Murderer Loughner’s Rightist ideology

This is a Bill Maher video from the USA about the background of the Tucson massacre.

By Patrick Martin in the USA:

More evidence of right-wing links to Tucson attack

13 January 2011

While right-wing pundits and politicians continue to claim that it is illegitimate to hold them morally or politically responsible for the massacre carried out in Tucson, Arizona last Saturday, more evidence has emerged that the gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, drew inspiration from the political language and invective of the ultra-right.

The Los Angeles Times published a detailed summary of the ideological roots of the attack, in which Loughner killed six people, including a federal judge, and severely wounded Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The analysis was headlined, “Loughner’s Ramblings Appear Rooted in Far Right.”

It noted that Loughner’s Internet postings included “a number of themes drawn from the right-wing patriot and militia movements.” Citing several groups that monitor the radical right, the Times noted, “several oft-repeated phrases and concepts—his fixation on grammar conspiracies, currency and the ‘second United States Constitution’—seem derived from concepts explored with regularity among elements of the far right.”

Loughner asserted, for example, that he would not “pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver,” which dovetails with similar comments by anti-abortion gunman John C. Salvi III, who murdered two women in 1994 at an abortion clinic in Massachusetts.

The ultra-right spokesman most famously obsessed with gold and silver is Glenn Beck, the top-rated Fox News ranter. Beck regularly suggests that he or his co-thinkers are preparing to meet this or that supposed left-wing assault with armed force, declaring last fall, for instance, that if the federal government sought to compel him to have his children vaccinated against the flu, he would invite them to “meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.”

One of the experts interviewed by the Times is Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors racist and neo-Nazi groups.

Tucson Tea Party founder blames Giffords for getting shot: here.

Palin and the rest of the US right thrive on pushing a hate-fuelled discourse, writes Sam Webb: here.

Discussing media narratives in wake of Giffords shooting: Peter Hart: False Equivalencies & Right-Wing Buzzwords: here.

Republican Congressman drafting bill to let members carry guns inside Capitol: here.