Via Comrade Stuck, here’s some craziness from Debbie Schlussel:
Mr. Von Brunn has been on this planet for 89 years, and he didn’t feel comfortable shooting up a Holocaust museum until now–this new era of “tolerance,” in which we must tolerate the most extremist Muslim behaviors and sentiments. It’s, in general, not 89-year-old White guys telling people at churches worldwide and in religious schools that the Jews are the devil incarnate, a filthy tribe, the sons of pigs and monkeys, subhuman, etc.
No, it’s guys with names like Mohammed and Ahmed on our own American streets who make Mr. Von Brunn far more at ease in 2009 than he was even in 1999 to attack places associated with the Jews. They created the comfort zone for James W. Brunn to engage in today’s shooting.
The rash of anti-Semitic attacks in America, with a frequency unheard of in previous contemporary U.S. history–on synagogues all over the country, a Jewish community center in Seattle, and now this Holocaust museum–have all happened since 9/11 and our new tolerance for Islam and all of its intolerant extremism. This is no coincidence. It is a correlation.
I hate to bring Hitler into this, though, as T Paine points out, it’s hard to avoid bringing up Hitler when you’re talking about Nazis, but I have to wonder, does Schlussel believe it was the presence of Islam in Germany that created the comfort zone for Hitler to begin perpetrating the Holocaust? After all, he had been on the planet for over 40 years before he felt comfortable doing it. And what about the pogroms that went on in Europe for hundreds of years? Were they also caused by tolerance for Islam?
whinger
Welp, if there’s a Hell, she’s gonna burn there.
Sometimes I wonder if the thought of that ever keeps these people up at night.
demkat620
That woman walks the streets with her underwear on the outside. Don’t tell me she doesn’t. I’ll never believe it.
What kind of twisted mind makes these connections?
Jon H
No, it’s guys with names like Mohammed and Ahmed on our own American streets who make Mr. Von Brunn far more at ease in 2009 than he was even in 1999 to attack places associated with the Jews.
Actually, Brunn took a sawed-off shotgun to the Fed in 1981 and tried to do a ‘citizens’ arrest’ of the board of governors. Since he believes the Fed is controlled by the Jews, I think that counts as his first strike against them.
So, unsurprisingly, Schlussel is ignorant and wrong.
Comrade Stuck
The thing that’s lost on these wingers, is that the problem Muslims have with Jews has nothing to do with anti-semitism, many muslims being semites themselves, they are at each others throats mostly over land, an ancient border dispute as such, and muslims could care less that Jews “control” wealth, or media, or whatever the Brunn nuts of the world drum up.
And thanks for the h/t.
Rosali
He was already railing against the Jews in 1981 when he went to the Fed with firearms and started shooting.
Breezeblock
What’s 2 levels up from “craziness”? Maybe “Batshit Insane”? Or “Fucking Froot Loops For Fucking Brains”?
me
The connection is simple. The Moors had much lasting influence in Spain, then Hitler was good friends with Franco.
John Cole
Were there this many crazy people before the internet, or has providing them with an opportunity to enter into a feedback loop where they read each other and nothing else had the effect of multiplying the crazy? And I’m serious. Before, maybe there were people who could be this batshit insane, but they didn’t have anyone to agree with them and feed their insanity.
Also, if I remember correctly, she was featured at Sadly, No! going insane about ice cream cones or something a while back.
Bubblegum Tate
Did we ever come up with a name for wingnut facts? You know, those things that aren’t facts but wingnuts insist are facts and therefore be treated as such?
TenguPhule
Yes.
DougJ
There were probably more.
demkat620
@John Cole: I don’t know, but they are starting to really scare me.
kay
@Rosali:
Her whole elaborate theory just falls apart, doesn’t it?
That pesky 1981 incident. Well prior to 9/11. He did 6 and a half years in prison, right?
Just ignore that, okay?
Anne Laurie
No, Hitler and his enablers were driven insane by Teh Geighs and the Feminists, aka “Weimar decadence“. As Debbie’s readers already “know”, Muslims, kweers, feminazis and atheists/scientists are the Four Horsepersons of the Conserva-pokalypse, interchangeable monsters whose sole purpose is to destroy all that is Good and Decent.
beltane
This isn’t even remotely funny anymore. One of these nuts could systematically gun down every single member of MoveOn.org and people like Ms. Schlussel would blame the liberals because their mere existence would be considered a provocation. Could there be any act of right-wing violence that Fox News or the rest of wingnuttia would actually blame on, you know, the right-wing?
ET
Ignorant wench.
This guy has been stewing for decades. But I am not surprised someone on the right has taken this route. Decry this as an evil act but add a “but” or blame someone else. Patently obvious and incredibly lame attempt to blame others for hate radio/TV tolerance of their near insessant hate-fest. I don’t know the inner workings of her mind but shit like this does make me wonder if her thoughts aren’t all that different than his.
TenguPhule
At this point, what measures can be taken against them?
Blue Raven
Second Continental Congress records indicate an argument against independence included claims it’d lead to the Indians and “Negroes” uprising and destroying their way of life.
Or to go farther back in time, Carthago delenda est.
QED.
geg6
That is such a boatload of complete and utter crap topped by a complete failure to demonstrate any recognizable logic…just when I think I’ve seen peak stupid, someone comes along and doubles down.
TenguPhule
Protocols of Zion.
I rest my case.
Rosali
I think they weren’t as rabid before the internet. In just one example, they seemed to accept the criminal investigation and prosecution of the 1993 WTC bombers.
