As happens with far too much regularity, the latest heinous crime that has a political dimension is being used by left and right to push their agenda. Yesterday, a hate filled, anti-Semitic, anti-government, neo-Nazi, 9/11 Truther, conducted an assault on the Holocaust Museum during which one guard was killed, another was seriously wounded, and the assailant wounded. From the paper of record:
An 88-year-old white supremacist with a rifle walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the capital’s most visited sites, on Wednesday afternoon and began shooting, fatally wounding a security guard and sending tourists scrambling before he himself was shot, the authorities said.
...
Officials and others who track conspiracy theorists have long been familiar with Mr. von Brunn, whose latest address is believed to be in Eastern Maryland, in part because he maintains a Web site. (Wednesday night, only an archived version of the site was available.) He has claimed variously to be a member of Mensa, the high-I.Q. society; to have played varsity football at a Midwestern college, where he earned a degree in journalism; to have been a PT boat commander in World War II; and to be a painter and an author.
Mr. von Brunn has also claimed to have been victimized by a court system run by Jews and blacks.
Some on the Left immediately jumped on the gunman's pedigree on the far right to attack the right:
More Terrorism From The Loopy Far Right
That DHS report doesn't look so iffy any more, does it?
The gunman was identified by several news agencies as James W. von Brunn, a man in his late 80s. According to a Web site maintained by Mr. von Brunn, he embraces a far-reaching conspiracy theory involving Jews, blacks and other minority groups.
Goldblog is all over the story. The ADL found some emails from the alleged old Holocaust denier. Here they are. TPM has more. Like another right-wing fanatic, he was also a painter.
Some on the Right immediately rushed to insist that, although this gunman was a denizen of the Right, his actions were facilitated by a climate created by Muslim anti-Semitism:
Much is being made by Muslims and their many defenders on the left--and the ignoramus "conservatives" at Hot Air (who lecture us that hate has no ideological bounds, which I already learned not from those clueless ones, but from Sarah Palin e-mails wishing me cancer)--that the shooter of several people (one now dead) at the U.S. Holocaust Museum is not a Muslim but a White guy, James W. Von Brunn, who is a neo-Nazi.
But that is a distinction without a difference. In fact, it is because of Muslims--who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels--that neo-Nazis feel comfortable--far more comfortable!--manifesting their views about Jews. Until 9/11 and our resulting new tolerance for Islam, the neo-Nazi types were marginalized and howling at the wind. We know who has been targeting Jewish museums and centers affiliated with Jews in recent years. And it hasn't been, in general, 89-year-old White guys.
Jeffrey Goldberg, in response to Debbie Schlussel's post, makes the point that Muslims have no monopoly on anti-Semitism:
Maybe this was meant to be a parody, I don't know. I've never read Debbie Schlussel before. But if it's meant seriously, then it's ridiculous. White Christians have done an excellent job being anti-Semitic for several hundred years -- almost a couple of thousand, actually -- without any help whatsoever from Muslims. In fact, it is Muslim Jew-haters who rely on the publications of European and white American anti-Semites -- most notably the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the International Jew -- for inspiration. I hope Schlussel retracts this absurd piece of "analysis." Does she have any idea what this country was like in the 1930s? I don't think Muslims dominated the German Bund.
Yet all of them miss the point. The intersection of psychopathology, anti-Semitism, and politics is exceedingly complex and those who simplify the matter in order to score political points are doing a disservice to their readers and shortchanging themselves.
Let's start with the psychological.
