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.

The Christianist Propaganda Blue Print

Having followed the tactics and propaganda methods of a number "family values" Christian organizations for a number of years, one thing has always struck me. Namely, that their tactics and their propaganda campaigns against gays draw heavily on the Nazi propaganda machine Hitler used against the Jews and to claw his way to power. They clearly believe - like Hitler - that if you tell a lie often enough, people will ultimately begin to think the lie is true. Similarly, they use the pseudo-science put out by NARTH and individuals like Paul Cameron to support the "choice myth" as I call it and to make all kinds of claims depicting gays as diseased vermin and threats "to the famoly."

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Sadly, the MSM generally fails to challenge their claims and merely provides a platform where the lies can be repeated yet again. Likewise, news anchors never look beyond the lofty titles that these organizations give to their talking head representatives, most of whom have no credentials at all other than whacked out religious beliefs and degrees from obscure bible colleges. A new exhibit at the Holcaust Museum in Washington, D.C., "State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda," focusing on the Nazi Propoganda machine once again helps make it clear where our enemies have drawn their inspiration for their attacks against LGBT citizens. LGBT rights organizations must do a far better job of exposing this type of propaganda and countering it. Here are some highlights on the exhibit from the Washington Post:

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"State of Deception," . . . covers much of the same ground as the museum's permanent collection, while more explicitly emphasizing the degree to which propaganda was the very fiber of the whole Nazi project. It's also a subject of ongoing debate in our own political culture, where politicians routinely resort to the same techniques -- simplification, vilification, message branding -- that the Nazis relied on seven decades ago.

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In her preface to the exhibition catalogue, museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield is particularly concerned about how new media might revive ideas and tactics that should have been thoroughly discredited in the rubble of conquered Germany. "The haters and propagandists have new tools in this age of the Internet, and at the same time consumers of information seem less equipped to handle the massive amount of unmediated information confronting them daily," she writes.

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Nazis used sophisticated niche messaging, especially during their rise to power in the early 1930s, tailoring ideology to different interest groups. . . . And they understood the many facets of propaganda, from its positive powers -- to instill a sense of unity and purpose in a beleaguered population -- to its slow, corrosive power to foster indifference and, finally, hatred.

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The exhibition includes toy soldiers in brown shirts and Nazi armbands; games such as "Jews Out!," played on a board ringed with an old, medieval city wall, and "Radio Sende Spiel," which encouraged players to avoid enemy or foreign radio stations; and children's books such as "The Poisonous Mushroom," which showed a Jewish caricature rendered as blue-headed toadstool.

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It covers the pseudo-science of race as it was taught in public schools and the recasting of German history as a series of grand accomplishments and horrific betrayals (by Jews, capitalists, communists and outsiders of all stripes). It demonstrates how hatred was deployed like a fusillade to soften the populace before the country goose-stepped over yet another line of civilized behavior. . . . raises the question of whether we can draw lines between hate speech and incitement before people start dying.