And those who suggest that law and order is the exclusive province of the GOP should look back on the first WTC prosecutions and admire the successful prosecutions and convictions.
InflatableCommenter
More or less on topique, but ….
why the hell is this fool not in jail?
When did we start permitting this kind of thing?
More than 50 years ago, I read in a book about the Secret Service that it was unlawful to make threats against the president. Is that still true?
blogenfreude
Inching closer to Godwin’s law violation:
Charon
@John Cole:
Are you regretting using up that “Dumbest Thing Said on the Internet in 2009” title yet?
Comrade Stuck
@TenguPhule:
Just curious. and what “case” would that be?
Shygetz
And will someone please parse the phrase “previous contemporary U.S. history” for me? Beyond the obvious redundancy of “previous history”, does “previous contemporary U.S. history” exclude ancient times like 1994?
gbear
Dies ist von zentraler Bedeutung für meine.
(from google translate. forgive me)
Marc
I’ve seen some loony stuff from the Costco Coulter, but this takes the cake.
I like the use of those convenient strawmen — “Mohammed and Ahmed on our own American streets” — who are fomenting so much anti-semitism. If they’re lurking on every corner, you think she might be able to provide a concrete example or two.
You know, one that’s not drawn from her fevered imagination.
Anne Laurie
One of the best things about the Internet, as far as I’m concerned, is that the rest of us can see the High Craziness enshrined in all its glory, archived for posterity. For the four-fifths of the voting public who will forever remain Low Information Voters, I think it’s a net positive to be able to say, “No, I’m not just saying that because I’m an urban progressive who hates the Heartland(tm), there really ARE dangerous crazy people making these statements right out in public.” Of course the Truly Committed still insist that von Brunn, or Debbie Schussel, are ‘tools of TPTB’ planted to distract the innocent, but most people most of the time don’t want to be associated with this level of paranoia, and it’s easier to link to a website than to carry around a stack of badly-mimeo’d pamphlets to demonstrate what the Fringe Haters say amongst themselves.
frogspawn
1) Yes
2) Yes
geg6
Go and find some clips of Lindbergh’s America First rallies pre-American entry into WWII. Same as it ever was.
demkat620
@Rosali: I don’t know. Michael Smerconish, you know the “reasonable conservative” was a huge, HUGE, promoter of Jayna Davis.
They were crazy before, but 9/11 let Cujo of the leash. I think the internet is just a more efficient megaphone.
Charon
@InflatableCommenter:
As dangerous as public calls for God to smite our enemies are, as long as there are no exhortations to direct action by congregants, it falls well within the realm of protected speech.
gex
@Bubblegum Tate: fucts? It’s a fucked up “fact”.
NutellaonToast
I grew yo up in a Jewish town and my friend used to joke “four thousand years of this shit and WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!”
Jews have been getting the shaft since fucking Egypt, man. I guess those Babylonians were just following the words of Mohamed 3000 years before he was born.
MikeJ
Crazy time back then. Dems were the party of unreconstructed Dixie, Republicans were the party of antisemitism.
http://www.archive.org/details/AmericaAndEuropeanWarsdeliveredSeptember151939
bvac
What a slutty flight attendant she is.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
The Muslims should just give up and self-intern themselves, if only to get away from people like Debbie Schlussel. When the GSAVE is finally over, perhaps then Muslims can come out.
@John Cole:
Unfortunately, that’s the downside of the Internet. The incredibly low barrier to entry with regards to accessing and posting does allow for illogical, irrational, and silly arguments to be made and amplified. Most of the thoughts that you see on the web really are more of the stream of consciousness variety, i.e. things that people should probably keep to themselves, or at the very least, dwell on a little before telling it to the world. And no, I’m not talking about censorship here. I just mean that people really need to think through their ideas carefully, research their arguments, etc before making any assertions. As an analogy, think of conversations. Even in conversations, where the standards for judging thoughts can be a little lax since the exchanges happen in real-time, you STILL don’t say every damn thing that comes to your mind. Unless you really want to look foolish, which isn’t really a problem for people like Schlussel since they’re so completely oblivious.
Anne Laurie
Schussel and von Brunn agree that a certain percentage of their fellow citizens should be, at the very least, barred from public discourse. This gives them plenty of common grievances to share and joint causes to uphold. It’s only after the brown people, non-Xtians, atheists, demon-rats & other Scary Not-Patriots have been eliminated that Debbie and Jim realize they each consider the other part of the “enemy alien within” demographic.
mutt
They seem to be starting to swarm…..the nihilist in me wants me to crank up a batch of popcorn, grab a 6 pack, & get a seat somewhere to watch the next lunatic “patriot” blow up some bystanders, gun down some guy mindin his own business, or whatever.
This rot on the right, this endless sniveling & fear, really starts to wind them up at some point. Between Obamas skin color & the utter exposure of their Dear Leaders as murderous, lying, insanely incompetant frauds, whats a Wingnut to do? It aint THEIR fault- no,no,no….aint a drop of self doubt in the creeps…WAH! Its “THEM ” Wah wah friggin wah.
For two fisted he-men they sure are wimps.
like kids shootin up schools, one example sets off others- a mob mentality, made possible by mass communications.
And lest you think Im some sorta college sniveral, Im a combat vet & serious Bill of Rights defender. ALL of them.
And Im tellin ya: there are LEGIONS of these punks….
Polish the Guillotines
Li’l Debbie’s only meaningful contribution to this life is her amusing obsession with Darryl Issa.
Knowing this little piranha is nipping at his toes gives me a tiny amount of pleasure.
