I'm dense, but whatever happened to him; did the jihadis stop preaching for perches like Al Azhar, did Al Jazeera stop broadcasting, did the hawalas stopped funneling moneys to insurgent groups. Roeder is a bomb making Freemen ex con, Von Brunn is a truther Nazi, George Lincoln Rockwell by way of man, another criminal. Carlos Bledsoe an American born Salafist
covert, who have you heard least about.

[The Devil made him do it.]

This is actually a very interesting question with probably unique solutions in each case: the relationship between the acts of a solitary crazy and the political movements which may have inspired their acts. It's awfully easy to think and respond superficially about this matter. That's my main objection to your comment Big Charles, you of undying Rather memos fame.

[Jim Miller]

Charles Johnson won't read this FrontPage article. But he should.

Sample:

A review of his lengthy associations reveals Von Brunn hardly fits the stereotype of a Religious Right, GOP precinct captain. He denounced the Christian faith as a dastardly Jewish conspiracy, a "HOAX" invented by the Apostle Paul to "DESTROY ROMAN CULTURE" from within by undermining its pagan virility. (All screaming capitalization and grammatical errors in this piece appear in the original.) Like others on the racist fringe, the shooter proclaimed clearly: “SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West.”

Judging by his economic views, von Brunn is on the left, not the right. But I don't think that his economic views led him to murder; instead it was his vicious anti-Semitism. (Which, as Johnson must know, is now more common on the left than the right.

(In general, I think the left-right spectrum so beloved by our journalists is best reserved for economic issues.)

[verner]

So let's see if we can sum up Von Brunn:

1) a journalism degree
2) a registered democrat
3) a non-christian
4) hates neocons
5) anti-war
6) 911 truther

geez, he sounds like half the people who write for HuffPo--or the NYT for that matter.

Charles, you're all wet honey. As I've said before, all three of the perps had previous criminal histories, and two of them belong on the left, not the right. By the vague standards of the DHS report, I would need to be on the "watch list" because I'm vocal in my opposition to the Obama administration. Political intimidation, pure and simple.

They shouldn't have needed a new report to tell Law enforcement to watch out for a nut with an explosives conviction, a nazi who went to jail for trying to assassinate the Federal reserve Board with a shotgun, and a black Muslim with a criminal record who traveled to Yemen on a fake Somali passport.