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Devastating! An 88-Year-Old Anti-Semite Attacks the Holocaust Museum.

I’ve spent the better part of the afternoon flipping the television channels to hear more report about this 88 year old monster who killed a guard in his attempt to kill even more people at the Holocaust Museum in D.C.

This was a guy that the authorities KNEW ABOUT. He ran a web site which attacked Jews, Blacks and Catholics. He self-published a book that he gave the first six chapters of away for free on line (then advertising the last six chapters for money).

He had served 6 and a half years of an 11 year sentence in the 1980s for kidnapping Federal workers while armed. And yet he had guns. He brought a rifle to the Holocaust Museum and started shooting in the lobby.

Republicans who always insist on the right to bear arms and a Republican dominated Supreme Court that has recently declared it legal to bring firearms to National Parks and Monuments will be babbling away tomorrow on how this is above and beyond the legal protection of guns.

Fox News spent a lot of time with the local Washington D.C. Fox reporters talking live from outside the Museum. Wolf Blitzer scored a Coup at CNN by having former Secretary Bill Cohen and hs wife (who is directing a theatre piece at the Museum) talk about his experience 30 feet away from the shooter when it happened (Mrs. Cohen was on the way in by car and wasn’t allowed inside at the scene.) MSNBC put it as the first item on all their afternoon shows.

I watched all of them and searched around the web picking up more. This was a devastating event. Add it to the Murder of Dr. Tiller the other day and you wonder if the far right loonies are going to continue to pop out of the bushes to make themselves known the only way they feel good about.

As I write this, I am over at Full Circle Theater in Shepherdstown, WV, where we are getting ready for a touring production of POUND, a play about Ezra Pound, the particularly anti-Semitic poet who was held at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for 19 years after WWII, which he had spent in Italy supporting Mussolini and Hitler. In the play a young, Jewish doctor eventually gets him to realize a great deal of guilt for the radio broadcasts that caused the Italian police to kill her parents.

But I don’t think people really know how evil this guy who attacked the Holocaust Museum is.

Nor do I think they realize how easily this could happen again.

Under The LobsterScope


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/ 65 Comments

65 comments

  1. Peter Jukes

    …to many things we have been discussing on the Moose. It’s worth continuing that thread here. I think you make an important point

    This was a guy that the authorities KNEW ABOUT. He ran a web site which attacked Jews, Blacks and Catholics.

    Beyond the grief and the transgression, that’s a key issue. Keeping these people in the open, not banning them, means that we can see them.

    But then again that’s presuming a perfect world, and perfect policing.

    Despite what I’ve said on other threads, I don’t believe banning is the answer. But just as we monitor a terrorist threat on Jihadist websites, I hope the FBI will more closely monitor the forgotten terrorists within.  

  2. creamer

    Tell me again why we need more guns. Tell me why speech that directly leads to murder and assasination is protected. I know I’m a hopeless liberal, and I’m proably not feeling paticulary pragamtic right now, but for the life of me I can’t understand why a philosophy that has tie’s to lynching in the American south and genocide in Europe is allowed to flourish.

  3. John Allen

    Who would take seriously the possibility of a guy that is almost 90 years old taking the action he did? The gov’t is more likely watching 20-50 something skinheads. Wow, my spellchecker recognized ‘skinheads’.

  4. Chris Blask

    Do we believe that stopping this person from speaking his twisted views would have prevented this killing?  

    Do we believe that allowing this person to speak his twisted views caused this killing?

  5. GrassrootsOrganizer

    on the rise in right wing hate group activity?  Yeah well, there you go.  Except for the part where that particular report was full of shit and nothing but a political hatchet job that the Commies at Homeland Security pulled together on a direct order from Obama himself just to deny the free speech of Christian Real Americans who somehow still speak for all the rest of us, even if only  10% of us ever agree with them on anything.  

    Anyway, yeah, that report.  Spooky, huh?

     

  6. Barr

    Totally off the wall, but that dude was in good shape for being that old.  Must have been his pure Aryan genes.  What a sicko!

  7. Chris Blask

    From ABC News”

    “My father’s beliefs have been a constant source of verbal and mental abuse my family has had to suffer with for many years. His views consumed him, and in doing so, not only destroyed his life, but destroyed our family and ruined our lives as well.

    For a long time, I believed this was our family’s cross to bear. Now, it is not only my families lives that are in shambles, but those who were directly affected by his actions; especially the family of Mr. Johns, who bravely sacrificed his life to stop my father.

    I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father who lost their life yesterday [Wednesday]. It was unjustified and unfair that he died, and while my condolences could never begin to offer appeasement, they, along with my remorse is all I have to give.

    While my father had every right to believe what he did, by imposing those beliefs on others he robbed them of their free will. His actions have taken opportunities away from many people and forced decisions not expected, nor warranted, to be made that otherwise would not have been necessary.

    For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice. To physically force your beliefs onto others with violence is not brave, but bullying. Doing so only serves to prove how weak those beliefs are. It is simply desperation, reminiscent of a temper tantrum when a child cannot get his way. Violence is a cop out; an easy answer for an ignorant problem.

    His actions have undermined your “movement,” and strengthened the resistance against your cause. He should not be remembered as a brave man or a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish.”

    My condolences, Mr. von Brunn, and well said.

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