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.