The Holocaust Museum Shooter

Who was he? From Jeffrey Goldberg, who linked to the ADL:

The suspect, identified as James Wennecke Brunn, is a long time white supremacist and anti-Semite who often uses the name James von Brunn. Born in 1920, Brunn is a veteran of World War II and retired Naval Reserve officer. Brunn worked in advertising and other professions until he retired. He now lives in Maryland and describes himself as an "artist" and "writer;" however, his magnum opus is a self-published anti-Semitic book, Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog ("Kill the Best Gentiles"). He has written many anti-Semitic essays as well. In recent years, he also created an anti-Semitic Web site, which he called "The Holy Western Empire." The museum shooting is not the first time Brunn has exhibited a willingness to use violence with regard to targets he considered connected to Jews.

In 1981, Brunn, then living in New Hampshire, was arrested at the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Board after he tried to use a sawed-off shotgun to take board members hostage. Like many anti-Semites, Brunn believed that Jews control the nation's banking system. He was convicted of attempted armed kidnapping, second-degree burglary, assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a pistol without a license and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon. He was sentenced to four to eleven years in prison in 1983 and served over six. In 2004 Von Brunn posted on Fredrick Toben's Holocaust denial "Adelaide Institute" email group, "Time to FLUSH all "Holocaust" Memorials."

There's not really much to say about this. What can you? I've never personally paid much attention to Holocaust deniers (other than this prominent fellow) and White Supremacists. Maybe it's because I live in the bay area and I take for granted the generally liberal, tolerant, educated atmosphere that pervades here. Or maybe it's because I've always considered the notion of denying a tragedy whose horror, brutality, and unprecedented scale is so well documented so absurd that I naturally expect these kind of people to be ostracized simply because of their despicable views. This is a rather rude awakening to the reality that our country continues to be tarnished by the stain of all kinds of bigotry. As much as I would like to think that, particularly with the election of a black president, the United States has closed the racial parentheses in its history, this tragedy is a painful reminder of the opposite. Damn.