Holocaust Museum Murder Suspect's Background Confounds Media

As I already pulled from James Von Brunn's website and searches of for content he produced online, Brunn hits the trifecta of crazy, even before yesterday's attack on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.

He was a 9/11 Troofer (a conspiracy theorist claiming that the US government and Jews were behind the attack).

He was a white supremacist and anti Semite and had links to various members of different white supremacist movements.

He was a Holocaust denier.

He was anti-Christian, claiming that Christianity brought the downfall of the Roman Empire and that Christianity was a hoax.

He also apparently believed that President Obama's background was being hidden from the public.

He was an anti-Bush kook. More to the point, he was anti-government and had been for decades.

He'd previously served time in prison on firearms charges after attempting a takeover of the Federal Reserve to protest interest rates in the 1980s.

It's difficult to shoehorn someone like that into a box so the media does the next best thing, it chooses to ignore all the crazy and instead headlines that he was simply an elderly gunman although some are claiming that he was a right wing extremist, which is quite the stretch.

MSNBC goes with "Shooting Suspect Called Genius and Hothead." For starters, he's a murder suspect as the man he shot, security guard, Stephen T. Johns, died at the hospital. The MSNBC bit doesn't even mention the guard's murder. and that quote comes from none other than self-described white separatist, John de Nugent, claiming that Brunn was a genius and a hotheat. Nugent further notes that Brunn's personality changed in the past couple of weeks, after claiming that his Social Security benefits had been cut and was espousing violence.

It was at that point that Brunn started advocating the killing of all the Jews in various emails. He's also reported to have claimed that as a WWII veteran, he fought on the wrong side (he was allegedly in the US Navy, and found common cause with another anti-Semite and segregationist in US Navy Admiral ).

Still, this doesn't exactly explain why he chose the Holocaust Museum. He had a notebook with other potential targets, including the Washington National Cathedral, and other sites, which required law enforcement to conduct searches to verify that they were secure and safe.

Security was also stepped up at Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers in both the city and the suburbs, as a precaution against the possibility of copy-cat attacks, officials said. Law enforcement authorities stressed that they believe Von Brunn acted alone, and said they did not have any evidence that other sites were at risk.

Several people caught glimpses of the attack.

"We heard a really loud bang, and we saw a guy with a silver length of a gun walking through" the door, said Shannon Clark, a tourist from Iowa who was walking on the mezzanine at the time of the shooting.

Former defense secretary William Cohen was standing in the exit area when he saw a car that had stopped just outside the driveway. "I noticed an older man, but I didn't pay that much attention," he said.

Then Cohen heard shots.

"I've been around a lot of gunfire over the years, and it was real clear that's what it was," he said.

Maria Hernandez of Bristow was leaving an exhibit when she heard shots. "I saw a security guard pull out his gun," she said.

Visitor Liliane Willens was heading into a basement auditorium to listen to a Holocaust survivor talk about her wartime experiences when she heard a noise that sounded like a roof falling in.

The audience in the crowded auditorium was told to stay put and that there had been a shooting but that people were safe where they were, she said.

Meanwhile, I would like to point out that the Washington Post has a wonderful tribute to the murdered guard, Stephen Johns, who gave his life so that others would be saved.

UPDATE:
Still more people are trying to somehow pigeonhole yesterday's attack at the Holocaust Museum to the DHS leaked report about right wing extremist groups.

Curiously, some of those who are quoted don't seem to understand the level of crazy involved in yesterday's attack:

The opinions of several experts contacted by The Washington Times on Wednesday differed when it came to questions about whether membership in such groups are increasing. But all agreed they present a serious threat.

"I am more concerned with the threat from the Christian-identity groups than the homegrown Islamic terrorists," said Maria Haberfeld, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It's a disaster waiting to happen. The fact that this guy did what he did may be symptomatic of things to come."

Ms. Haberfeld, who teaches a counterterrorism class for New York police officers, said she worries that local law enforcement agencies do not keep close enough tabs on such groups and that the Internet allows them to put forth an extreme rhetoric that advocates violence.

Brunn was anti-Christian. We've already seen more homegrown terror plots busted this year than any Christian identity groups (1-0). That's not counting the convictions from other Islamic terror plots, including the Fort Dix Six.

Trying to extrapolate from individual incidents, such as the murder of abortionist George Tiller and the Holocaust Museum shooting isn't a good idea, particularly since the motivations from both are widely divergent, and I'd argue that Brunn was around the bend with so many conspiracy theories that the one driving factor was anti-Semitism, not right wing extremism.

UPDATE:
Apparently the Weekly Standard was on Brunn's hit list notebook, as the FBI paid a visit to the Weekly Standard yesterday in conjunction with their ongoing investigation into Brunn's activities.

Two other sources said two FBI agents arrived shortly after 5:00 p.m. Thursday at the 17th Street offices of the magazine. They told staffers that they had found the address of the magazine on a piece of paper associated with the shooter, James von Brunn, and asked whether the Standard had received any threats.

The magazine is about a mile north of the Holocaust Museum, and there's no other indication that von Brunn had targeted it. Von Brunn's published rants included attacks on "neocons," and the Standard has been at the heart of the neoconservative movement.