comment #1

62Lincoln says ...

Extremists from both ends are dangerous, and can be wound up just as Krugman suggests.Anyone remember Ted Kaczynski?

comment #2

Michael says ...

Please explain how you can predict the behavior of 'lone wolves'? Morris Dees and the SPLC came out years after Oklahoma City and basically admitted that the whole right-wing militia movement had been wayyyy overblown...and two random shootings (one whose movement universally condemned him, and the other an 80something Nazi) do not a pattern make.

comment #3

YRG says ...

Some conservatives feel the need to counter Pres. Obama's bright optimism with hatred and negativity. I hope it doesn't take and they are royally defeated in the 2010 elections.

comment #4

TL says ...

Michael - are you saying we have to wait for 3 shootings to call it a trend?

comment #5

Mowkeka says ...

I love how the murder of an Army recruiter by an Islamic extremist on American soil totally slipped the liberal radar. Is MSNBC to blame for his murder? By your logic, yes...yes they are.

By the way, it's kind of hard to call the holocaust shooter a conservative, considering he thought 9/11 was an inside job and hated neo-cons.

comment #6

lbeale says ...

Not a conservative, a right-wing extremist. That's what the Homeland Security report is about. There's a big difference.

comment #7

le corbeau says ...

Not really a right-wing extremist, either. At least as much a far-left paranoid-- his anti-semitic anti-neocon Truther stuff is closer to Chomsky, Tim Robbins, or Rev. Wright than to most of the right, at least till you get to around Pat Buchanan.

comment #8

lbeale says ...

Really? Being anti-black is left-wing extremism?

And by what definition can you describe a Muslim convert jihadist as a left-winger?

comment #9

le corbeau says ...

"Really? Being anti-black is left-wing extremism?"

Please reread previous post, with emphasis on "at least as much" and the specific items listed after. The point is not to replace lazy typing of him as a rightwinger with lazy typing of him as a leftwinger, but to point out that the violent paranoids find some commonalities with the fringe on both sides.

Same goes for the Muslim convert jihadist. Is he probably informed by 1) anti-Bush rhetoric and 2) anti-imperial-America rhetoric, both found on the left? Very likely. But I would not, simplistically, call him a leftwinger as a result.

But then I kinda believe in a basic distinction between the ones who talk their point of view and the ones who start shooting it. And that trying to smear the former on any side with the latter is wrong.

comment #10

George Prager says ...

I guess young virgin Mowkeka has never heard of the John Birch Society.

Here's a sample:

Jews seek to destroy White America. They created Obama to read their 'multicultural' death-message to ignorant Christian sheep. America now teeters on the brink of extinction," Mr. von Brunn wrote May 27.

In earlier e-mails he attacked Jews, called President Barack Obama "a mongrel," and claimed the Catholic Church was "founded by Israelis" and promoted illegal immigration.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09162/976709-100.stm#ixzz0IEKwR2RN&D

comment #11

MovieBob says ...

There's a certain amount of truth in this, but it's important to remember how easily this crap can get turned around. Blaming rightie radio-talkers for influencing guys like this isn't in the same "ballpark" as, for example, blaming "Redacted" for "emboldening" terrorists - but it's on the same frequency. "What's good for the goose" and all that.

I've read this guy's (Von Brunn's) stuff over the last few days, and trying to tie him to either side extreme or otherwise is missing a key "achem's razor" element in the situation: The man is a LUNATIC. Not "just" in the "shoots up a Holocaust museum" sense, but in the sense that his rantings read like a classic case of delusional paranoia.

There's elements of "far-right" anti-government extremism in there, yeah, lot's of John Birch/Isolationist stuff and some mongrelized variations on Objectivism and Libertarianism... but there's also smatterings of stuff he could've cribbed from Zinn or Chomsky i.e. corporate conspiracy and whatnot. Guys like this live every moment under the illusion that they are being oppressed and puppeteered by some vauge all-powerful force, and they gravitate toward ANY logical-sounding idea that seems to confirm this illusion. This man is not a liberal, or a conservative, or a socialist, or a libertarian, or anything else - he's a crazy man.

comment #12

Mowkeka says ...

Anti-Semitism is far more prevalent on the left than the right. Just look at Obama's Reverend. You know, the one he named his book after. The one who brought him to Jesus.

Oh wait, I forgot The One can't do anything wrong. What was I thinking?

comment #13

DeeZee says ...

Michael: "and two random shootings (one whose movement universally condemned him, and the other an 80something Nazi) do not a pattern make."

If you include those church shootings and those assassination attempts on Obama, it does make a pattern...

Mowkeka: "I love how the murder of an Army recruiter by an Islamic extremist on American soil totally slipped the liberal radar."

Hey, you're the ones who ended the '94 gun control laws. Don't blame us for that one. At least we stopped the guys who tried to blow up the synagogue.

comment #14

DeeZee says ...

Mowkeka: "Anti-Semitism is far more prevalent on the left than the right. Just look at Obama's Reverend. You know, the one he named his book after."

Is that why O'Reilly said you should go to Israel if you want to be a Jew, without being harassed about conversion, or Coulter called them imperfect? Not to mention those frequent "We're a Christian nation" comments.

comment #15

Travis Crabtree says ...

Someone help me.... my eyes got stuck as I tried to roll them.... now it seems I'm staring at my forehead....

Looks like Wells is trying to up that post count.....

("ahh, politics! that's the ticket!")

Topic-
Right-wingers and Middle Americans are knuckle-dragging buffoons. Discuss.

comment #16

George Prager says ...

