Another update: DHS supposedly issued a memo saying Loughner was influenced by the racist right wing group American Renaissance (DHS denies issuing the memo). If true, this would obviously out more inline with the racist right than with the left (someone who knew him when they were teenagers said he was liberal or left wing when she knew him). Speculation that he is mentally ill remains rampant. The NAACP’s Tea Party Nationalism paper reported links between various Tea Party members and right wing groups, but American Renaissance wasn’t one of the ones mentioned. So there’s still no clear link to the Tea Party or Palin, so far as I know.
(I’m blogging from the road this week, so I probably shouldn’t be trying to blog about this as it unfolds. It’s dicey enough to blog about a sensitive subject like this before all the facts are in without having to deal with work and travel at the same time)
It’s looking like there’s very little to connect the alleged Tuscon shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, to the Tea Party or to Sarah Palin’s hit list. There’s some references to the gold standard on his YouTube channel, but also a lot of nonsense about the grammar and literacy. The SPLC thinks the grammar stuff is
connected to the far right, but they see Nazis behind every tree so their credibility is a bit compromised at this point. (It would bring a whole new meaning to the term “Grammar Nazi” if true though, eh?)
I’m not expert, but it looks like the work of either someone who is crazy or wants to be seen as crazy. From what can be found publicly, he sounds more like your average EsoZone attendee than a Tea Partier. But it is, however, still early in the investigation.
None the less, it looks like this might actually stick the Tea Party if they can’t manage to spin this to their advantage. Loughner cited both Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto. Sounds like perfect ammunition for the likes of Beck and Limbaugh to use to connect liberalism with National Socialism.
January 10, 2011 at 4:43 pm
“I’m not expert, but it looks like the work of either someone who is crazy or wants to be seen as crazy.”
Yup, that was more or less my own conclusion when I tried to parse one of his incomprehensible screeds. I also do not know what to make of “JUDGE” (You can’t tax me, I’m a prepositional phrase.) David-Wynn Miller: My paranoid side looks at him as a human man-trap designed to snare unwary people who are clueless to how the legal system works; maybe he’s just another nutty opportunist who’s not in jail because of the First Amendment, although what he does could be considered practicing law without a license.
On prisonplanet.com, they claim Loughner’s a “left-wing” “occultist” “pot-smoker,” etc. etc.
On alternet.org, they claim he’s a “right-wing” yadda yadda yadda.
Naturally, people would want to distance themselves from somebody who does something like this, at least in the USA, where the police state is strong.
I don’t think the language as control mechanism theme is a left/right issue, but then again, I think left/right is the use of language as a control mechanism. Language is just one of many tools.
This guy seems to have become aware of linguistic uncertainty and vagueness to the point of being driven insane by it.
I mean, when you read what the Unabomber allegedly wrote, you can understand where he’s coming from. I have great difficulty parsing what Loughner wrote because it comes across as incomprehensible to me.
January 10, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Yeah, my own political biases make me want to believe he’s right-wing, but that just doesn’t seem to be supported by the evidence.
Mother Jones is running an interview with a friend who claims to know Loughner well, and the picture painted again sounds more occultnik than Tea Party:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1
Reading this, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out the guy was influenced by The Invisibles.
January 11, 2011 at 9:21 am
Sorry, but why anyone should care what this guys interests have been, other than political axe-grinding, is beyond me. Whatever this person’s political persuasion and regardless of whether or not he smokes pot or does rituals, he has lost his way and somehow ended up at a place where spraying a crowd with a 9mm seemed constructive.
It is useless to point fingers beyond Loughner himself, other than to say that folks should try to avoid demonizing those that disagree and cut out the violent metaphors.
January 12, 2011 at 1:47 am
I agree with Whitcomb. He could easily have been a nutty Christian/Muslim/Jew/Buddhist/Hindu etc. and the manifestation of his nuttiness would have probably been jacketed with the symbols of his faith. Since he’s an occultist who was into lucid dreaming, his nuttiness wore that jacket. I know plenty of occultists who are perfectly harmless, sane people, or at least as harmless and sane as the mainstream people are considered. All of them can explain their views in terms an average person could understand. Not so much this guy. I find his views utterly incomprehensible. It seems as though the machinery of his mind somehow got broken.
January 12, 2011 at 10:41 am
I suspect that a “want” for this guy to be right-wing is what is driving the Krugman’s of the world to pin this on Palin et al.
Lest we not forget that “if they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun.”
January 24, 2011 at 12:20 am
congratulations, technoccult is so far the only website where the poster and ALL commenters have been reasonable and honest on this situation….