I would say she’s bat-shit insane — but bat shit has noble and practical uses.
Krista
No.
SATSQ, Volume MXMVIII
They’re the victims, the oppressed, the minority in the U.S., doncha know? If they bite back, well, what do you expect after all of the awful persecution that they have had to suffer at the hands of the godless liberals? It’s all OUR fault for making those poor dears suffer so.
Skepticat
Whackts?
flounder
Did Debbie just call Pat Buchanan a dirty Muslim?
mr. whipple
I can’t even understand wtf she’s trying to say.
gbear
Shepard Smith is cracking under the weight of reality.
Comrade Stuck
@mr. whipple:
I think she was trying to pass a jackass through the eye of a needle, or something.
Polish the Guillotines
Wingnuggets?
Xanthippas
Whoa guys, Schlussel is “Sadly, No!” territory. She’s way too crazy for you guys to honor with a blog post.
JL
@bvac: The problem that I had with the Letterman comment had more to do with the derogatory remark he made about flight attendants.
Brian J
There’s so much that’s wrong with what that woman wrote, it’s hard to know where to begin. She makes not even the slightest bit of sense.
First and perhaps foremost, has the past decade been the worst for anti-Semitic attacks? That’s the sort of claim that needs to be backed up with some pretty serious statistical evidence. Maybe she’s got it, but I’m not going to hold my breath. But generally speaking, nobody in the mainstream of American politics–and almost certainly nobody on the fringes, either–is proposing “tolerance” for violence directed at this country or anything else that you might lump in with “intolerant extremism.” Such a claim is a straw man of the highest order. Also, are most, if any, of the surge in anti-Semitic incidents actually caused by Islamic extremists? It’s a small sample, to be sure, but it’s always the white guys she says aren’t really the problem that always seem to pull the trigger.
Tsulagi
Guess I’m not aware of all Internet traditions; I’d never heard of Schlussel before. But I am in awe now. Her post was multi-dimensional retardation at a level worthy of two wetsuits and a dildo if not more.
Could there be any doubt?
Not only in Germany, but soon thereafter those sneaky bastards looking to create a Jew-free Caliphate turned their attention to the growing USSR. Not only creating the comfort zone that enabled Stalin to send a few million Jews to gulags, but also many more millions of good Christians. Win/win for the Caliphaters. Their behind-the-scenes treachery is boundless.
Marc
Seriously, go search Sadly No! for her and her greatest misses. It won’t disappoint.
Anne Laurie
Mutt, don’t forget the economy. A lot of people who were content just to mutter about negroes, jews, commanusts an’ uppity wimmen when “we” could all afford 4×4’s and McMansions, or at least get usurious credit to run the ’89 clunker and keep up payments on the double-wide, are now unemployed and near-homeless and desperate, not just broke but broken. In the best American masculinist tradition, when they perceive themselves as hopelessly surrounded by the forces of evil, they’d rather pull an Alamo and take some of Teh Enemy with them as they go out “in a blaze of glory”.
I assume that von Brunn had some variation of “suicide by cop” aka “becoming a martyr patriot” in mind today, because going into a museum near the White House carrying a gun is otherwise difficult to explain.
Joshua Norton
Tolerance is something Debbie Schlussel and her fear-mongering ilk should be grateful for on a daily basis. If it wasn’t for tolerance, they’d all have been frogmarched at bayonet-point onto a waiting ship bound for what ever country would take them.
Not all Republicans are stupid people, but it appears that all stupid people are Republican.
Notorious P.A.T.
So. . . promoting tolerance is what led a crackpot to shoot people at the Holocaust Museum. Makes perfect sense.
Notorious P.A.T.
“Did we ever come up with a name for wingnut facts? You know, those things that aren’t facts but wingnuts insist are facts and therefore be treated as such?”
“Truthiness” is it, I think.
Ash Can
@beltane:
Amen. Some pathetic creature is bouncing off the walls in the previous thread, people are still throwing beer bottles and bar stools around in that other Sarah Palin thread, and in the real world people are dying from the right-wing violence that the DHS, as dysfunctional as it was under W, honestly tried to warn us about.
And I’m deliberately trying not to even think about the right-wingers in the media who are doing so much to fuck up everything in the entire fucking world.
I’m just not in the mood for any more of this shit today. I’m going to turn the computer over to my son and his Lego games for the evening, and go fix myself a martini. Good night and good luck.
Notorious P.A.T.
“Were there this many crazy people before the internet?”
I don’t see any difference–at all–between what we’re seeing now and what happened when Bill Clinton was elected in ’92. I’ll say it again: somewhere in America a wingnut is looking at U-Haul catalogs and shopping for fertilizer sales.
Rosali
Clearly there was racism, anti-semitism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc., etc, before and there were groups that organized to propagate the hate. There were assassinations, lynchings, mob violence and all the rest.
I agree with Mutt @ 40 that there’s a mob mentality, made possible by mass communications that didn’t exist before.
John Hinkley Jr. tried to assassinate Reagan to impress Jodie Foster and everyone thought he was crazy. But I think that now there are hordes of people on the hate-filled rightwing websites who are whipping themselves into a frenzy with misdirected anger and who can’t wait to make headlines.
Notorious P.A.T.
Remember, Boss Limbaugh was whipping people into a common frenzy before the internet as we know it existed. And he’s just one example.
Sophomore
Debbie Schlussel: “This is no coincidence. It is a correlation.”
My stats professor and yours: “Correlation is not causation.”
What does Ms. Schlussel think her last sentence proves?
jcricket
i like “wingnoids” (like factoids) myself.
