Von Brunn a “Liberal.” Um, Yeah, right.
Here’s a beaut: the right-wingers are trying to claim that James Von Brunn, the man arrested for killing a guard at the Holocaust Museum, was a left-winger. Glenn Beck retorted, “How did it happen that you look at people that are Nazis and you say that those are right wing? It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever!” Yeah, those Nazis were so damned liberal. Von Brunn is a left-winger because he believes in evolution and doesn’t like Christians. A Freeper claimed he was a registered Democrat in Maryland, but offered no evidence; now the idea is being widely reported around the right-wing blogosphere, but the “evidence” always points back to itself, in echo-chamber style. Make a claim, then claim it’s true because you claimed it.
There’s a lot to suggest he was right-wing by association; for example, he apparently posted on Free Republic, an ardently right-wing web site. Even if the user “wannabegeek” is not him, then that poster and the people who commented in response to him were clearly fellow travelers.
But for proof that von Brunn was a right-winger, just do a quick review of the man’s web site (in Google’s cache only, now). It shows pretty clearly who he was, and he was definitely not a leftist. Aside from claiming right-wingers as people who shaped who he is, and as employers, co-workers and friends, he wrote this:
The RW [right wing] does NOTHING BUT TALK. It offers no Goal, no short or long-term objectives, no plan of action against the well-known enemy. There is no strategy, no tactical advice. Only the warning: DO NOTHING, BREAK NO LAWS, SIT TIGHT (as it has for almost 100-years).
Exactly the advice Marxists/Liberals/Jews want to hear.
Hard to get more definitive than that. (Aside from being a disturbing sign of the man’s thought processes leading up to the shooting.) He dislikes the “right wing” not because he disagrees with it, but because it doesn’t go far enough. Ergo he was a right-wing extremist. He disliked the “right wing” only because it usually does not take the radical or violent action he feels is necessary.
Note his statement immediately afterward which lumps Marxists, Jews, and Liberals together into a group he clearly hates. Not to sound flippantly obvious, but he was clearly not a liberal.
Just because this guy doesn’t fall exactly in line with everything mainstream right-wingers believe does not mean he was not a right-winger himself; again, that’s what the “extremist” part is about. But saying that he was a left-winger because he believed in evolution and didn’t like Bush is like saying that the S.L.A. was right-wing because they used guns and didn’t like Lyndon Johnson. It doesn’t track.
Case closed.
The guy was a ‘birther’.
There are no birthers on the left. That is a strictly far far right of center position.
Once again, “The Big Lie” rears its ugly head.
The bigger the big lie, the better, according to the Nazis.
It’s an interesting response, and in a way can you blame them? Who’d want their “wing” to be broad-brushed with this guy. I personally know Republicans who resent when left-wingers associate the entire spectrum of conservativism with extreme radicalism, and maybe these talking points are in response to this (although I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to call PETA right-wing). Frankly, we’d all be better off if we checked our political perspectives at the door when a sick tragedy like this occurs.
Normally, I’d agree–except for one thing: the people who are trying to disassociate themselves from people like von Brunn and Roeder are the very same people who are inflaming these extremists in the first place.
Von Brunn, for example, was a “Birther,” a fellow traveler of those who claimed that Obama wasn’t really born in America and therefore is not a legitimate president–a claim made by many of these self-same pundits and bloggers. People like O’Reilly and Limbaugh lash out at people like Tiller in terms and to such degrees as to egg on and push over the edge people like Roeder. Fox, Limbaugh, and the others are claiming that Obama is a traitor, Obama is a Nazi, he’s a socialist commie coming to get your guns and to destroy the country. That Obama is on an “apology” tour, is breaking the law to help illegal immigrants steal jobs from hard-working Americans, is bowing to foreign leaders and opening his arms to terrorists, and wants to let all the hard-core terrorists in Guantanamo run free on American streets to kill, rape, and plunder.
The scary thing is, I am not exaggerating. Not one bit. If anything, I have not expressed strongly enough the extremes of the insanity these people are spouting on a regular basis. This is not commentary, or political analysis, nor is it “political perspective.” It’s utter science fiction, but more to the point, it is an out-and-out incitement to violence. More and more on the fringe are starting to make thinly veiled threats about Obama, as if encouraging the nutcases to start shooting. Randall Terry calling Tiller a mass murderer who reaped what he sowed, and now Obama is nominating a judge who will be responsible for more mass murder of babies. A Southern Baptist reverend, former VP of the church, said on Fox News that he prays for Obama’s death. The punditry may balk at making such stark statements, but they go just as far and even further with their hysterical accusations, claiming such utterly heinous things about Obama and others that violent action would seem only reasonable in response. The guy who shot three police officers in April did so in part because he listened to Fox News and genuinely believed that gun confiscation was imminent.
Normally, I would agree with you that someone like von Brunn is so far extreme that even though he’s a right-wing extremist, he’s so far out there that you cannot legitimately group him together with other right-wingers.
But when the very people who are spouting the garbage that spurs these nuts to violence are trying to paint him as representative of the other side, it bears pointing out that (a) people like Roeder and von Brunn are far closer in nature to the right-wing punditry than most realize, and (b) these people are at the very least in part responsible for nuts like these going off the deep end into violence.
I do not find it wise to “check my political perspective” when I see clear evidence that the vocal right wing is not at all casually related to a rising tide of violence and terrorism. To the contrary, this absolutely needs to be pointed out.
It was the Rush Hannities I had in mind when I wrote that since they were the first ones out of the gate, not you. Although I don’t think it’s a bad general principle to live by. Reflection, not… er, reflex-ion?