is a liberal town that perhaps the culprit was a liberal.

Don't be coy. Don't just link to his post. Be straight-forward.

Good for us all to be vigilant.

You are witch-hunting, but you don't have the guts to be honest about it. If you just wanted to make your point that there are trolls on DU, you could have linked to a post by you saying it. Instead, you're attacking a DUer, but pretending you are 'merely pointing out' that trolls exist.

You are making DU suck, today.

... reply. My bad.

"Police believe McQuilliams was associated with the Phineas Priesthood, an anti-Semitic, anti-multiculturalism group that opposes biracial relationships, same-sex marriage, taxation and abortion. Authorities found a copy of “Vigilantes of Christendom,” a book linked to the group, in the rental van McQuilliams used during the attacks, NBC Austin affiliate KXAN reported."

Good thing the Washington media and cable news is all over this.......wait a minute.....

were uncovering the "Latin Kings" in Central Florida.

"New Black Panther Party"

I'm Black and sarcastic.......

It's probably always best to use the sarcasm smilie...

Same crap, different name, thats all.

That should sound strange.
Seriously, it should have that "Giant Shrimp" ring to it.
Then and again.

Like racism, religion, just another tool in the GOP's arsenal.

“If you look at what he did, he terrorized a city, he’s just an American terrorist trying to terrorize our people,” Acevedo said. Wow. He went there!

From the linked article at WaPo.

Do these folks also represent Christianity?

Eric Robert Rudolph, the man who bombed the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, a gay and lesbian nightclub and two abortion clinics was an Army of God member. Not to mention many of the KKK branches, and their numerous offshoots, wrap themselves up in their own distorted version of hate fueled Christianity. So, I'd say it's just one more such attack by a homegrown Christian RW terrorist in the US.

Bonnie Weinstein, the co-founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has a new book out today, "To the Far Right Christian Hater … You Can Be a Good Speller or a Hater, But You Can’t Be Both: Official Hate Mail, Threats, and Criticism From the Archives of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation." I ordered a copy in hopes of trying to get a better glimpse into the minds of those who say and do such hateful things in the name of their god.

These people represent their version of Christianity. As disclosure I'll mention I've been reading much of the religious texts in the past few years, but I am not religious and not looking to become religious. I just want to understand better how to coexist with everyone in a more peaceful way. What I've come to realize is these radical subsets of Christian fundamentalism don't want to coexist with a person such as myself. They want me, and our whole country, to conform to their standards and beliefs, or die and burn in their version of hell for all eternity. Some of their more fanatical members fantasize openly about how they should expedite the latter. Others, such as the man in Austin, Texas, become so entangled in their fantasies of righteous hate and dominance they act on them. Luckily this time the actor was an inept terrorist who was stopped before he hurt anyone, but we won't always be so fortunate, just like we haven't been before in the past.

Sorry to ramble on so, it's just a topic I've been thinking about a great deal for quite awhile now.

"My son is in the Canadian Military. He is also an atheist. I had never considered that that fact would matter. After all, isn’t the purpose of the Military, at least ostensibly, to protect liberty and doesn’t that include freedom from as well as freedom of religion? One would think that if anyone should enjoy these freedoms, it would be the men and women who are willing to risk their lives for little pay to protect them. So when I saw this book on Netgalley, I thought it might give me some insight even though it is about the US Military.

Author Bonnie Weinstein and her husband Michael founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) in 2005 and since then, the Foundation has been nominated six times for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, as Ms Weinstein writes

‘…it has taken an extreme amount of intestinal fortitude to stay the course. We fight against those who, at worse, seem hell-bent on dismantling our Constitution, and at best, seem to have little idea of what they are talking about.’

The book, itself, is a very quick read divided between letters from some of the people who object to the Foundation and a list of some of the important successes it has achieved.

The letters are divided into categories and go from bad to worse . Many of the writers seem to aim their vitriol at Jewish people in general, believing, based solely on their name, that somehow the Weinsteins are motivated by a Jewish anti-Christian bias despite the work of the MRFF in aid of soldiers of all faiths or none including Muslims, atheists, and both Protestants and Catholics who do not share the same beliefs as the far right Christians and do not enjoy being a captive audience to the proselytizing of both fellow enlisted men and officers. The anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, racism, and gay bashing of these letters are, to say the least, shocking especially as it is all coming from self-avowed Christians.

"The worst letters are from the far right Christians who believe that the United States is a Christian nation and that the purpose of the Military is to bring their (ie far-right Dominionist) Christian values to the ‘lost’ nations and peoples of the world even at the end of a gun. If these letters are examples of how they want the world to look, it is truly a terrifying place. Here is an excerpt from one of the nicer and better written letters and, trust me, I am not being sarcastic when I say that:

‘…real Americans are lovers of Jesus Christ…Real Americans are not jews and real Americans know how the muslums have to be eliminated and real Americans know that the faggots deserve no safe and respect and especially not in the army of America.’

Apparently, Real Americans also won’t be tied to the tyranny of spell check or rules of grammar. By the time I finished reading these letters, I literally felt ill – I wanted to take a shower and wash my eyes and brain out. I found myself thinking (and hoping) that the writers of these letters must suffer from a mental illness and that they make up only a tiny fraction of the American population. Nothing, judging from these letters, is too vile, too beyond the pale in the fight to protect the rights of these so-called Christians to force their brand onto those who don’t share their beliefs."

Thank you.

