More on Right-Wing Influences That Drove Loughner to Violence

A week or so after crazed gunman Jared Loughner’s Jan. 8 alleged terror attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents in Tucson that left six dead and 13, including Giffords, wounded, it’s the consensus now that Loughner was not driven to mass murder by Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map.

The Times asserts that only liberals like to smoke pot and listen to the Jimi Hendrix and the Doors.

The fact that there is no provable causal link between Loughner’s actions and Palin’s map does not mean Loughner, in his madness, was not influenced by GOP-tea party toxicity. As we noted on Jan. 12, Loughner was definitely influenced by a right-wing kook named David Wynn Miller and his “sovereign citizens” movement, which advocates declaring oneself exempt from laws set forth in the U.S. Constitution. Some of the more extremist factions in the right-wing militia movement are founded on a similar concept.

The Los Angeles Times also published a report on Loughner’s influences on Jan 12:

[Experts] said that 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’s assertion that he would not “pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver” is a running theme among right-wing opponents of the Federal Reserve system…

In fact, it’s one of the major themes in Glenn Beck’s Fox shows.

More from the Times:

[One expert] noted Loughner’s declaration about a “second Constitution” — an issue debated by mainstream scholars and white supremacists alike over the markedly different character of the amendments that came after the Civil War.

The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments deal with citizenship and voting rights for freed slaves, immigrants and all those born in the U.S., the latter being a key point of controversy in the modern immigration debate. They also establish the “validity of the public debt of the United States” — echoing, Berlet suggested, the issue of U.S. currency.

The Times, in order to prop up the establishment media’s “equivalency” meme, also mentioned that Loughner claimed that “The Communist Manifesto” was one of his books, despite the fact that only a tiny — no, minuscule — fringe element in the American left would make the same claim. (A smaller percentage than number of fringe types on the right who would list “Mein Kampf,” as Loughner did.)

The Times also made this bizarre assertion about Loughner’s supposed liberal influences:

[A] former high school friend reported on Twitter that Loughner was a “pot head” whose tastes ran to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors and Anti-Flag a radical leftist punk band whose music focuses on themes of corporate greed, U.S. foreign policy and opposition to war.

So right-wingers don’t smoke pot and listen to Jimi Hendrix and the Doors? Please.

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4 thoughts on “More on Right-Wing Influences That Drove Loughner to Violence”

  1. Uhm…considering he also shot a Republican Judge and clearly was not right or left wing but anti-government how can either you or the LA Times make any case that he was any wing?

    That “sovereign citizens” movement is also found in groups like We Are Change, other 9/11 truth groups and in films like Zeitgeist and The Esoteric Agenda.

    Those films are not right wing.

    Also it seems like you’re defending the Federal Reserve…that institution is a very big issue and a bill to Audit The Fed has bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats alike.

    You cannot equate people that choose to use gold over fiat currency as right-wing, Jon.

    Fiat currency was first used by the Federalists and then Jefferson and Jackson fought against the use of it in replace of Gold or Hard Currency. Those are Democratic men.

    Lincoln used fiat currency and it was Nixon who ended the gold standard.

    This article is laughable, you guys are trying so hard now but I doubt you will say anything about this :

    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70F0R020110116

    TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – A victim of last week’s Arizona shooting rampage was arrested on Saturday and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation after threatening a Tea Party leader during the taping of a television show, police said.

    James Eric Fuller, 63, who was shot in the knee on January 8, objected to comments from Trent Humphries, leader of the conservative Tea Party political movement in Tucson, during taping of a town hall meeting organized for an ABC News special program on the aftermath of the shootings.

    Fuller stood, turned and snapped a picture of Humphries, said Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jason Ogan.

    “Then he yelled at him and said, ‘You’re dead,'” Ogan said.

    Deputies arrested Fuller on charges of disorderly conduct and making a threat.

    After consultation with a doctor, deputies then took Fuller to a local hospital for an involuntary evaluation, Ogan said.

    The charges will be filed with the Pima County Attorney’s Office, he said.

    Fuller was one of 13 people injured when a gunman opened fire during a gathering of constituents of U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Six people died, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and the Democratic congresswoman remains in critical condition in a Tucson hospital.

    A 22-year-old college dropout, Jared Lee Loughner, was arrested for the shootings. He is charged with five federal counts, including the murder of a federal judge and the attempted assassination of Giffords.

    The rampage sparked a national debate about whether the vitriolic tone of partisan politics in the United States in recent years had contributed to the suspect’s motivations.

    (Reporting by Brad Poole; Editing by Peter Bohan and Eric Beech)

    Are you going to defend this guy because he’s left wing, while you try, poorly, to attempt to connect the Arizona shooter to any political wing?

    Obama even says this was not political…

    Maybe we should Pensito Review and Fox News to the same light..I wonder if the Review will cast a shadow.

    This used to be a good read, now you guys just disgust me.

  2. I guess if you are opposed to war you are a leftist and somehow that’s bad, hence the twisted logic of the right.

  3. Being Anti-War is much accustomed in being a Real Republican.

    Your perception of what Republican are now ( neoconservatives ) is different than what a Real Republican is.

    Jefferson was what a Real Republican was, Madison too.

    Please look up what a neocon is. You will be surprised.

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