And this is a great moment to bring up the fact that this type of “lone wolf” has been specifically cultivated by extremist right-wing organizations for quite some time. They decided, after getting their asses handed to them by the Feds and Police a while back, that direct violence and planned actions weren’t the best idea. Instead they’d incite, enrage and otherwise encourage the “less stable” members of their ideological fringe group, but maintain “plausible deniability” themselves.
When Dave Neiwert writes about the consequences of “eliminationist rhetoric”, it’s guys like this whacko and Roeder that he’s discussing.
ItAintEazy
I thought Stephen Colbert used to called it “truthiness”: facts that aren’t necessarily true, but that we feel are true.
jcricket
Salem witch trials? Lynchings? Father Coughlin?
Seriously, I know it feels different, but the haters have been using the “mass media” of the day to spread their hate for a long time.
I like the Internet more, though, because the hatred doesn’t stand on its own. It can be countered, through the mockery displayed at places like our lovely BJ right here. In olden times people like Ed Whelan would be free to spout off without any direct refutation.
SimplyOn
Where is BOB when you need him…?
Emma Anne
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Agreed, on the Clinton era crazies. I think not many people around here were paying close attention back then. Video tapes accusing the president of drug running and serial killing. All the Vince Foster stuff. Talk radio with a new attack every week. Jack booted thugs who needed to be shot in the head.
It was insane for eight years. And then people who weren’t paying much attention would tell me they were tired of the Clintons and all their scandals, and how much they upset the other side. Like it was the Clintons’ fault people told lies about them.
Nat
No, it is exactly seemingly normal white guys who think David Duke is some sort of intellectual, who deny the holocaust, and rant about the Jews. There are a lot of these guys around. Scratch a Ron Paul supporter or an Alex Jones listener and you are liable to find an anti-semite. The anger these guys tap is heavily fueled by anti-semitism.
Schlussel is a moron.
One more point. These guys are equally rabid about Jews on Wall St. This could have been Goldman Sachs.
NonyNony
@jcricket:
This is true for von Brunn, but I’m waiting for an investigation into Roeder before I commit to the “lone nut” theory as far as he’s concerned. There’s too much about the circumstances around what he did that smell of organized conspiracy right now. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that he had his own small support group backing him up. It could turn out that he’s a lone nut, but it could also turn out that he came from a whole tree of nuts that need to be shaken loose.
conumbdrum
And I’m sure that Von Brunn had, oh, dozens of Muslim pals with whom he sipped mint tea, bitching for hours on end about those lousy Jews.
I’m for turning the police loose on the nearest mosque in Von Brunn’s neighborhood… hell, the old geezer was probably storing his spare guns and gelignite there.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Shorter Debbie Slushforbrains: The Darkies Made Him Do It!
Which is why he took out a black guy.
Chup
I’m 48 years old. I learned how to read at the age of three. I read every damn thing that crosses my path.
I have never read anything this stupid in my life. From now on, anything that has her name anywhere near it will be ignored by me.
jcricket
@NonyNony: With Eric Rudolph he absolutely, 100% had an after-attack support network. They were giving him places to stay, food, etc.
This is why the FBI and Police need to be infiltrating the right-wing extremists groups and taking them down from the inside. A hell of a lot easier than penetrating the foreign or “islamist” terrorist groups (given that we have a lot of white cops and right-wingers tend to be whities).
And right-wingers have clearly shown themselves to be as much of a danger to America as the scary brown furr’iners.
Left Coast Tom
@John Cole:
Father Coughlin.
Pat Buchanan. Though he’s still with us now.
The internet is a medium. There were other media before.
Fox News strikes me as a television version of British newspapers, which have definite partisan viewpoints, unlike BBC news which has a professionalism U.S. television news can only dream of. In the past American newspapers did likewise…there are still newspapers with names that betray that past. So Fox News provides an echo chamber, there were other echo chambers in the past.
And sometimes those British papers publish “must read” articles with information unavailable in our papers. I can know this mostly because of the Internet…I’ve been to Britain a few times and read the papers, but I think their weaknesses are more immediately apparent while their strengths require time to appreciate.
Besides which…U.S. papers really screwed up recently in deciding to become Echo Chambers for Bush. I still can’t approach an _NYT_ article without wondering if they’re trying to snow me, and the _Washington_Post_ seems hopeless. Compared to the current situation, everyone at least knows where the British papers stand because they’re open about it.
jcricket
What’s funny is that as Jew, I have dozens of muslim pals, with whom I figure out how to use my vast wealth and their hatred of America to bring down our system of government and replace it with sharia.
No, seriously, we gripe about annoying Christians who don’t understand what it’s like to be a religious minority.
demimondian
I wonder if this was one of the other attacks that Tiller’s Killer was talking about? It would make sense, given his politics.
Xanthippas
Good God, can you even imagine Middle Ages internet? “Free Republic” would be called “Serf Central” and every other post would be about a witch or a Jew.
demimondian
@Xanthippas: Yeah, and imagine the acronyms. MCMMC, OK?
[That’d be “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”]
steve s
If I ever get rich, I’m going to have a guy who reads blogs for me and edits certain things out. Cause I just lost 5 IQ points reading Debbie Schlussel’s brain-damaged babble.
And I really don’t have enough IQ points to go around sacrificing them all willy-nilly.
Mentis Fugit
@demkat620: That woman walks the streets with her underwear on her head. Don’t tell me she doesn’t. I’ll never believe it.
Fixed that for you.
TenguPhule
It’s a bestseller in the Middle East.
