The shooter at the Sikh temple
The first thing to say is that this was an abominable act.
Information on the shooter is coming in slowly, but the best we can tell so far is that he was a white supremacist who had been discharged less than honorably from the Army in 1998.
I note that authorities were awfully quick to label this domestic terrorism, compared to how slow they often are for shooters connected with Islam, such as the Fort Hood shooter. And yet I agree that this has all the marks of domestic terrorism, or at the very least of a hate crime.
If the shooter turns out to have been a white supremacist, no doubt those on the left will accuse the right of inspiring him. However, white supremacists are outside mainstream politics on either side, a group onto themselves motivated by their own racist thinking that transcends the usual categories of left or right. This is a separate issue from the historic one concerning whether the Nazi Party was on the left or on the right; neo-Nazis don’t necessarily sign into, or care about, Hitler’s (or other fascists’) economic policies.
I have seen neo nazis explicitly support nationalist socialist economic ideas in at least one tv show that covered them.
It’s such a perverse instinct in the Left- they immediately hope every mass killer was a Righty or inspired by the Right. It reaffirms their faith in themselves as inherently righteous people and the notion that the Right is inherently hateful.
The second instinct is to turn it into a conversation on gun control. They’re like clockwork. “If only there were no guns…” Well, yes. If only. If only men were angels, we would need no government.
What Holmes said, with this addition:
No one seems to remember that some of the worst massacres haven’t involved guns at all. Dynamite and access to a school made for the worst school massacre in American history. Knives, explosives, and old-fashioned poisoning are contenders.
I will guess that this is neither domestic terrorism nor related to racial supremacy. It is more likely the outcome of failed individual interaction, which was then progressed to encompass a larger group which incidentally shared certain features. Most likely this is a simple crime with an elevated status due to the sheer number of individuals involved.
In any case, the American right are revolutionaries, not petty criminals or anarchists.
I object viscerally to the concept of ‘hate crime.’ Murder is murder, and when killer and victim know one another, hate is always involved.
It is not worse, IMHO, to murder a gay than a straight, or a black than a white.
Terrorism has public fear as an objective, coupled with hate of the non-personal Other. This event was not terrorism.
Don Carlos
Somebody made the point that there’s a way to see if this was terrorism.
The guy was not shouting “Allahu akbar”. That makes it’s terrorism.