Von Brunn, who claims on his own website to have been a decorated PT-boat captain and lieutenant in the US Navy during World War II, has written a book entitled ‘Kill the Best Gentiles!” According to its preface, its purpose it “to present WHITE YOUTH” with factual information to explain that an “age old CONSPIRACY does exist to destroy Western Civilisation.”
Von Brunn also has a Wikipedia user profile in which he champions the virtues of Western culture and the practice of eugenics. In another article he claims that Holocaust history is destroying Western civilization.
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In 1981, von Brunn entered the Federal Reserve in Washington with a shotgun to make a citizens arrest, he later said, to protest about high interest rates. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail.
On his website, he claims he was convicted by a “Negro jury, Jew /Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal.”
While details are still emerging my thoughts once again are turned toward the Department of Homeland Security report that was released a few months ago and outlined the possibility of a rise in right-wing extremist violence. Again, not that all conservatives or people who hold right-wing viewpoints are extremists who want to commit violent acts, but with the election of President Obama we have seen rhetoric that began during the campaign escalate into a very angry opposition. An opposition that is angered by policies and fueled by rhetoric that we must stop Obama at all costs in order to save our Democracy from Fascism.
On a somewhat related note, I was recently criticized in the comments section of a recent post for writing, "to an almost obsessive degree", on an instance of right-wing terrorism (the death of Dr. Tiller) while ignoring "a left-wing political murder". This "left-wing political murder" that this poster referred to was this incident:
Muslim convert charged with fatally shooting an American soldier at a military recruiting center said Tuesday that he doesn't consider the killing a murder because U.S. military action in the Middle East made the killing justified.
"I do feel I'm not guilty," Abdulhakim Muhammad told The Associated Press in a collect call from the Pulaski County jail. "I don't think it was murder, because murder is when a person kills another person without justified reason."
Obviously my lack of posting on that story does not mean that don't find that shooting any less disturbing, it is very disturbing and should also be labeled as domestic terrorism. What I don't accept is the broad labeling of this as a "left-wing" incident. Are there members on the fringe of the left that demonize military recruiters? Yes. Is there a left-wing movement that advocated violence on military recruiters that Muhammad was a part of? No. In fact, much of what we know in this story paints Muhammad as an American who was converted to radical Islam while he spent time in a prison in Yemen. Scott Roeder, however, has a much different background that includes participation with radical right-wing anti-abortion groups and various offenses for damaging abortion clinics.
There are also two other differences. There is no one that I am aware of on the left, who is attempting to justify the murder of the military recruiters. No one is saying that justice was served or that people were saved because of this shooting. Secondly, there was not a presence of cable television hosts who continually targeted these military recruiters as "killers" or suggesting that they ran a "death mill". There was no talk of "stopping" these recruiters and mentioning that anyone who didn't stop them would have blood on their hands.
While both of these scenarios are domestic terrorism, there are notable differences that complicate these scenarios more than putting them in neat little boxes of "right-wing terrorism" and "left-wing terrorism".