Just an old-fashioned white supremacist with a strong side order of anti-Semitism.

http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/hoskins.html?LEARN_

Although not as well known as white supremacists such as Matt Hale and the late William Pierce, Virginia financial advisor Richard Kelly Hoskins has promoted racism and anti-Semitism for nearly fifty years, and has considerably influenced the far right during the past two decades. His books, Christian Identity-based commentaries on history and economics, are among the most widely-read on the Identity circuit, and he has become a fixture at movement conferences and retreats. He is best known for introducing and advocating, in Vigilantes of Christendom (1990), the concept of the "Phineas Priesthood": violent white supremacist guerrillas who avenge "crimes" against the white race. Hoskins' idea is derived from a passage from the Book of Numbers, and has been adopted or popularized by some of the country's most radical racists and has provided a religious justification for acts of domestic terrorism. ...

In the late 1950s, in the wake of the then-recent integration of Virginia's schools, Hoskins decided, in his own words, "to write a short book on the history of our own Saxon race and publish it myself if I had to." The result was Our Nordic Race (1958), a self-published attempt to prove the superiority of "pure Nordic" peoples. Hoskins asserted that the empires of Rome and Greece fell primarily because the native peoples mingled their "pure" blood with that of lesser races: "When a race which produces original thought breeds with a race which produces little or no original thought, the resulting breed is a failure." From this Hoskins concluded that "our Nordic race in these nations was betrayed and destroyed by their own Nordic countrymen who . . . became Race Traitors." ...

Hoskins experienced a spiritual reawakening of sorts in the mid 1960s, which culminated in his becoming a Southern Baptist in 1966. ... Hoskins' religious conversion did little to moderate his views on race. He delved further into Christian Identity, a sect whose dogma includes the belief that whites are God's chosen race - descendants of the Bible's Israelites - and that Jews literally and figuratively descend from Satan. ... In 1985 Hoskins published War Cycles, Peace Cycles, which purported to be a Christian analysis of banking and economics in Europe and America. In actuality, the book denounced predatory lending and banking practices purportedly committed by a cabal of political and economic elites that included corrupt political leaders and Jewish banking concerns.

There are right wing nut jobs in Texas even in Austin

It would be funny if it weren't so evil.

People who hold books are bigger threat to police than ammosexual gun nuts.

First time I've heard that. I like it.

Jesus was not about hate. Jesus was about the opposite of hate. Jesus was about LOVE.

or was he military?

Done and done...

Call them "Christianists" if you have to identify them with that part of the religious spectrum. You wouldn't have a problem with using the term "Islamists" to denote radical Muslims, would you?

The KKK, and these guys, are to Christianity as ISIS is to Islam.......makes sense.

Follow everything your holy book says to do you will be breaking a shitload of laws including murder-

Christians have a long history of murder, using their beliefs as justification.

what a sad amerikkkan contradiction/hypocrisy. Religion has always been used in this country to hate, what they feel is justifiable hate cause that's what god wants.....

to this Wapo article, all I can say is this country is truly going downhill fast. No critical thinking, no empathy, compassion, intelligence. A country FULL of racist , ignorant people lapping up every racist dog whistle from joseph scaronthefaceofamerikkka, limpnuts and all the rest of those clowns who will be sitting in their lily white enclaves laughing at the chaos and murder they will have caused the 99 percent to do to each other. We are a sad society indeed.. Something is brewing and it ain't going to b pretty when the "melting pot" boils over. It's been more like a crock pot finally turned up to high after centuries of stupidity and hate based on the color of some citizens skin color....... ain't going to be pretty at all....

The only Phineas I ever heard of was the great Phineas T. Bluster on the Howdy Doody Show.

They need to face the fact that all of their hate spew is getting people killed. People who are unstable are listening to it and acting out their fantasies. I'm just glad that nobody other than the gunman was hurt. Can you imagine if he had gone off on his rampage on a day that wasn't a holiday?

...from the RWNJ's whose rhetoric and actions serve as the foundation of hate needed for such actions as this one to occur, almost like a form of confirmation for the perpetrators that instead of being vilified, they will be praised.

Just don't let any books this nutcase was brainwashed with get burned.

dark skin people of the islamic faith.






Call it what it is. Terrorism. Home grown terrorism.

He said, "If you look at what he did, he terrorized a city, he's just an American terrorist trying to terrorize our people." He also said, "Terrorists come in all sorts of colors, ethnicities, and religions," said Acevedo. "By no means can you call him anything other than an extremist." I'm guessing this is where they media is getting the word extremist from? Not that I disagree with that assessment, but I do think it's only a part of what he was. Not all extremist are terrorist, but all terrorist are extremist.

The media is typically shying away from the no holds barred approach Acevedo used when addressing the situation. I haven't yet found a transcript of his full speech, but I've found snippets here and there in articles and he did an excellent job from what I've seen.

Home Grown extremest"

Acevedo, Austin's chief of police, called him a terrorist multiple times. The media has given those remarks no headlines though, and they're mostly being ignored by the population as a result. Which is what I was trying to point out.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was just pointing out how the actual words used by the chief of police during the press conference are being somewhat cherry picked by the media as they report the story. Acevedo said things which make the media uncomfortable to repeat, so they're running with headlines like "hate in his heart" and "homegrown extremist," which were also said by him, but they were said in conjunction with his calling him an "American terrorist." The terrorist remarks are being buried deeper in the story, or in some cases, not being mentioned at all.

When I did a search for "American Terrorist" in connection with the Austin shootings, I only found one media outlet which used the term in a headline. Rather sad and telling in my opinion.