In the comments to another post of mine, a reader pointed out a claim made by a right-wing blogger that James von Brunn is a registered Democrat. This was news to me (the blogger’s claim, that is), but looking at some of the articles in blogtopia today, it appears that this claim may be part of a new direction being taken by some on the right — away from denying any connection between von Brunn (and Dr. Tiller’s murderer) and right-wing extremism, and toward actually connecting violent far right extremists to the left, as noted in a post by Steve Benen:
The conservative drive to connect violent right-wing extremist James von Brunn, who murdered a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum this week, to the American left continues to confound. Dave Weigel had a terrific report on this yesterday, including this gem:
“From what I can tell,” explained Jonah Goldberg, the author of the 2008 bestseller “Liberal Fascism” and a writer for National Review, “his hatreds echoed the kind of stuff we hear from the Kos crowd, Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan et al.” Goldberg called Von Brunn “objectively crazy,” but argued that “his hatreds would be easier to find at an ANSWER rally than at CPAC.”
Even by Goldberg standards, this is remarkable. Adam Serwer responded, “That’s right. A neo-nazi who hates blacks, Jews, and thinks Obama wasn’t born in the United States is going to be more at home with a group called ‘ACT NOW TO STOP WAR AND END RACISM’ rather than the political convention where they’re selling Obama Waffles and conservative figures get applause for questioning Obama’s citizenship.”
Read those two linked pieces, as well. They are very informative.
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