Holocaust Museum Shooter Was a Christian-Hating Socialist

From OpposingViews
By Ben Johnson

On June 10, the nation tragically witnessed a memorial dedicated to commemorating an atrocity become the site of yet more death. Just before 1 p.m., longtime neo-Nazi James Wenneker Von Brunn entered the Holocaust Museum on the National Mall and opened fire in an attempt to complete the Final Solution his hero had left tentative, an omission Von Brunn dubbed “Hitler’s biggest mistake.” As former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen wandered the museum grounds, Von Brunn killed Stephen T. Johns, a black security officer, then was shot himself. As of this writing, the 88-year-old is in critical condition.

The white-wing fringe greeted the news with predictable joy. Its most popular website, Stormfront.org, saluted “White Racialist Treasure: James Von Brunn” in 2004; a thoughtful reader, seeing Von Brunn had backed up his recent threats with deadly action, wrote yesterday, “Definitely needs a bump today.” Another hoped the shooting would cause Americans to believe taking their children to Holocaust memorials is now “an insurance risk.”

Yet racists are not alone in their glee. Leftists have decided to exploit Von Brunn’s madness to engender fear of rampant conservative terrorism. They overlook one point: the shooter was not a conservative.

A review of his lengthy associations reveals Von Brunn hardly fits the stereotype of a Religious Right, GOP precinct captain. He denounced the Christian faith as a dastardly Jewish conspiracy, a “HOAX” invented by the Apostle Paul to “DESTROY ROMAN CULTURE” from within by undermining its pagan virility. (All screaming capitalization and grammatical errors in this piece appear in the original.) Like others on the racist fringe, the shooter proclaimed clearly: “SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West.”

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