Holocaust Museum Attacker von Brunn Closely Linked to Neo-Nazi Leaders

The dark legacy of the Third Reich cast a violent shadow in the nation's capital this afternoon.

At about 12:50pm EST James Wenneker von Brunn (click to see a picture) an 89 year-old man from the Eastern Shore of Maryland walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC (pictured at left) produced a rifle and proceeded to open fire on two museum guards before he himself was shot and wounded.

There is no question that von Brunn has numerous ties to known white supremacists in the US according to the Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch blog.

SPLC reports von Brunn was active in the Holocaust denial movement and was the author of an anti-Semitic/racist book entitled "Kill the Best Gentiles" published in 1999.

He has interesting web of connections to the American neo-Nazi movement. Von Brunn was also close with well-known white supremacist Willis Carto, one of the architects and biggest supporters of the modern American Holocaust denial media movement.

The SPLC reports that von Brunn was once employed by Carto's Noontide press which published various Holocaust denial books. Carto recruited William Luther Pierce, the author of the fictional account of a futuristic race war called "The Turner Diaries" - the book which helped inspire Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City.

Listen to an excerpt of a 2007 radio interview with Willis Carto - ironically, he is being interviewed by white supremacist radio talk show host Michael Collins Piper in Washington DC.

With Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Tyrone Johns succumbing to his wounds we can only hope the mainstream press devotes more analysis of the neo-Nazi movement in the US. If there's any place where we assume we'd be safe from violent extremists it's at a Federal museum devoted to millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust.

Right Wing Political Gains in Europe: A Signal of Hate or Economics?

Downturns in the economy are traditionally boom-times for extremist hate organizations nowhere is that demonstrated more clearly than in Western Europe.

The recent election of British National Party leader Nick Griffin (pictured at left) to the European Parliament is just the latest sign of the political pendulum in Europe swinging to the right, ushering facists, neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists into political office as representatives of a European Union population of over 491 million people.

We need not look far for proof. In the US, membership in the Ku Klux Klan soared to an all-time high in the late 1920's before the onset of the Great Depression - just as the National Socialist Party was setting the stage for the Nazis rise to power in Germany.

Hate groups boost their numbers and garner sympathy to their cause by playing on the fears and insecurities that arise when unemployment is high, wages are low and costs soar.

Unfortunately for immigrants, minorities and members of some religious groups, extremists always have some marginalized group of people to blame for what's wrong with the world; but the cause isn't always just hatred.

The UK, the Labour party in particular, are still reeling from a slew of cabinet-level resignations in the wake of a widespread campaign finance scandal that has rocked Prime Minister Gordon Brown's political support.

The eroded support for Brown's Labour Party and dissatisfaction with the handling of the economic crisis were some of the factors that paved the way for Griffin to become the EU Parliament representative from England's North West region and fellow BNP politician Andrew Brons to represent Yorkshire and Humber.

What's the whites-only BNP about?

According to Wikipedia the BNP constitution describes their mission as being "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948"

The UK Guardian reports that Nick Griffin was chased from a BNP press conference today after protesters calling him a Nazi pelted him with eggs before he fled the scene.

Europeans are growing alarmed at an increasing faction of right wing political parties, each of which opposes immigration to the point of violence and openly embrace neo-Nazi ideology. But it's not just in the UK.

Who's who in Europe?

The Front National, or FN in France was founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie LePen. In addition to Holocaust denial, the party supports a range of anti-immigration platforms and neo-facist politics.

In Germany the NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) like the FN, has minimal representation in the German version of the state representative body. NDP leader Udo Voigt campaigns for white supremacy, "ethnic pride" and the ouster of "non-Germans" among other things. This rugged goose-stepper also predictably idolizes numerous figures from the Third Reich including Rudolph Hess and Adolph Hitler.

According to Wikipedia in 2008 in a document entitled "Africa Conquers the White House" the NDP claimed the election of President Barack Obama was the result of an "American alliance of Jews and Negroes."

It also suggested the wide-spread support for Obama within Germany was the result of an "African tropical disease."

In Italy, Forza Nuova is echoing the rings of Mussolini's facist state with calls for violence against non-Italian immigrants, laws against inter-racial sex and draconian nationalistic calls for ethnic and racial supremacy.

This trend warrants more mainstream media attention in the US than I've seen or read lately, even with America involved in two wars, a growing diplomatic problem in North Korea and global efforts to turn the tide of the economic crisis.

Nick Griffin speaks at a rally with ex-Klan leader David Duke.

Obama's Efforts to Recast America in the Eyes of the Muslim World Move Forward

Addressing tensions between the US and the Muslim world have been a clear priority for the Obama administration since day one, but the Cairo Speech signals a major step forward and underscores the seriousness of this administration to heal rifts with the the Muslim world.

In the latest step towards addressing the mistrust, fear and anger that characterize US relations with many in the Muslim world, the signaled a desire to overhaul American perceptions of Islam and challenged Muslim's to do the same.

