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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Outside Voices: Hatred still too common

Newsday, June 12: Hate does not age out. Though some people can rise above it, far too many never do. That is the sad and alarming lesson of 88-year-old James Wenneker von Brunn’s assault Wednesday on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The attack also reminds us of the network of white supremacist, neo-Nazi hate groups flourishing from sea to shining sea. They hate blacks, hate Jews, hate gays, hate the federal government. And they love violence as a solution. The Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama keeps track of them, and its reports on their geographic spread are chilling. The center had identified von Brunn’s Web site in 2003 as a hate site.

Von Brunn has a history of extremism. He saw the Federal Reserve System as part of some vast Jewish conspiracy. And he hated blacks with similar intensity. Tragically, the attack lived out both hatreds: He targeted an institution created to remind us forever of the Holocaust and to fight against all genocides, but the person he killed was a black man, Stephen Tyrone Johns, a security guard.

Johns should be perpetually honored in the museum. His job was to protect people coming to learn about the tragic history of hate in Europe, and his murder illustrates the ubiquity and danger of hatred as vividly as a museum exhibit can.

Miami Herald, June 12: A hate crime deserves to be treated as such. That there are people who deny the Nazi Holocaust and the millions of Jews and others killed in gas chambers – and who insist on conspiracies to explain the election of President Barack Obama – remains this nation’s saddest challenge.

It is anti-American in every sense, showing disdain for the millions of innocent victims who died during World War II and the U.S. and Allied soldiers who fought valiantly to secure freedom.

Philadelphia Inquirer, June 12: Von Brunn has a long history of anti-Semitism and racism. But the museum shooting shouldn’t be written off as the result of one man’s hatred. The vile material von Brunn spewed on a personal Web site is repeated often on the Internet.

Little can be done about such venom, other than to watch those who produce it, hoping to detect a crime. Von Brunn’s site was among those monitored by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, but they couldn’t predict his actions.

While they watch, the rest of us must guard against the encroachment of hateful language into what is supposed to be civil discourse.

Some of the fiercest rhetoric of politicians and TV and radio personalities has made the haters bolder. They take it as a call to arms when a Latina Supreme Court nominee is called a “racist.” For them, the recession has been an excuse to blame the Jews for financial problems.

In such an environment, it’s not hard to produce a gunman who would attack the Holocaust Museum, or shoot soldiers at a recruiting center, or kill a doctor who performed abortions. To change the environment, people must change the language they use.