Bill Arnold
Read the comment thread for Debbie’s linked post. People are drawing all sorts of links between Islam and Nazis and Hitler, including purported historical links. Perhaps some of them are spoofers having fun, but I suspect not.
TenguPhule
Redstate without spellcheck.
Charon
Along with all of the rest of the stupid in Schlussel’s post, I especially liked the last two sentences. As a language dork I really get a kick out of someone trying desperately and futilely to prove causation then suddenly switching to the notion of correlation at the last minute. It’s the dishonest cherry atop the stupid sundae.
steve s
The years of reading creationists caused a lot of the damage, but that kind of stuff irritates my PTSD.
Post-Tard Stress Disorder.
Mentis Fugit
Duplicate comment removed – a thousand apple-jollies
learn_from_history
not such a stretch, people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni
nabalzbbfr
Is it a coincidence that this shooting occurred so soon after Obama’s Cairo speech?
El Cid
Clearly it’s the fault of the Muslim-tolerating liberals that lifelong anti-Jewish anti-Communist paranoiacs feel like shooting people at a Holocaust museum.
What other conclusion could you possibly come to?
Fern
@nabalzbbfr:
Probably.
BDeevDad
As a Jew and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Fuck You Debbie.
Comrade Stuck
Suicide Spoofer’s?
nabalzbbfr
@me:
Here is further elucidation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d51poygEXYU
Jim-Bob
So it’s not the guy who shot up the Holocaust museum who’s to blame for, uh, shooting up the Holocaust museum, it’s George Bush, who was president on 9/11, and all but five months since.
Sounds good, Deb, let’s run with it.
Delia
There’s something else to factor in. The money wing of the GOP has been busy screwing over the rest of us for the past eight years, as we know. Now the loonybin wing of the party has been screwed just as much as anybody, but in the interest of minimizing cognitive dissonance they’re all unable to admit it. So they get poorer and poorer and look for somebody else to blame, and of course it’ll be all the usuals suspects: Jews, Muslims, Negroes, Commies, abortionists, Illuminati, etc., etc. (Yes, Rachel was quoting some writings of this freak who killed the guard at the museum, and the Illuminati are amongst his villains.) So they’ll never make an accurate analysis or one that could actually make their real-life situation better. They’ll just act so as to sink deeper and deeper into their psychosis.
Brachiator
@John Cole:
The craziness factor probably doesn’t vary by much. Before the Internet, more people kept it to themselves, from embarrassment, shame, fear of social ostracism. They would write their sick crap in a journal, or maybe publish a book with low circulation. They had to look hard, maybe travel a bit to find equally disturbed soulmates.
The InterTubes allows near-instant gratification and, best of all, an audience. It not only brings out the standard issue nutcases, but the equivalent of those loonies who have a need to expose themselves to someone on the bus. Instead of flashing their genitals, these sad clowns love to expose their odious excuses for thought and shout rhetorically, “Look at this!!”
And there are editors and publishers who have a fetish for “edgy” writing; and so they encourage intellectual nonentities like Debbie Schlussel, who think that they can thrill people who shake their head and mutter, “Just when I thought she scraped the bottom of the rhetorical barrel — more bottom.”
John S.
As a Jew and relative of Holocaust survivors, I second that.
No Likudnik
A Zionist Jew who would downplay Nazi anti-semitism to bash Muslims!? I’m shocked.
The whole shtick of equating criticism of Israel with Nazism pretty much tells you Jews aren’t really worried about Nazism anymore.
But they sure would like Israel to get the land Palestinians live on.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
Someone needs to tell Debbie that when she finishes scribbling a masterpiece like this, she shouldn’t jam the crayon back up her nose so forcefully. Clearly it’s causing irreparable brain damage. Not to mention taking us one gigantic leap closer to the Wingularity.
Charon
My grandparents, who were run out of Eastern Europe in the 1920s, will be shocked to learn this. All of those people participating in pogroms must have been wearing masks or something.
To join the refrain:
Rosali
Of course, there were crazies before and, of course, we were paying attention during the VRWC hit job done on the Clintons.
I’m referring to the Joe and Sally Wingnuts in towns and cities across the country who are low-info racist, xenophobic, anti-semites that are looking for scapegoats to blame for their problems. Before, they could listen to Rush on the radio and maybe work the phone lines to try to get through to make a 1-minute comment. Maybe some would join groups, but I believe most were passive consumers of the messages from the rightwing noise machine.
Now, we have the wingnuts who post on the hate-filled blogs and watch Fox news to validate their delusional conspiracies until they’re foaming at the mouth. These are people who are feeling aggrieved and empowered at the same time and who are ramping up the rhetoric to such a high pitch that even Shepard Smith says it’s frightening. This is the change in the craziness that I’m feeling more and more lately and I’m afraid that many more are going to try to act out in aggressive and dangerous ways.
Brachiator
@Rosali:
One local radio station here in Southern California was reading from a journal or notebook that this guy kept. He was railing about the Jews taking over New York as early as 1948. His screed only got worse from there.
I wonder if Debbie will take back any of the misinformed nonsense she has written, or will she fall back on the inane rationalization that a pundit’s opinion doesn’t need to be backed up with facts.
demimondian
May I join the malediction?
Listen, Debbie — go to any synagogue in America, and walk down the remembrance wall. I’m sure the members of the congregation will be glad to show it to you, and explain the lights and the names. See all those plaques which mention dying “in the Shoah”? Yeah — fuck you, Debbie.
Go to the Holocaust Museum itself, Debbie, and go through the exhibits about the precursors to the Final Solution. Fuck you, Debbie.