The speech, delivered at Cairo University on June 4th, has prompted a mixed global reaction from different sides of the media representing those in both the Western and Muslim worlds the speech was clearly directed to.

The pro-Israel HonestReporting.com Website, which monitors and offers analysis on media coverage of Israel, was generally supportive of Obama's calls in the speech to confront the Holocaust denial rheoric that is increasingly found in the Mid-East.

But they side-stepped Obama's criticism of the Israeli settlement expansion policies in disputed areas of West Bank and other parts of Israel.

According to the BBC.com Republican House Minority leader John Boehner suggested in an interview that the speech portrayed the United States as weak based on Iran's support of Hamas and Obama's willingness to sit down and negotiate directly with Iranian political leaders.

Some conservative bloggers in the US, perhaps frustrated over Obama's broad high-profile media appeal, complained that the Cairo Speech lacked real substance and echoed the similar-sounding and usually factually abstract complaint that the speech made America seem "weak" in the eyes of the world.

Did it? Aren't compassion and understanding essential components for respect and therefore strength?

The conventional wisdom and spin on the speech shared on the al Jazeera Website suggests that millions of Muslims who watched the speech closely felt otherwise.

al Jazeera's Muqtedar Kahn described the speech as "truly transformative in intent and affect" and opined that "Never has an American President spoken with such eloquence, compassion, understanding and empathy to the Muslim World. There is no doubt that Obama gets the Muslim World."

That's a big philosophical shift for many Americans used to the Bush administration's rigid, one-dimensional post-911 casting of millions of Muslims as willing supporters of the 'Axis of Evil' rather than as individual citizens from different nations with a wide range of views on America.

For decades many Muslims have viewed America from the standpoint of a nation that destabilized a democratically-elected government in Iran to help install the Shah of Iran into power.

Many Americans from all walks of life have tended to view Islam from the perspective of angry Iranians holding American hostages captive in Tehran in 1979 and the terrorist attacks on US citizens that culminated with 911.

Obama's Cairo speech seems to lay out a willingness to engage in dialog that identifies common ground and a desire to move past thinking rooted in stereotypes and prejudice rather than truth and understanding.

Finding ways to push cultural respect and understanding forward is a sign of strength, living in fear of that is a sign of weakness.

Lee Tucker Deemed Competent to Stand Trial in Beating of Rabbi Moskowitz

As if the media doesn't already have a slanted-enough view of African-American/Jewish relations...

A judge has deemed a 38 year-old African-American man from Lakewood, New Jersey named Lee Tucker (pictured left) competent to stand trial on attempted murder charges after allegedly using a baseball bat to severely beat Rabbi Mordechai Moskowitz in October, 2007.

The then 53 year old Rabbi, a third grade teacher, was walking to synagogue to pray.

The attack has unsettled many in the Jewish e-media communities, including the Yeshiva World.com Website where I go to try and get a pulse on the orthodox community here in New York.

I blog about a lot of strange and sometimes senseless violent hate attacks here. But I must admit, this one just leaves me confused and saddened. Wondering, why?

One of the reasons I began this blog was to try and find some kind of creative outlet to explore the obstacles to racial and cultural tolerance that have so often confounded me during the course of my life.

Growing up as an African-American in a predominantly white suburban enclave was, in some ways, culturally isolating. But it also taught me respect of and appreciation for people of many races and backgrounds.

On the street I lived on were families from Bangladesh, Australia and there were white families who were devout Catholics or Protestants and some who were quietly non-denominational. Our next door neighbors were Jewish and our families were close.

My mother baked bread for them on Jewish holidays, when they went on vacation they gave me their house key to water their plants. Lee Tucker's actions make absolutely no sense to me.

It feels similar to how I felt trying to wrap my brain around the violence of the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn, New York in 1991, partly because of the Dinkins Administration allowing the conflict to rage for three days, but also because it was such a stark contrast to the way I'd grown up.

Perhaps I was just a sheltered suburban child. Or maybe, there were thousands of people in the Crown Heights community on all sides of the issue who were similarly sheltered inside hatred and fear and ignorance. It's a matter of perspective.

But then there are the Lee Tuckers. What can you make of beating anyone with a bat, let alone a religious leader and teacher? Was Tucker trying to get his wallet, or just pissed off? Was he insane? Look at his photo above, he looks scared, but not crazy to me.

If Tucker is guilty I'm not sure it can be passed off simply as schizophrenia or insanity as the defense lawyers have tried to suggest.

Perhaps there are times when we have to just close our eyes and try really hard to remained focused on a vision of a world where unity, tolerance and respect are the norm rather than mindless brutality and violence fueled by hate.

Guys like Lee Tucker are branded by the hate and resentment, perhaps it's better if his lawyers just stop trying to cop insanity pleas for him so he can go to jail and think about the fact that he attacked a 53 year-old Rabbi and 3rd grade teacher with a bat when he was on the way to pray.

Lee Tucker is most definitely NOT Baracking, but he's not a reflection of evolved perspective. He's content to be sheltered by hate.