Another Far Right Terrorist Killing

George Tiller had barely been buried for more than a few days and now another deranged far right shooter has killed another person motivated by their hate-based beliefs that discriminate against others who are different. This time the scene of the shooting was the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the victim was an innocent security guard, Stephen T. Johns (pictured at left). The shooter? A white supremacist who has a trail of tirades against Jews and African Americans - I can only assume that he was not likely to have been a fan of LGBT Americans either. As the Washington Post is reporting, the killer, James W. von Brunn, stepped through the doors of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, took two paces, lowered his rifle at a security guard and, before anyone could react, opened fire. I hate to say it, but Von Brunn sounds like he would have eagerly participated in a Sarah Palin campaign rally last year. Increasingly, Von Brunn, Tiller's killer, and others like them are the face of the GOP and they are rallied to act by the talking heads of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and many of the professional Christian organizations who denigrate not only gays but Jews, Hispanics and blacks as well. As I have said before, these far right organizations are a clear and present danger to society and need to be exposed for the hatred that they foster. Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

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The guard, who did not have time to draw his gun, fell bleeding and fatally wounded to the polished floor. Other guards fired back, cutting down the assailant. Terrified patrons, many of them children, dived for safety. And what moments before had been a bright weekday in June became a tableau of violence.

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The attack inside the famed Holocaust museum, as described by bystanders and authorities, turned the crowded building and Washington's nearby tourist-thronged Mall into a scene of fear and chaos, with black-clad SWAT teams, hovering helicopters and racing emergency vehicles. Stunned witnesses described a fusillade of gunfire -- five shots or more -- the blood-streaked floor and the screams of frightened visitors inside the museum and on the street.

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The suspect, identified by law enforcement sources as James W. von Brunn, 88, of Annapolis, was said to be a longtime, "hard-core" supremacist whose Internet writings contain extensive, poisonous ravings against Jews and African Americans.

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Police recovered a notebook in the suspect's possession that apparently contained a list different District locations, including Washington National Cathedral. Police bomb squads were sent to at least 10 sites.

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Von Brunn is said to have been a leading writer in the white supremacist fringe for many years. He also appears to be the author of a recent Internet posting suggesting that President Obama's background is being hidden from the public.

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His online book, "Kill The Best Gentiles," contains hundreds of pages of conspiracy theories that include Holocaust denial, the ancient hoax of the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" and wild webs of fantasy about Jewish plotting against white people.

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"This is a longtime white supremacist and anti-Semite approaching the end of his life who may have decided to go out shooting," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group in Alabama that tracks right-wing extremists.