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Wisconsin Terrorist named: his White Power Past

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Busy at the Olympics, which has been brilliant, but I thought I’d pass on more sobering news.

The Guardian explains the FBI findings

The FBI is examining ties between white supremacist movements and a US army veteran who killed six people as they gathered at a Sikh place of worship in Wisconsin on Sunday.

The police identified the gunman as Wade Michael Page, 40, who served in a US army psychological operations unit before he was discharged in 1998 for a pattern of misconduct, including being drunk on duty.

The Daily Beast has more details of Wade Michael Page’s past, including some great investigative research into his band:

Band photographs of End Apathy on their band-mix page show Page holding a red electric guitar, wearing a shirt that reads “Definite Hate: Music With Pride,” over a Confederate flag. Swastikas and Confederate flags hang in the background. Definite Hate, another band in which Page played guitar, is also affiliated with the Hammerskins, according to Pitcavage.

The Definite Hate song “Take Action” includes these lyrics: “All the talking is done and now it’s time to walk the walk / Revolution’s in the air 9mm in my hand / You can run but you can’t hide from this master plan.” It has been reported that Page used a 9mm semi-automatic handgun in Sunday’s attacks.

I’ve nothing to add to this disturbing news, except the thought that I hope the FBI have their eyes firmly fixed on domestic right wing terrorism which – until 9/11 – was responsible for the biggest terrorist act on US soil.

This is further confirmation that one of the biggest scourges of our time is not just extreme Salafism, but the over-reaction of Islamophobia, which often is given intellectual legitimacy by main stream thinkers, intellectuals and political leaders the US and Europe (I wrote a series of essays about the European dimension of this over the last two years). This attack  on a Sikh Gudwara is doubly tragic, since it combines Islamophobia with complete ignorance. It is a world-wide phenomenon: as the massacre by Anders Breivik in Olso and Otoya last year proved.

A month or so ago, the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland explained his aversion to the casual Islamophobic statements you can hear every day. He reiterated something I’ve also often thought: every time a generalisation is made about ‘Muslims’ try putting the word ‘Jew’ there instead and see how it sounds.

We will reap a bitter harvest if this new ideology of hatred isn’t fought at every turn  


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15 comments

  1. Strummerson

    If we weren’t shoving a black president down their throats, they’d just stay in their clubhouses playing their awful music.  We’ve provoked them with our radical agenda.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost.  

    – assuming that everyone here knows that’s snark, right? –

    In the meantime, Huffpost is reporting that Margie Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church (why again aren’t baptists suing them for slandering the name of their denomination?) tweeted that “God sent another shooter.”

    But of course, we live in a world where Saul Alinsky is a dirty name and ‘leftist’ is a scary smear…

  2. Chris Blask

    They don’t have to go together, though they so often do. Not even the first such moran to so fully misunderstand the universe to confuse Sikh’s with Muslims.

    An unfortunate use of this assclown in analogy was made here in a recent thread, a more accurate analogy is to bin Laden, Hitler as you say, and every other lunatic fool who ever raised a weapon for the One True People.

    Understanding, hope and optimism are the only things imho that can reduce this sort of insanity. Killing because the other person is not like you is, historically, a very common thread. Among the things that America and the whole post-French-revolution ‘equality’ thread have promoted is the idea that there are views of humanity beyond being born into God’s Chosen People with instructions to oppress or eliminate the people God created but (by some sick logic) whom He hates.

    I wish my knowledge of Sikhism was a little richer, but as I understand the theology it is particularly sad that the victims of this crime are so removed from the violence so often associated with religion. Sikh’s in my experience are exceptionally peaceful, thoughtful and diligent members of society.

  3. fogiv

    are worthless pieces of shit (is there a way we can reclaim their carbon and put it to better use?) but let me touch on one thing, and make a disjointed an ironic oberservation:

    these assholes ruin tattoos for decent ink enthusiasts like me. i mean, look at that crap. jeez, scumbags. you know, about a year ago, a colleague and I had some fieldwork out near some backwater town in a relatively remote part of central California. at the end of a long hot day, we stopped off at a mini-mart/gas station thing to grab something fresh/cool to drink on the drive back to HQ.  anyway, my colleague is fueling up out rig, and I head in for a couple of icy fountain drinks. anyway, there’s a youngish (maybe mid 20s) white dude behind the register, and an older lady milling about the counter. There’s nobody else in the place. I locate the soda contraption and start filling the cups with ice and soft drinks when I sense someone looking at me. Scanning over, I see the woman (prolly in her late 50s/early 60s?) eyeballing me rather intensely, and notice that the young guy is saying something to her under her breath, and he looks uncomfortable. Takes about 3 seconds for me to piece together that she’s likely the establishent’s owner, and he’s an employee (maybe her grandson or something). Anyway, I take the drinks up the the counter, set them down, and say that “I’m going to grab a snack or something too”. As I approached, the lady is just looking me up and down, with this really sour face on, and I’m thinking that maybe I’ve wandered into the middle of some unpleasant conversation they were having or something….I dunno, whatever, right?

    Anyway, I start walking down the few aisles hunting for a Cliff Bar or what-have-you, and the woman is tailing me — and I mean right on my ass. All with this ‘look’ on her face. I’m thinking, what the hell? The store is really small, and you could easily see and watch anyone from anywhere inside. It dawns on me that she probably thinks I’m going to steal something. Like I’m a shoplifter or whatever. So yeah, I’m now officially offended.

    So I turn to her, and say, “Excuse me, is there something you need from me?” She’s still sporting the sour puss, but it’s now glazed over with a touch of fear. Her lip was actually trembling. She does not make eye contact with me, but I can see her eyes tracing the tatoos along my arms–up down, up, down, up down. It’s the tats, right? I must be a criminal. A low-life. Not to be trusted because of my appearance. So yeah, I’m now officially pissed off. Flustered somewhat, I abandon the snack idea and brush past her toward the counter to pay for the damned drinks. As I do, the look on the young clerk’s face expresses clear discomfort, but nothing like hers. His was obviously reflecting shame and embarrassment, and some relief as I greeted him cordially and bounced before I made a scene of confronting this lady.

    By the time I get back in the rig, I’m steaming mad. How dare she judge me? For what? My appearance? I’m ranting about it to my coworker, who’s gallantly trying to calm me down with a light-hearted joke:

    Maybe she didn’t like the color scheme?

    …and right then, it hits me like the proverbial ton of bricks. This hag judged me on the colors of my skin. A little reminder of my white priveledge. What I had just felt was 0.000000000000000000000012% of what people of color feel in this country EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THEIR LIVES. I’m a fucking grown man. Imagine how that kind of treatment would feel if you’re a 12 year old hispanic boy, or a Sikh, or a 7 year old black girl?

    So yeah…END APATHY? fucking bigot pigs. no value in a just and decent society. NONE.

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