You are vile and below contempt. You are not fit to wipe shit and blood from a pig-butchers clogs at the end of a shift. Fuck you, Debbie.
NCReggie
One of the drawbacks of the infowebs is the anonymous post. The complete freedom to indulge in shit that ordinarily would catch you a beat down among the sane (or the down low racists who don’t want their cover blown) and society at large is what draws these assholes out. Like a moth to stupid.
demimondian
Here’s an interesting fact, Debbie — prior to 1948, do you know where the largest diaspora communities were? Of course, there were many Jews spread across Europe, and Jews had found sanctuary in the New World, but there was one very great center of scholarship, where the community had been allowed to dwell in peace for more than a thousand years.
Baghdad.
You know, that city in Iraq? Yeah, that one. Those “Jew-hating” Muslims took their *religious* dictate to tolerate the other people of the book very seriously, which is a fuck of a lot more than we Christians can claim. Well, without lying, which only troubles some of us — evidently, not you.
Fuck you, Debbie.
Doctor Science
Sorry, John, I actually think this is dumber than what Captain Ed said. You can’t knock him for trying, but Debbie there has been conducting her own personal wingularity for *years*.
gex
@Brachiator:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *gasp* ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *snort* ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Damn. You are funny.
mcc
I’m intrigued by Ms. Schlussel’s “Muslims cause right-wing extremists” theory but I don’t think it goes far enough. After all, if this deadly Muslim-engineered tolerance is the reason why Von Brunn was able to do what he did, then this must be true for some other bubble of the extreme right wing as well. Might it be that Muslims are, unbeknowst to us all along, the reason for the existence of Glenn Beck? Rush Limbaugh? Debbie Schlussel?
Rosali
How is this day different from any other day?
Brachiator
@demimondian:
A little something to blow away some of the fetid stench of Debbie Schlussel’s outrageous wingularity…..
Mark Blumenthal has written a piece about his late father-in-law that also encompasses a touching tribute to the staffers of the Holocaust Museum.
Elie
— It is starting to get downright painful…
There was a piece on Huffington Post about Krauthammer extolling a separate reality for the Fox news watchers —
I see all of the crazy talk, the denial of reality and confirmable facts…
I see the cold blooded murder of people for ideological reasons — executions by a national American Taliban..
WHAT is going on???
Are we never again to share a common reality with close to everyone in our nation? Are we now so split, that we cannot even define a common existence together?
It truly brings tears to my eyes.
This nation has undergone one Civil War. Do we need a bench clearing brawl or some other means to resolve this? Will we just break apart into two worlds, two nations with differing values and beliefs? Are we to throw away the shared American experience of diversity but shared goals and values?
Where are those so called leaders in the Republicans taking themselves and those whom they represent and are they aware of what they are doing? While there is no benefit to retaliate for those of us who are attacked and made into the focus for hatred and villification, how long can we take this without responding to take care of ourselves? What doctor wants to “pack heat” in prep for morning rounds, but must every doc who wants to provide the needed service of pregnancy termination be under extreme physical danger with no recourse? Must every Muslim, Latino, black leader experience the kind of vilification and insults in order to serve our country?
I think it is getting past time to hold certain media and formal and informal Republican leaders accountable and to have them answer some of these questions.
I am tired, I am angry and very much in pain.
Screamin' Demon
I believe the DSM-IV defines the highest level of crazy as “Cuckoo For Cocoa Puffs.”
Comrade Stuck
@Elie:
It’s going to get worse before it gets worserer.
North Dallas Thirty
The most interesting part of today has been watching the entire left go blind as to today’s statement by Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor and father figure.
Then again, this is nothing new in the Obama Party’s base and its supporters.
North Dallas Thirty
@Elie:
Sheesh, if you want to confront hate against Jews, start in your own party and base.
Brachiator
@Breezeblock:
There’s a Jack-in-the-Box fast food commercial that describes someone as being street rat crazy. This fits pretty well.
And to go all medieval on Debbie’s ass (in a scholarly way), Schlussel could easily be consigned to a special corner of the Eighth Circle of Dante’s Inferno.
There’s an area of the Eighth Circle called the Malebolge, for those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil. Sinners in Bolgia 2 are sunk in a pit of human excrement. They talked shit in life and so have to eat shit in Hell.
Elie
North Dallas and Comrade Stuck:
I hear you — not very reassuring but I hear both of you…
The work of staying centered, focused and right in the head is hard but we cannot afford to give in to the kind of rage that pops up in all of us from time to time.
Give us strength for the days ahead…
Hume's Ghost
I expect someone already noted this, but I ain’t reading 114 comments:
I guess this means that Henry Ford and his publication of the Protocols of Zion makes him a Muslim.
asiangrrlMN
Elie, I agree with you. This shit has got to stop, but it won’t. The craziness is the same, but now, it can spread more easily.
@Rosali: I completely agree with this. The people who got snookered by W. need to focus their rage and hatred on someone. Why not their usual suspects? The minorities.
Let me add a weary “fuck you” to the chorus against this vile, vile woman. In addition, let’s all reject false equivalency. No matter the faults of the left (and we have many), our crazies don’t fucking kill people like this. We need to start naming and shaming those who support this kind of hateful rhetoric.
North Dallas Thirty
Actually, they certainly were planning on it, then and other times.
But don’t worry. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn eventually managed it. You’ll get that university position and a chance to teach your hate ideology to public-school children yet.
kilo
@gex: Gex wins the Intertubes:
Fuct: n, a fucked up fact. Esp. a wingnut factoid which is presented as obvious truth, and is therefore obviously wrong to any observer with a functional cerebral cortex.
