Holocaust Museum killer a Chuck Darwin fan

Latest Right-Wing Meme: Von Brunn's A Lefty
By Zachary Roth - June 11, 2009, 4:19PM
It's hardly been 24 hours since James Von Brunn allegedly walked into the Holocaust Museum and shot museum guard Stephen Johns. But already conservatives from Rush Limbaugh to Red State have started advancing their latest up-is-down meme: Von Brunn -- a white supremacist consumed by hatred of Jews and blacks, who has called for President Obama to release his birth certificate -- isn't really a right-winger -- in fact, he's a lefty.

Let's count off the examples:

Yesterday, a guest from the "Ayn Rand Institute" argued to Fox News's Glenn Beck that because Von Brunn is a racist, he must of course be "a phenomenon of the left." In response, Beck accepted that logic, and wondered: "How did it happen that you look at people that are Nazis and you say that those are right wing? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever!"

Yes, it's totally baffling.

Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh too declared Von Brunn "has more in common with the marchers and protesters we see at left-wing rallies," according to video just aired on MSNBC.

But it's conservative bloggers that have really taken this idea and run with it, though. Yesterday, Eric Erickson of Red State tweeted:

holocaust shooter, like left wing bloggers hates Bush, Israel, the war, Christains, capitalism. the list goes on and on.
On his site, Erickson wrote:
It is the leftists like Kos's acolytes that perpetuate anti-Semitism under the guise of "if only we wouldn't defend Israel this wouldn't happen." Nazism, like Communism, and the neo-nazis disease that stems from the former, share the common foundation of socialism that these same leftists now agitate for.
...

Kos and the lunatic gunman today and the lunatic gunman who killed Pvt. Long share more in common that the rest of us -- their world view is centered on contempt for what this nation stands for and are consumed with an abiding hatred of George W. Bush and the "neocons."


And Michelle Malkin -- playing defense after blowing a gasket about that DHS report warning of right-wing extremist, only to see the report's predictions borne out over the last week -- declares, "Shooter wasn't "left" or "right," just plain loony," while linking approvingly to another writer who says no, he was a lefty.

Malkin also points to the fact that police found the address of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine in Von Brunn's car -- the implication somehow being, we suppose, that it's impossible to be a right-winger if you also hate magazines that advocate a neoconservative foreign policy.

And of course, as Josh noted earlier, Andy McCarthy of National Review wrote:

So what does that leave us with? A lunatic who killed an abortion doctor (and was vigorously condemned by conservatives for doing so), and an 88-year-old white supremacist of the Nazi bent (which somehow makes him a right-wing savage -- a paradox Jonah has written a book about) who killed a guard with a shotgun at the Holocaust Museum.
That is not a wave of domestic terrorism, much less right-wing extremism.


Right. Nothing to do with right-wing extremism. How silly of us.

Late Update: Reader JD points out that conservatives are indulging here in what's known as the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, advanced by the British philosopher Antony Flew, by redefining the meaning of a term in order to make a desired assertion about it true.

In Thinking About Thinking, Or: Do I Sincerely Want To Be Right?, Flew, an Englishman, wrote, a bit xenophobically:


Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the "Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again." Hamish is shocked and declares that "No Scotsman would do such a thing." The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, "No true Scotsman would do such a thing."

While the Left are not Holocaust Deniers, in my opinion, I think I see some Holocaust Trivializing in their rhetoric, since the Left being anti-Zionist, they may not see any need for a Jewish State, as a safe haven for Jews. This is not "denying," it is just "trivializing," in my opinion.

Quote:

While the Left are not Holocaust Deniers, in my opinion, I think I see some Holocaust Trivializing in their rhetoric, since the Left being anti-Zionist, they may not see any need for a Jewish State, as a safe haven for Jews. This is not "denying," it is just "trivializing," in my opinion.

Holocaust denier, Holocaust trivializing....so what? You tell them that you know that they are wrong/cold/mean...whatever, and then you move on. I seriously doubt that the millions of Jews, mentally and physically handicapped, and others killed by the Nazis are in some place listening to idiot moderns and getting all offended, so I am not going to get sore over it either.

I would not expect a nice Gentile like yourself to know, "so what?"

WASHINGTON " The son of the man accused of killing a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said Sunday that his father had long burdened his family with his white supremacist views and that he wishes his father would have died in the shooting instead.

James von Brunn, 88, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 39-year-old Stephen T. Johns, who was black.

"I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father who lost (his) life," Erik von Brunn, 32, said in a statement to ABC News. "It was unjustified and unfair that he died, and while my condolences could never begin to offer appeasement, they, along with my remorse is all I have to give."

1: a gnawing distress arising from a sense of guilt for past wrongs :

He said he never imagined that his father would take a life.

"I never had any inclination to think that. The man is 88 years old. I never would have thought he could do this," he said. "It really hasn't sunk in yet. It's a shock."

For myself after hearing the story one woman told me of the total lost of her family and most of her friends during the holocaust I have the emotional reaction of feeling like apologizing for the rest of the human race to her.

For myself after hearing the story one woman told me of the total lost of her family and most of her friends during the holocaust I have the emotional reaction of feeling like apologizing for the rest of the human race to her.

So yes I do feel guilty for actions taken against an elderly little woman when she was a child and before I was born.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen