Comments on: Shooting at DC Holocaust Museum

By: Rachel

Rachel — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:06:44 +0000

I was on a school trip and we were on our way to the Holocuast Museum when we got a txt that said an 88 year old man walked in to the Museum and shot three people one died and two were taken to the hostpital we were scared knowing that we were on our way there and we could have been there any min there were police every where and we were so scared but that was not going to stop us.

By: ARPhilo

ARPhilo — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:22:37 +0000

Taking away guns from civilians will only make sense if they are also taken away from the police, the military, and all other government.

By: Marksman2000

Marksman2000 — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:13:43 +0000

“You guessed it, the two are related. Get rid of the guns and the violence will reduce”

Yeah, it’s working great in Mexico, isn’t it?

By: Cameron H. Russell

Cameron H. Russell — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:00:16 +0000

@misteranthropist.
Should the holocaust be laid to rest?

By: misteranthropist

misteranthropist — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:55:02 +0000

It’s unfortunate that the Holocaust will never be laid to rest by supremacists. It’s unfortunate how these right-winged patriarchal contributors only unleash havoc on casualties only to create a minor disturbance in society. This guy is no different than Muslim extremists and suicide bombers around the world. The only way to stop this thought is to remove the sadism from culture, which is an enigma. I am sure the man claimed that God would have wanted him to do this, I always find this sort of thinking to be ridiculous and extremely racist. Anti-semitism will only go away, when all the of the supporters put down their weapons, ideologies, and attitudes and start supporting equality for everyone. Such a cookie cutter idea that will never promote peace.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:29:55 +0000

I doubt he was a direct influence. But I bet Mearsheimer and Walt were much more directly influential, and I doubt they’d have made it to the NYTimes bestseller list without a lot of people like Rev. Wright. If the point is that antisemitism is a phenomenon larger than the far right, I think that’s absolutely spot on.

By: JessSnark

JessSnark — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:09:59 +0000

I just don’t think it’s at all plausible that Rev. Wright was a major influence on Von Brunn’s ideology, given Von Brunn’s hatred of blacks. I do, however, think it’s plausible that O’Reilly may have been an influence on Roeder’s ideology.

By: Henrietta G. Tavish

Henrietta G. Tavish — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:41:24 +0000

Bringing up Wright’s antisemitic remarks sets up a kind of false similarity as if liberals and conservatives are equally to blame for the murder of a guard just because members of both groups have said antisemitic things.

I don’t see how it’s a false similarity. The premise I’ve seen articulated here is that disagreeable or hateful speech targeted at a group or individual constitutes incitement to murder. It shouldn’t matter whether the speaker is O’Reilly or Rev. Wright.

Personally, it seems to me that in the cases of Dr. Tiller, the museum guard and the Little Rock soldier, the killers were loners acting primarily in response to voice in their heads. But if it’s fair to say that a long history of hateful comments from O’Reilly or the Right triggered murder, the same should be said of Rev. Wright’s antisemitism. Dismissing it as “old news” is disingenuous, not just because the last antisemitic remark he made was yesterday, but because the news is only “old” because he’s been saying such things for twenty years. One could certainly dismiss things said over a long period of time by O’Reilly or right-wingers as “old news,” but instead what has been done is to cast such statements as an incriminating form of prolonged harassment.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:40:36 +0000

Jess, I agree about the playing dumb thing.

But it is not a partisan issue. All antisemitism, right or left, is part of the problem. Making it about left or right is burying the problem of antisemitism inside a completely different debate.

By: Thom

Thom — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:30:14 +0000

Again with the violence != sign of mental illness.

No kidding. I watched last night feeling frustrated as people attempted to write this off as just some delusional elderly man who lost his grip on reality. Of course, if he and Roeder had been Muslims… we’d be seeing people freaking out about the terrorists becoming so active (and is it Obama’s fault???).