When President Obama’s new Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, issued a report in early April that warned law enforcement bodies in the U.S. about the dangers of a potential rise in “right-wing extremist activity,” Republicans and conservatives protested so loudly that she ended up apologizing for parts of the report.
Few can help but notice, however, that the right-wing extremist violence occurring since she issued the warning has more than justified her decision to circulate the original document to all of the nation’s police departments.
The most recent incident, of course, was yesterday’s murder of a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. James Wenneker von Brunn walked into the museum with a rifle and shot and killed his innocent victim.
Von Brunn runs the website holywesternempire.org, which is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate site.
Von Brunn has a long history of connections with prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. He wrote the 1999 book, “Kill the Best Gentiles,” a racist and anti-Semitic thesis that whites are seeing “today on the world stage a tragedy of enormous proportions: the calculated destruction of the white race and the culture it represents. Europe is now overrun by hordes of non-whites and mongrels.”
On his website von Brunn also claims that in 1981, with concealed weapons, he went to the Federal Reserve Building to “put the whole Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve” under citizens arrest.
The Napolitano report had indicated that “economic recession, the election of America’s first Black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white power militias.” A footnote to her report defines right-wing extremism in the United States as including “not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” Von Brunn, it appears, fits into both categories.
Only a few days before the shooting at the Holocaust Museum pro-choice organizations held candlelight vigils around the country to remember Kansas Dr. George Tiller. Tiller, known for his life long commitment to women’s health, was shot dead while serving as an usher in his church. His murderer was a right-wing extremist who had harassed women and health care workers at clinics for years. He said he wanted his actions to be a warning to any doctor who might consider performing an abortion.
Another section of the Napolitano report had warned that dangerous right-wing extremist activity “may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”
In April a man opened fire on and killed three police officers in Pittsburgh. Friends of the 23 year old killer who were at the scene said he did it because of his fear that the Obama administration was planning to ban all guns.
Republicans, at the time Napolitano issued her report, described it as a political ploy and as an “attack” against veterans and against people with political opinions (opinions about abortion and immigration, for example) that were not held by the Obama administration. Some even demanded her resignation. None of them are saying anything about her report now.
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