Just three days ago I posted an article about the potential for right wing violence. It did not take long to come true.
John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings.
If so, that would make the Pentagon shooting the second violent extremist attack on a federal building within the past month. On Feb. 18, Joseph Stack flew a small aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Mr. Stack left behind a disjointed screed in which, among other things, he expressed his hatred of the government. (For more on this incident, click here.)
Details of Mr. Bedell’s case are still emerging. But writings by someone with his same name and birth date, posted on the Internet, express ill will toward the government and the armed forces and question whether Washington itself might have been behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
However, law enforcement officials have yet to publicly state their theories as to Bedell’s motives.
“I have no idea what his intentions were,” said the chief of Pentagon police, Richard Keevill, in a Friday press conference…
…According to the Associated Press, an Internet posting made by someone using the name JpatrickBedell expressed a determination to see justice served in the case of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in his California home in 1991. Authorities have ruled this case a suicide, but it has become a cause célèbre among extremists who consider that ruling a coverup by the government.
The posting expressed general hatred of Washington and added that exposing the Sabow case would be “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolition,” according to the AP.
The Pentagon attack and the destruction at the IRS building in Austin, Texas, come at a time of explosive growth in extremist-group activism across the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such organizations.
The number of US extremist paramilitary militias grew from 42 in 2008 to 127 in 2009, according to a just-released SPLC annual report.
So-called “Patriot” groups, steeped in antigovernment conspiracy theories, grew from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009 – an increase that the SPLC report judges as “astonishing.” [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Christian Science Monitor>
In addition to this, Think Progress has revealed that Bedell posted a request for collaborators from an email address from Ludwig Von Mises Institute, a right wing group with ties to Ron Paul.
I have long claimed that the GOP love of violence as expressed by Michelle Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and too many more to mention would take root in the hearts of wing nuts and blossom in violence and death. That does not make me a prophet. That call was a sure bet. Because of them, two police officers have been wounded.
Many have called on the GOP and their Teabagger accomplices to end their violent rhetoric. They have refused. If the GOP still refuses to change, their party must go the way of the dinosaurs into extinction.
10 Responses to “Pentagon Shooting Was Right Wing Violence”
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There is no constitutional solution for the spew of these so called “commentators.” I was reading some of the comments on this at Yahoo.com and to be honest it is pretty scary how the sheep have turned rabid in their vitriol against everything and everyone they perceive as not agreeing with them. I guess the BecbaughbachO’rile crowd will not be happy until they foment a civil war between them who are the once middle class.
This though has building since the first abortion clinic bombing and Atlanta gay night club bombings. escalating violence from the right and the left waiting for the FBI or other federal agencies to take the lead and solve the problem of conservative violence.
The question though is if the right gets back in power, how much more civil liberties of the left will be redacted from the constitution rewritten by the theo-neo cons?
Will things ever change? Will peace be given a chance?
And the right-wingers will not address the issue. They’ll just claim that Bedell was really a leftist, as they did with the Austin air terrorist. Ever since Jonah Goldberg wrote a whole book claiming Mussolini and Hitler were leftists, anything goes — words can be re-defined to suit the need of the moment.
I fear that rather than go the way of the dinosaurs into extinction, the far right will go the way of the smallpox virus into extinction — killing a lot of people until they finally force us to get rid of them in self-defense.
Mark, you’re dead on. Under a GOP administration, they would throw these teabaggers under the bus, deprive them of their rights, and use them as an excuser to deprive the rest of us as well. This is another reason I keep saying that, as bad as Democrats smell, the GOP must be kept from power.
Monique, I see no chance for it without the extinction of the Republican party, at least in it’s current form. Then we might have a chance to drain the Democratic swamp.
Infidel, I fear that you are correct. Nevertheless, I shall continue this quest until they nail the lid on.
They will try to get elected first, they will make a push in this years mid-terms, if unsuccessful, we might see some broader anger from them. At least they will be in the open and we will know who they are. There are some shadowy figures out there right now.
Of course, Holte. The government will not fall to a violent revolution by wing nuts. Since that is not their plan to gain power, the only possible rationale they could have for inspiring the violence now is to present themselves as the needed saviors from that violence at some future time.
This change in the number of hate groups is not surprising, all because a black man is in charge. The numbers themselves though are surprising – and numbers don’t lie. How SPLC can track this many hate groups is beyond me – this must be a full time job for many people.
I have a feeling that TWM is correct (careful Oso, he may become my new bestest friend on here!) – sad but oh so very true.
This stuff has been going on all year. Remember that report, commissioned by Bush and that was released earlier this year, about right wing extremists and the potential for violence? Oh, the republicans CROWED about how unfair it all was, blabbity blabbity. Several incidents throughout 2009 showed just how timely that report really was: the DC Holocaust Museum shooter, the guy in…where, Pittsburgh? who laid in wait and ambushed 3 cops and had expressed “fear of socialism” lunacy. How about the guy who was found strung on a tree in East Kentucky with FED scrawled across his chest and the local mounties called it accidental death by asphyxiation? This year, we in VA saw our Appomattox shooter who killed 11 people, including kids. Oh, how timely that report really was, and no apology or retraction should EVER have been issued for it.
Conservatism is Terrorism. The Right has been fomenting hatred for Government and is hoping small incidents like this will sow a level of political turbulence which they can ride into electoral victories. Conservatism have embraced Terrorism, use of violence to effect political change. Conservatism is Terrorism.
Lisa, I don’t know either. I would not want that job!
Bee, I remember it well. I wrote an article about the GOP hypocrisy at the time. The census worker in Kentucky turned out to be a suicide. I publicly apologized for the article I wrote on that one. Was there ever any proof that your Appomattox shooter was politically motivated?
Gene, that sums it up quite well.