Following the shooting at the Holocaust Museum this week the right has been in defense mode. They are trying everything to pain James Von Brunn as some lefty or just a plain old loon. The problem with that is he isn’t.
Just like in lefty liberal land there are extremes of right wing/neo-con land. James Von Brunn would far surpass even people like Rush Limbaugh on the right, just like Stalin would far surpass Dennis Kucinich on the left. Hence the names “right wing extremists” and “left wing extremists”. Both sides have people that just go too far.
I wanted to give this little lesson in political science to address this:
Weird, huh? What possible grievance could a Jew-hating 9/11 Truther who ranted about Bill O’Reilly and “neocons” have against a magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch and edited by Bill Kristol? Maybe he detected a leftward drift in the Standard’s editorial slant lately? You know how irascible those “right-wingers” can be, especially when they’re fed a steady diet of Fox News. Which, um, Von Brunn hated.
I guess he’s from the conservative-hating wing of conservatism. Big tent!
I have not seen one liberal blog or talking head say that Von Brunn is from the Republican or conservative movement. Instead they are addressing Von Brunn for what he is – a far right extremist.
But this also goes back to the DHS report. At no point did that report say “Republicans” or “Conservatives”. It addressed far-right extremists like Von Brunn. But it was people like Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh who decided to classify themselves as far-right extremists, not the left or the DHS report.
Perhaps someone in the media should take this up with the people on the right who thought the DHS report talked about them. Ask them why they are mad about an association that they created. Then remind them again that they were the one outraged by the report. It was them that wanted this association.
Again – when the DHS report came out, it wasn’t DHS or the left that was saying “hey guys – this report is about you”. It was people like Malkin and Limbaugh who said “hey they are talking about us”. They decided they wanted to be classified the same as neo-Nazis and white supremacists.