Odd Ideas About von Brunn

No kidding: on June 11, 2009 Rush Limbaugh said (video below) about James von Brunn, accused of killing a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.:

....If we want start assigning blame for this beyond this nutcase Jew hater.... They want to claim this guy didn't have the ability to act on his own. He only could act if he was inspired by somebody. Well, who did he hate? He hated both Bushes. He hated neocons. He hated John McCain. He hated Republicans. He hated Jews as well. He believes in an inside job conspiracy of 9/11. This guy is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right.

First, von Brunn was no "nutcase." nor, as Chris Cillizza proposed, do we know he "is a guy who is clearly, deeply disturbed." Properly, Chris Matthews has

an objection to that. Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy, OK. He‘s in prison. We can say he did it. Are you saying he was disturbed? Are you saying Lee Harvey Oswald was disturbed? Or are you saying they‘re assassins? This guy was an assassin. Is that, by definition, somebody disturbed or is it somebody who is a zealot, who‘s willing to do anything to get done what they want to get done?

And a leftist? According to Keith Olbermann, on his website von Brunn contended that his character had been shaped by "The Iron Curtain Over America," from which he "learned how Jews had destroyed Europe and were now destroying America." It claimed "General Del Valle recommended that I‘d be given a position with Noontide Press. Noontide publishes right-wing books. Willis Carto (a Holocaust denier from the Liberty Lobby) was its founder." Further, the accused murderer posted on his site "Right-wing websites illuminate the problems that Aryans face. Each day new alarms are sounded, adding more fuel to the raging fire. The right-wing does nothing but talk. No plan of action against the well-known enemy. Exactly the advice Marxists/liberals/Jews want to hear. Even a kid in grade school knows when it‘s time to get his knuckles bloody. And on the conservative Repub website Free Republic, von Brunn defended President Bush against Dan Rather and charged that President Obama's birth certificate was forged and that the media had tried to destroy Sarah Palin.

Then there is David Corn refuting Rush:

I heard his argument, but look at some of the causes that James Von Brunn has associated himself with. One is the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born an American citizen, and therefore he can‘t be president.

He‘s anti-immigration. He‘s for culture purity. He‘s for gun rites (sic). He‘s for defending states‘ rights. He was part of a chat group on Yahoo! called “Support the Confederate Flag.” He wrote a movie script sympathetic to the south in the civil rights. You know, all these issues are far more closely aligned with a conservative movement than to the left.

Cillizza suggests "trying to see this in the left/right split in the political world is a mistake." Funny, though, that during the presidential campaign, Bill Ayers was not viewed as a conservative or a nut- but as a dangerous, unrepentant leftist tied to Barack Obama.