Martin
Not to serve as a defense, but our brains are wired to find solutions to problems that confound us. We all have our own personality as to how to do this – UFOs and Jesus and Muslims and science all work in various ways with various people. (See BOB for a particularly fun illustration.)
For people that have trouble accepting that they personally belong to the class of people perpetrating these horrible acts and who have a fear (it really is fear) of Muslims will assemble a solution to the problem that protects them emotionally.
LD50
So Dallas, are you going to be the next birther Wingnut who flips out and shoots a bunch of people?
Mrs. Peel
Don’t look now, but there’s one trolling this board at this very moment.
His website should be submitted by a concerned citizen for closer scrutiny by the Feds.
LD50
It’s quaint that ND30 has to reach back 40 years to find examples of ‘left wing terror’. To find rightwing terrorists, we only have to reach back about 12 hours.
North Dallas Thirty
@LD50:
Actually, I provided two examples who were far more recent than that.
By the way, it should be noted that the “right-wing” terrorists you are talking about are in jail, not walking the streets and teaching public school children, like your left-wing terrorists are.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
What was it about the conspirators in your first link that made you think that they were liberals? Other than the color of their skin, of course.
North Dallas Thirty
@Mrs. Peel:
Feel free.
It’s always funny to watch lefties betray the fact that the biggest terror in their lives is to actually have found out what they’re doing.
LD50
The difference is that your terrorists actually kill people.
LD50
Do try and calm down, ND30. It’d be a shame to see you on the news for all the wrong reasons one of these days.
Mrs. Peel
Not if you knew him for the weasel that he really is. I’ve seen him post at most of the big progressive websites over the years (and seen him banned from most of then) and it’s always the same contrarian bull shit. He’ll find a link to some obscure factoid and post as a justification for the monsters that haunt his party’s side of the aisle. Plus he’s a gay wingnut. So you know he’s striking out from his own low self esteem because he believes all the “pervert” crap his party piles on him.
I’d suppose I could feel sorry for the emasculated nutter, but given the recent occurrences, there’s no chance in hell of that happening.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
Well, had their activities take place 40 years ago like Ayers and Dohrn, they might well be teaching now.
North Dallas Thirty
@Charon:
Really? You are truly asking that?
LD50
Actually, self-loathing is a big motivator for most of the wingnuts I’ve known.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
Don’t try to change the subject. What was it about the specific group of religious fundamentalists in your link that makes you think that they were in anyway liberals?
And for the record Farrakhan is a racist, anti-semitic, and most importantly for this back and forth, REACTIONARY asshole.
North Dallas Thirty
Or, in other words, requiring Mrs. Peel to think and justify her actions rather than repeating Obama Party talking points.
Don’t worry, dear. We know you hate those of us who are liberated enough to think beyond our minority status and have figured out that you don’t have to enslave yourself to the Obama Party in order to be a worthwhile human being.
North Dallas Thirty
Don’t try to change the subject.
Translation: Don’t bring up uncomfortable proof of the anti-Semitism and hate that exists within the comfortable confines of the Obama Party, or the fact that it can be positively linked to the rantings of people who worship Obama as a messiah.
Oh, and Charon? Skip a step and go right to the squealing “racist” that you and your party do every time anyone holds a black person accountable for anything. It really doesn’t matter anymore, givenwhat your Obama endorses and supports.
LD50
Stick to chanting ‘birth certificate’ and ‘Ayers’. It’s what you do best. And maybe if you’re a real good at it, all those Republicans just might like you.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
I’m still waiting for an on point answer. Is it coming anytime soon? I do have to go to sleep at some point.
fleinn
“I have to wonder was the presence of Islam in Germany that created the comfort zone for Hitler to begin perpetrating the Holocaust?”
Actually, that Hitler didn’t eradicate the jews earlier shows his tolerance for jews. Get with the programme.
Jeroen janssen
I have a strong suspicion that Hitler was not german (or austrian) at all. I’m convinced that he was really a radical muslim brought up with the specific goal of infiltrating and destroying western society from the inside.
Think about it, it makes sense! I mean, has anyone actually seen Hitler’s birth certificate?
Someone should look into this.
LD50
Apparently, Martin Luther was a Muslim, too.
North Dallas Thirty
Let’s see, I already gave you three: one, the predominance of anti-Semitic thought in the Obama Party, two, the endorsement of anti-Semitism by Obama’s own minister and spiritual advisor, and three, the positive linkage between the religious belief of these individuals and the liberal and Obama supporter Louis Farrakhan.
Charon
@North Dallas Thirty:
First, no one but you has mentioned party affiliation. This is about ideology. Democrats and liberals are in no way the same thing.
Second, I’ll state again Farrakhan is not a liberal. He is a black nationalist who’s goals sometimes, but not often, overlap with liberal ideas.
Third, since when did voting for the Democratic candidate make you a liberal? All those Dixiecrats would have been horrified by that notion. And what about the Stormfront types who urged their followers to vote for Obama because they thought that his election would advance their goals?
Finally, once again, what was it about the Bronx terrorists that made you think that they were liberals? Antisemitism is not the bailiwick of either conservative or liberal thought, though both some liberals and some conservatives have espoused it from time to time.
Tattoosydney
Heavens, look at all the troll feeding…
I admit, I play up to BOB some of the time, but at least his nuttiness is entertaining. What the hell does anyone get out of arguing with NDT, a self loathing queen so boring he makes wallpaper paste look like finest Bolivian nose candy?