"Anti-Semitism is far more prevalent on the left than the right. "

That's why there are 13 Jewish U.S. Senators who are Democrats, plus "democratic socialist" Bernie Sanders, and the soon-to-be Senator Al Franken. On the Republican side? There's Arlen Specter...........................no wait...!

comment #17

le corbeau says ...

Well said, MovieBob.

Really, trying to decide which wing the paranoid fit best into is sort of like trying to decide whether your dog is rightwing or leftwing. The real question is, which wing is more susceptible to picking up aspects of paranoia and taking them mainstream? And that's a lot tougher call than a lot of folks are willing to admit.

comment #18

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

I really despise people like Mowkeka.

Because after you read their factually and logically impaired posts day after day, you begin to lower estimation of the Other Party's membership. Which can lead to underestimating them at a critical point later.

Oh, wait... A-ha! I see your game, this is all an act. You're only pretending to be this obtuse.

Clever boy....

comment #19

MovieBob says ...

"The real question is, which wing is more susceptible to picking up aspects of paranoia and taking them mainstream?"

Well, THAT would the right - owing to the over-influence of religiousity in their base. Belief and thought don't go together all that well.

comment #20

Travis Crabtree says ...

"I really despise people like Mowkeka."

"Despise", eh? Would that be another way of saying.......hate?

Discuss.

comment #21

George Prager says ...

WWJVD: What would Jon Voight do?

comment #22

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

"Anti-Semitism is far more prevalent on the left than the right."

Yes, just look at Hollywood, that crazy town that is both liberal and Jewish. Those crazy bitches just constantly hate on themselves!

Whatta dumbfuck.

comment #23

JSantos says ...

Most organized, established religions, by their very nature, promote conservative beliefs. It can then be followed that leaders of those said religions, generally, would adhere to and promote the conservative tenets of their practiced religions.

But I think that's a separate issue than where those religious leaders may fall in their political beliefs. I think even though they mingle at times, these are two different areas of thought: politics and religion.

Using Jeremiah Wright and the terms "left and "right" would seem to me to be, in this instance for the lack of a better term, mixing metaphors. Is Wright on the "left" just because Obama, the leader of the Democratic party and our President, at one time attended his church? Is he "liberal" even though he is a Baptist minister?

Why mix metaphors? Why obfuscate the issue with these labels "left" and "right" when we're speaking, I think, of "conservative" and "liberal"?

It's a red herring, calling up down and down up in an effort to confuse people.

Sure the shooter was an anti-Semitic, right-wing fundamentalist lunatic, but you know, people on the left-wing are even more anti-Semitic and fundamentalist in their beliefs and, therefore, the "left-wing" in this country is just as much to blame for the environment that created this incident as the "right-wing." And we all know who the leader of the "left-wing" is, right?

Give me a break.

comment #24

le corbeau says ...

So JSantos, you correctly note that right and left and conservative and liberal are neither synonymous nor fixed in meaning, and then you scoff at the idea that a neocon-obsessed 9/11 truther could be anything other than firmly on Bush's side? What the hell sense do you think that makes?

This is exactly the point. There is not a straight line on the right where Nelson Rockefeller was a 1, Bob Dole a 2, Bill Kristol a 3, Reagan a 4, Falwell a 5, and Hitler a 6. (Any more than Stalin was just a more determined Walter Mondale.) Religious conservatives and Milton Friedman disciples would have very little in common. There are more atheists among Ayn Rand disciples than Democrats. And on the flip side, black Democrats have very little in common in their beliefs with Hollywood liberals (and rather a lot, except for that race thing, with religious conservatives).

Jesus, these aren't sports teams, try not to think in such binary terms and look at the diverse array of points of view all over the spectrum. It'll help keep you from making foolish generalizations like "Marching in absolute uniform lockstep is a right-wing thing. Liberals wake up in the morning and decide what they're going to say and do on their own."

comment #25

bents75 says ...

"Blaming rightie radio-talkers for influencing guys like this isn't in the same "ballpark" as, for example, blaming "Redacted" for "emboldening" terrorists - but it's on the same frequency. "What's good for the goose" and all that."

With all due respect to your other points Moviebob, I don't think these examples are on the same frequency at all.

Right wingers could concievably listen to right wing radio. There's no way a bunch of terrorists are sitting up in the mountains of Afghanistan, huddled in a tent, watching a bootleg copy of a shitty low budget Brian Depalma film which 99.9% of Americans have never even seen, and getting all riled up over it.

I realize you're not making the literal comparison, but the very thought still gives me a laugh.

I'd just as soon believe they hand out copies of Mission to Mars to fuel American resentment.

comment #26

JSantos says ...

Skip, I guess my point got a little muddled there at the end of my last point, sometimes I don't fully articulate when I'm a hurry.

That last part of my post was meant to underline what has essentially been said about throwing in politics into this particular case, and life in general. It can obscure the tragedy of what happened and be used to further political agendas when that shouldn't be the case.

I don't think I mentioned Bush anywhere, and I didn't mean to say Von Brunn is any kind of GOP wonk.

The point I was trying to make, poorly as it were: right now, an argument is being made from some, again not all but some, political media/entertainment/analyst folk that label themselves conservative-leaning that this incident can be viewed as part of a downtrend that has occurred because of the presence of Obama in the White House.

I think that's ridiculous and fear-mongering, and to refer back to Krugman, giving comfort to extremism. That's all I'm trying to communicate.

I don't assume we're all on 2 monolithic sports teams, or there are absolute truths about how a person is because of how they're labeled. That's not what I meant to write nor what I wrote.