The Washington Post reports that John de Nugent, white supremacist friend of the Holocaust Museum murderer James W. Von Brunn "called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of "a loner and a hothead." "The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."
Crooksandliars reports that Glen Beck suggests that the Holocaust Museum killer is not a right winger, he's a lefty.
Beck offered the following rationale on his Fox News show tonight:Beck: What they're missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.
Actually, Beck has this exactly right. But frankly, it's boiling because of people like Glenn Beck, ranting hysterically every night about impending apocalypses of various forms -- looming "liberal fascism," the "economic meltdown," the "New World Order," violence spilling over the Mexican border, even FEMA concentration camps.
When behaviors manifest in the public sphere, when extremist "activators" in the media and on the web gives huge amounts of attention to people who go crazy, who act out the worst kinds of behavior, we are likely to see more of the same-- an increased frequency of this kind of behavior. Rupert Sheldrake calls this morphogenetic field theory.
Today's TV news coverage serves James W. Von Brunn well, giving the link to his website, broadcasting in high rotation repetition his message of hate. I can imagine his extremist hate group allies whispering to him at his hospital bedside, "You done good Jim. You're a hero. You've done more for the cause, getting all this publicity than a thousand websites or protests. You've moved the cause a quantum leap forward."
And they'd be right, thanks to media coverage of his sick act of cowardice. And maybe even this article I'm writing will help to forward that cause, because I too, am helping to cast light on him.
A government source told me, "continued media coverage only perpetuates the problem."
What a dilemma, tell a compelling, dramatic story, and by doing so get sucked down the rabbit-hole, helping the haters. What do we do, shut up?
As a columnist who must plead guilty to years of vilifying the other side, perhaps I must face the reality that we all need to cool the rhetoric and talk about issues, not toxic characterizations. We need to be able to deal with the tough problems we all face. A climate in which the idea of talking about the problem raises the risk of exacerbating that problem is dangerous.
There's no simple answer, but surely, fomenting the wingnuts and adding to their ranks is not part of the solution.
In the late '90's, Tipper Gore campaigned to get Musicians to clean up their lyrics act. Perhaps it's time for another campaign.
I started this article with a shorter title-- Wingnut Murder Spree. But that involves name calling that goes to the place I'm calling for us all to refrain from. So I edited it. It's a small start.
We are NOT all Anne Coulters and perhaps, whether left or right, we need to work very hard to move far, far away from that way of dealing with our dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs.
It's easy for passions to run high. We need to direct those energies into productive activism that makes change happen, not the anger and hate and toxic talk that potentiates more murders and violence.
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