DNFTT, kiddies.
Charon
@Tattoosydney:
But it’s just so tempting!
Tattoosydney
@Charon:
Yes, but it gets drool all over the threads (and other more unpleasant fluids all over his keyboard, I suspect).
Charon
@Tattoosydney:
Fair point. I’ll stop and turn in, but the image you just put in my head will probably keep me from falling asleep for hours yet.
Tattoosydney
@Charon:
Just imagine him fwapping away, pants around his ankles beneath the desk, sweaty butt squeaking on the vinyl desk chair, frantically typing one handed, straining, straining towards the relief that will only come if one more person takes his troll bait, till finally….
FWAPFWAPFWAPFWAPFWAPFWAP….
(Wait for it)
AGGGGGGH!
If that doesn’t turn you off responding to North Flushing three and half, then nothing will.
JGabriel
Chup:
New to the internets?
.
clb72
Schlussel is just the best recent example of how ideology can make you even stupider than you already are.
JGabriel
Debbie Schlussel:
Right. Because what I specifically remember most about 9/11 is how fashionable being Muslim became.
(Rolls eyes.)
.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
If you’re an American citizen, he’s “your Obama” too. Pretty kewl how that works, eh?
shampoovta
Wow.
I thought the same thing. Sorry but there are people who just hate Jews. You guys aren`t trying to do anything wrong but these nut jobs just need one hint of validation to act out there sick hate.
I know, I know
But I remember when the Olympic jew hate terrorist crap happened and seeing that crap as a kid makes ya worried with all the “We are going to change the world,… don’t get in our way” stuff. Look if you can change the world then fabulous but if you guys get a bunch of people killed I am not going to be happy with you at all.
melathys
i find that the stupidest thing about schlussel’s comment is that she’s blissfully unaware that von brunn would likely HATE to be told that his act (which he appears to think is some kind of fucked up heroism) was made possible by muslims/muslim tolerance. i’m guessing, as a white supremacist, he hates both with relatively equal vitriol. but what do i know.
Bulworth
So this crazy white supremacist fuck’s murder of an African American security guard at the Holocaust museum’s is all the fault of teh Islam?! WTF?
LD50
ND30 believes, like many wingnuts, that black = ‘liberal’.
Ray Radlein
@John Cole:
Actually, I think the ice cream may have been Dr. Leon Kass.
b-psycho
@Blue Raven:
Fixed.
North Dallas Thirty
ND30 believes, like many wingnuts, that black = ‘liberal’.
Actually, it would be the Obama Party that proudly proclaims that anyone who is not is not really black and is an “oreo”.
Steve Dutch
John Cole asked: “Were there this many crazy people before the internet, or has providing them with an opportunity to enter into a feedback loop where they read each other and nothing else had the effect of multiplying the crazy?”
Well, I’ve been researching crank science and crank movements for forty years. Long before the Internet, cranks lived in their own little parallel universes. Authors cited each other’s ideas, and believers read only works that reinforced their preconceptions. There was a huge boom in nut literature from about 1965-1981, a quiet spell for a decade or so, then a steady increase since the 1990’s.
Since the Internet came along, trying to keep up with the whole range of crank thinking is like trying to mop up a tsunami with a Q-tip. It’s certainly increased the volume of wacko writing as well as making it easier for nuts to be reinforced. Something that would have been a mimeographed pamphlet 20 years ago can now have a Web site.
I think it’s ironic that one of the shooter’s grievances was he was rejected as an artist. Didn’t someone else lash out because he was rejected by art school? Wait, the name will come to me….
A Ghost To Most
ND30, do us all a favor and go back to fucking cows.
rs
I’ve never been to the Holocaust Museum- does it give equal time to other horrific genocides, including the Native Americans? While it’s of obvious importance for everyone to understand the human capacity for cruel and evil behaviour, the name Holocaust Museum implies a singularity, when really the only thing unique about the Holocaust was the mechanical efficiency. While some of that efficiency was due to the contributions of American corporations like IBM and GM, it really was a German production, and The Holocaust Museum would seem to be more appropriately located in Berlin or Munich, while Washington D.C. could host a Genocide Museum or even a Slavery Museum- something more generic or that by it’s name shoulders a little responsibility for the sins that were committed by Americans.
Mr Furious
Yeah? Maybe he felt more comfortable at 89 because he had nothing left to do in his life?
Undertaking a mission which you’re going to end up either in a bodybag or handcuffs is probably an EASIER decision at 89 than 40.
demimondian
@rs: You might want to actually go to the museum and find out what was unique about the Holocaust. That would require that you learn some history, though, and, from your self-righteous screed, that doesn’t really seem to be high on your list of priorities.
rs
Like I suggested in what I wrote, despite the unprecedented scale and efficiency with which the Germans killed, the Holocaust was preceeded by other acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing in North America, the Congo, and Turkey (it was the blind eye turned to the slaughter of Armenians that helped persuade Hitler he could safely exterminate the Jews of Europe) and succeeded by similar crimes in Cambodia, East Timor, and Rwanda. There was something unique about the historical circumstances that produced all of them, although something they all shared was a world that remained silent. Having a Holocaust Museum implicitly confers a lesser importance on other equally horrific genocides (and also provides fodder for the narratives offered by the von Brunns and Ahmadidenejads?), whereas a Genocide Museum would denote the universality of man’s shittiness to man.
Like I also wrote, it’s typical that the American capital would have a museum devoted to the suffering of white Europeans rather than one documenting the treatment of it’s own black and native populations.
But thanks for the invitation.