Many people have a predisposition to paranoia, either by virtue of having a paranoid character or a paranoid psychosis. Consider this description of a young person having a first paranoid episode, from my post, Paranoia: Rationality in the service of the Irrational:
Paranoid psychosis often strikes young people in their late teens, early twenties. Many people do not realize that there is almost always a prodromal period (the period of weeks to months leading up to the overt psychotic break with reality) in which the world becomes more and more chaotic and makes less and less sense to the patient. If you see them during their first break (a person's first overt psychotic episode) they will often describe how frightening this time is; they are no longer sure of what they are seeing and hearing and experiencing and feeling. They worry they are losing their minds; they often despair and contemplate suicide. If they are in college, they have increasing difficulty getting their work done; lectures and readings become confusing and disorienting. They become more and more anxious until suddenly, they receive an insight and Everything Makes Sense! Rationality has returned, they are not losing their minds. These things are happening to them because they are special, singled out by God to do great things, to save the world; they might even be Jesus Christ himself returned to help mankind. It is important to recognize that once they have discovered this heretofore hidden secret about themselves, their anxiety diminishes and changes. They are no longer anxious that they are losing their minds, now they are anxious about being able to accomplish great things. In fact, this is where things often take a darker turn. There can be only one explanation for why they have flunked out of college, or are living on the streets, or are now in a psychiatric hospital: they can not accomplish great things (saving the world) because other powerful forces are opposed to them. What other explanation could possibly account for what is happening? This is when the paranoid is most dangerous (though most psychiatric patients are more likely to be victims and taken advantage of than to be perpetrators) because they have projected their unacceptable murderous rage onto their (invented) enemy, at which point a defensive attack may become necessary.
The paranoid character undergoes much the same process but it is more gradual and represents a less abrupt demarcation from prior functioning. In either case, the person with a tendency to externalize and project, who has a history of poor or declining functioning , seeks a reason in his environment to explain his failures.
Which leads to the role of anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism has a long and inglorious history. After the Holocaust it was repressed and suppressed until it began to re-emerge following the transformation of Jews from victims into victors during the 1967 war. Where anti-Semitism was considered to be the province of the right prior to WWII, the open anti-Semitism of the Arab countries, overtly modeled on the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, began to find traction on the left as Israel was increasingly depicted as a colonial occupier and an illegitimate Western presence in the Arab world. The emergence of anti-Semitism from the shadows has led to its appropriation by many paranoids as the nidus of their delusions. This is not at all surprising. Paranoids use available constructs in their own cultures around which to accrete their delusions. For someone convinced the government has caused him to fail in life or prevented a more perfect union (a white Christian Utopia, a Muslim caliphate, for example) it is the most natural step to note the prevalence of Jewish names in high positions and ascribe hidden powers and malevolence to them. This process is aided and abetted by the mainstreaming of anti-Semitic tropes perpetrated by the likes of Walt and Mearsheimer on the left and Patrick Buchanan on the right. The paranoid who sees academics offering scholarly explanations for how the Jews control American foreign policy have very little distance to go to seeing the Jews as behind the interference with their personal plans.
Which then leads to the political.
Where anti-Semitism becomes most dangerous is when it moves from the realm of the personal to the political. There is no question that a lone, anti-Semitic Muslim, motivated by his religion and sanctioned by his religious leaders, can be very dangerous. Sudden Jihad Syndrome is an expression of just such a confluence of political and psychopathological anti-Semitism. So, too, the acts of one such as the Holocaust Museum gunman represent a confluence of political and psychopathological anti-Semitism. Yet as dangerous as these kinds of terrorists can be, they pale in comparison to the potential of those who are not only politically and psychopathologically anti-Semitic, but include membership in terrorist groups (or states) dedicated to bringing their distinct political philosophy to fruition. Here then is where the distinction must be made, between those who are acting alone, even if under the influence of a particular ideology, and those who have leveraged their hatred and psychopathology with other like minded individuals, to act in concert.
We will have to contend with anti-Semitism and hatred indefinitely, as long as humans remain fallible and delusions remain adaptive for them in preserving their self esteem. The Holocaust Museum gunman is indeed a terrorist (just as the murderer of an abortion Doctor and the terrorist murderer of our Army recruits) but to build the case meant to indict the left, the right, or Muslims for his behavior threatens to efface any value we might gain from this experience and that would be shameful. Anti-Semitism is a protean hate easily manipulated into forms conducive to the hater's goals.
[For more on the psychological structure of anti-Semitism, consider reading Pity the Poor Anti-Semite. While anti-Semitism, like all paranoid delusions, serves initially to explain one's failings while preserving one's self-esteem, it is an unstable construct and cannot bolster self-esteeem indefinitely. As well, it includes imperatives toward action that serve to undermine the anti-Semite in the long run.]
[For a very interesting and enlightening discussion of the dangers of abstraction in the social arena, take a look at Shannon's post at the Chicago Boyz. The thought experiment discussing Nazis is germane.]
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