Shortly after opening fire at the National Holocaust Museum today, James Wenneker von Brunn, the suspected shooter, was identified as a white supremacist with a “history of associations with prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Brunn’s hateful rhetoric followed by today’s violent outburst chillingly echoes a controversial warning issued by the Department of Homeland Security concerning a rise in “rightwing extremist activity.”
In his book, “Kill the Best Gentiles,” Brunn wrote:
We are witnessing today on the world stage a tragedy of enormous proportions: the calculated destruction of the White Race and the incomparable culture it represents.
Brunn’s supremacist views weren’t limited to anti-semitism, he also condemned the “browning of America” in a public email:
Millions of low-IQ non-whites are encouraged to illegally invade the USA. They are provided sanctuary, jobs, health-care schooling, by those intent upon destroying Western Civilization.
SPLC’s Heidi Beirich spoke with Fox New’s Shep Smith this afternoon about the shooting and the warning signs it poses for the U.S.:
SMITH: There’s these crazies out there. And we know it’s absolutely — there is no truth whatsoever — zero to any of those ideas. Yet, they live within the computer and they fester within people’s minds.
BEIRICH: Shepard, you’re hitting the nail on the head. We’re extremely concerned about these kinds of crazed conspiracies, whether they’re about the President, or the fact — we’re hearing things like FEMA setting up camps to round up Americans and put them in. I’m getting bad sort of deja vu from the 1990s, when anti-government militias were on the rise, when Tim McVeigh committed that violence in Oklahoma City. I’m really hoping we’re not going through a repeat of that.
Watch it:
A DHS report leaked earlier this year warned of “Rightwing extremist groups’ frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence.” The DHS cited the rise in right-wing extremist ideology as “the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat.”
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