Weekly Standard may have been shooter target

Source: Politico

FBI agents visited the offices of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine yesterday after a shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and told employees they'd found the magazine's address. A senior Standard staffer confirmed the visit but declined to discuss it in detail. An FBI spokeswoman, Katherine Schweit, also declined to comment on the investigation.

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.

The suggestion that the Standard may have been a target complicates any view of the racist shooter in contemporary left-right terms. Von Brunn's white supremacist roots put him under the rubric of a "right-wing extremist," but the substance of his views -- which included everything from believing that President Bush may have been in on the September 11 attacks to denying that President Obama is an American citizen -- are too far on the fringe to fit into conventional political classification.

The focus on the Standard, though, appears to be of a piece with his central motivation: Anti-Semitism. In one essay, Von Brunn attacked "JEWS-NEOCONS-BILL O’REILLY," and the suggestion that neoconservatism is a specifically Jewish conspiracy is common on the racist fringe.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Weekly_Standard_may_have_been_shooter_target.html?showall

Duh.

contributors such as Kristol and Krauthammer(forgive any spelling errors) so this would only make sense.

By not being proud enough of being bigots or something.

extreme enough.

He just got lost along the way.

If Weekly Standard happen to be right next door to the Holocaust Museum I might ALMOST contemplate their message as a remote possibility.

The guy was a known racist wearing a confederate hate - he knew what he was doing.

Or not. :eyes:

This bit 'o propaganda is being released by Politico specifically to blunt the massive focus on the right wing hate machine in America. Rush and the rest of the gargantuan megaphone are as we speak pumping this bit of fluff out to try and blame the left for this shooting.

It is PURE propaganda! Don't buy it!

Indeed!

Perhaps the Weakling Standard's address was there because he was to have lunch with them after the shootings.

My sentiments exactly.

:thumbsdown:

It's already started. The media meme is that he was anti-Christian and anti-Jew, hated Bush and Cheney and neo-cons, was anti-Iraq war and anti-military. But there seems to be a lot less media about it today for some reason.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5826659


Complicated, is it?

What the right wing "entertainers" such as Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck don't understand is that while you fan the flames of hate--you don't get to pick who people hate. They may hate you.

Hate is selling really well right now, but in the case of Von Brunn it is rapidly coming out that his primary hatred is for Jews. A substantial number of the right wing intelligentsia are Jewish.

Antisemitism doesn't exactly adhere to standard left/right definitions. You can find it in the fringe of any political movement. Antisemitism is also the most likely core belief to produce violence. It has been that way for centuries.

When you play with fire you don't get to choose what or whom it burns.

The irony of Von Brunn having developed a hatred of neo-cons and Bill O'Reilly is very rich. I take Von Brunn was not a fan of Fox then...

welcome to DU! :hi:

Been here a few times. Not a heavy commentator. But I hope a good one.

he did, afterwards.

He just never got the chance because two security guards shot him down.

The fact that he double-parked tells me that he planned to go in quickly, shoot, and run out and drive off.

...means that he's not a right-winger.

That was a right-wing cause in 2008.

or entrust his 'memoirs' to a sympathetic organization...

I wonder if something in this article pissed him off? From 6/08/09: "The Shot Heard Round the World":

"Stefan Aust, former editor of the newsweekly Der Spiegel and author of a popular history of Germany's Baader-Meinhof (RAF) terror group, cites the Ohnesorg killing as "a turning point in the thinking and feeling of many" in Germany; a martyrdom that would function as a foundation myth for the country's radical left movement, many of whom would later transform themselves into university-educated "urban guerrillas." A simple narrative soon emerged on campuses across Germany: Ohnesorg, a pacifist active in Protestant student groups, had been brutally murdered by the "fascist pig" Kurras. When Kurras was twice acquitted in the killing--he claimed the shooting was accidental--it further "proved" that West Germany was merely a rump state of the Third Reich."



http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/564rpjrl.asp

to either mail or drop off his "manifesto" as it were.
Not content to just kill a few innocent people, Von Brunn might also feel the need to bore the world with his inane ramblings and outright hatred and stupidity. And who else would publish teh stupid?