What a Killer Was Watching

Did a steady diet of right-wing radio and Glenn Beck influence Richard Poplawski, the man who allegedly murdered three Pittsburgh cops? Max Blumenthal reports.

Shorter: Yes.

On April 6, two days after the 22-year-old Richard Poplawski allegedly murdered three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a radio host named Alex Jones settled in before a microphone in his studio in Austin, Texas to do some damage control. “The mainstream media has certainly enjoyed tying me into this story,” Jones complained. “They’re attacking me and saying I’m delusional and there’s no New World Order… The Second Amendment, what the country’s founded on—it’s all my fault!”

Poplawski was a neo-Nazi wannabe who railed against blacks, Jews, “Zionists,” and gun control. And like many members of the far-right fringe, he allegedly visited Jones’ Web sites and posted alarming reports by Jones’ writers on the white supremacist message board, Stormfront. (Poplawski’s posts are here (no link from me - G), authored under the handle, “Braced For Fate.”) While Alex Jones generally avoids overt racism, he has found an eager audience on Stormfront by conjuring dark visions of an impending New World Order, claiming FEMA is secretly building a national concentration camp network, and announcing that President Barack Obama has planned mass gun seizures on his way to establishing a leftist dictatorship. “Remember, the first step in establishing a dictatorship is to disarm the citizens,” warned a March 13 commentary on Jones’ website, Prison Planet.

But hysterical warnings of government gun grabs and a socialist takeover of the U.S. are no longer the sole proprietary interest of fringe players like Jones. In the Obama era, Jones’ conspiracy theories have graduated to primetime on Fox News. And radicals like Poplawski are tuning in. [...]

'Radicals' seems to be shorthand for 'unhinged right-wing loonies with guns who just need a little push'. And the 'tard gasbags are there to give it to 'em.

...Jones interrupted a live broadcast by Fox News host Geraldo Rivera (Rivera was reporting at the time on “the secret world of restroom gay sex”)...

I'm glad Geraldo has found his niche...

David Neiwert, a veteran reporter on right-wing militia movements and author of the forthcoming book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, explained that by co-opting conspiratorial rhetoric from the farthest shores of the right, mainstream conservative talkers can inflame the passions of paranoiacs like Poplawski to a dangerous degree. “It’s always been a problem when major league demagogues start promulgating false information for political gain,” Neiwert told me. “What it does is unhinge fringe players from reality and dislodges them even further. When someone like Poplawski hears Glenn Beck touting One World Government and they’re gonna take your gun theories, they believe then that it must be true. And that’s when they really become crazy.”

So where was all this talk of 're-education camps' and 'staging crises to impose martial law' and other stuff like that during the Bush years?

Why, on lefty blogs like this one, of course.

Here's the difference:

If you go back through the 12,000+ posts of the Brain, no links, heh, you will find a lot of stuff on these subjects, but other than some 'pitchforks and scythes' type metaphorical calls to action, you will not find one instance of where we actually called for armed insurrection against Bush, or with an eye towards launching the unhinged to violence against wingnuts-at-large. We called for Bush's and others' deaths many times, but only after due process of law. I think me 'n Fixer challenged everybody on the right to fistfights many times. There weren't any takers.

Of course there are fringe lefty loonies too, like PETA and Earth First, but I haven't heard of a Liberal going 'round the bend and shooting up right-wingers on the advice of lefty gasbags. We did advise folks to keep their weapons clean and their powder dry to protect themselves.

The far-right gasbags have kicked it up a notch into very dangerous territory. Freedom of speech does not permit shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater unless it's on fire and what they're doing is exactly that. People are already being killed by the fringe moron 'tards who believe the lies they tell.

The Repugs are out on their ass, and the shoe's on the other foot now. They're whiny-ass sore losers and will do anything, and I mean anything, to try and regain power by means outside the electoral process which threw their flunkies out, including inciting and fomenting deadly violence against those who disagree with their crap. They will disavow it and say they're not to blame for what their misguided and crazy followers do, but they are.

Someone, somehow, has to shut these bastards up before they burn this country down and get more people killed. In the meantime, keep your weapons clean and your powder dry like never before. Truth and reason are powerful things, but they ain't shit in a gunfight.

Update:

Grandpa Eddie's got a much better post on this than I could ever write.