And I told myself I was going to keep it light this week on the blog. Had to break the promise. I will probably come back to this topic in a more in-depth form later.
A rifle-wielding white supremacist entered Washington’s Holocaust museum on Wednesday afternoon, fatally shooting a security guard before being wounded himself by return fire from other guards, authorities said.
Stephen Tyrone Johns, a six-year veteran of the museum’s security staff, later “died heroically in the line of duty,” said Sara Bloomfield, museum director.
Law enforcement sources identified the suspect as James W. von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which focuses on human rights, said Brunn has “an extremely long history with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.”
“I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,” said President Obama, who just days earlier had spoken emotionally about the Holocaust when he visited Buchenwald, a former Nazi concentration camp with Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.CNN
I still don’t understand how people can have that much hatred toward others. After watching the news and then going to work yesterday afternoon, I was saddened as well. But strangely I wasn’t really shocked by the news. And that’s actually what made me do some thinking.
I wasn’t shocked because there’s so much hatred festering in the country right now. Just last weekend I wrote about the suspect in the assassination of the abortion doctor who called the media to warn that more violence will occur.
The Homeland Department of Security issued a report in April that signs of extremism are on the rise.
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. DHS
To my surprise, I read over on Media Matters that Shep Smith on Fox News took a serious look into the DHS report retrospectively. He clearly forgot which network he was working for temporarily.
But moving on …
I knew it’d be best for me to write this the same night that I heard the news rather than wait a few days later once it had sunk in and before I read analysis on James von Brunn’s entire life and what led up to that day.
The story is about Brunn this week, but it’s not really about him. It’s about all those other crazies who are out there filled with hatred and just waiting to kill others for their cause. America’s a pretty scary place to live right now. And it’s kind of like bad weather – we can watch the storm, but right now there’s nothing that we can do to automatically change the current atmosphere in the nation.
The acts of domestic terrorism this year have mostly been conducted by individuals, but that doesn’t mean that only the perpetrators are capabale of carrying out these acts. There are a lot of crazies out there.
R.I.P. Stephen T. Johns.
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