This seemed inevitable.
With all the efforts to tie the Tea Party and “right wing” to violence committed by others, it wouldn’t be long before the Islamic radical Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was tied to “right-wing” causes.
With the slenderest of proof, The BBC goes there:
One of the brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston bombings was in possession of right-wing American literature in the run-up to the attack, BBC Panorama has learnt.
So, what was this supposed “right-wing” literature? Was Tamerlan reading about lower taxes and federalism, more restriction of federal versus state government? About shrinking entitlements or stopping the growth of the welfare state? About the deficit? Reversing Roe v. Wade?
No. Here’s the BBC’s list of Tamerlane’s supposed right-wing causes:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev subscribed to publications espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories.
He also had reading material on mass killings…
The programme discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev possessed articles which argued that both 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were government conspiracies.
Another in his possession was about “the rape of our gun rights”.
Reading material he had about white supremacy commented that “Hitler had a point”.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev also had literature which explored what motivated mass killings and noted how the perpetrators murdered and maimed calmly.
There was also material about US drones killing civilians, and about the plight of those still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
Let’s take them one by one.
—White supremacy is neither of left or right, it is racism which is not espoused by the mainstream of either side today but has been used by both sides in the past. As for Hitler, few on the left ever acknowledge (or ever will) that Hitler was a socialist, but the evidence is quite compelling, although for the most part the left has been dedicated to suppressing it.
—Do most criminal mass killers have political motivations that involve either left or right? Aren’t they far more likely to have been moved by private demons? And among politically-motivated mass murderers, although I’ve not seen a study, my impression is that the left is very well-represented indeed. As for government-perpetrated mass killings (the source of the vast majority of such mass deaths), they have been far more connected to the left than the right from the rise of Communism on. Pol Pot, Stalin, anyone? Even the BBC would be hard-pressed to say they weren’t men of the left, although knowing the BBC they just might give it a go.
As for other mass killers such as, for example, Islamic terrorists (can’t imagine why that would come to mind in a discussion of Tamerlan Tsarnaev), there’s nothing right-wing about their motivations, unless you consider all religious fundamentalism to be of the right. But it’s almost solely the left that supports Muslim fanatics, allies with their cause, and makes excuses for their murders.
—9/11 and Oklahoma truthers? There’s not much data on the latter that I can find, but national polls indicate that 9/11-truthers are far more likely to be on the left side of the political fence than from the right. “Government conspiracy theories” are hardly the sole province of the right, to say the least.
—Now we get to the sole point of view on the list that could properly be called “right-wing”: gun rights. But if someone like Tsarnaev is reading about that issue, it doesn’t tell us anything about his politics in general. He was contemplating murder, for heaven’s sake, and interested in getting greater access to weapons (and by the way, Tsarnaev had most likely committed a previous multiple murder of great brutality, although the mode of killing was knife rather than gun).
—Learning about how mass killers work? That’s about the psychology of murder, not about left or right.
—The final item in the list, material about “US drones killing civilians, and about the plight of those still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay” are primarily concerns of the left rather than right. Even Obama has drawn criticism from the left for using too many drones and for not fulfilling his campaign promise to close down Guantanamo. These are leftist causes, although some libertarians get into the act too in that interesting area where right and left come full circle and meet.
This isn’t about literature in Tamerlan’s possession. It’s about the BBC whitewashing his radical Islam connection, even though that connection was the clear motivation, and replacing it with a deceptive tie to the right.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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Comments
Well, obviously a right-wing extremist will hide behind a facade of left-wing enthusiasms. It’s the left-wing stuff that proves they’re right-wingers! Kind of like how global cooling proves global warming, come to think of it.
I loved your well-written cogent argument, and it distresses me that it will not matter a whit. The propagandists are slowly but surely laying the foundation to smear conservatism by associating the right wing movement with violent mass murderers.
Frankly, I have become so disgusted with state-run media that I don’t even believe that he was in possession of any of the literature the BBC claims until I see the proof with my own eyes.
Furthermore, I’m looking forward to following his trial with the legal experts at this blog. After seeing the vast difference between the media hysteria of the Zimmerman trial versus the intelligent, thoughtful discussions about law and actual evidence on this blog, I suspect there will be an immense disparity between what the talking heads blabber about the Tsarnaev trial and what I will read here.
If the Brits admit that Islam is a problem, they will ave to stop cowering before Muslims and take back their country. Since they are too lost in PCness to do that, they prefer to ignore the camel pushing them out of the tent and point the finger at an enemy who won’t gut them in the streets, chop their heads off, spit on them, or beat them for the vile and disgusting crime of serving in their country’s military. Poor John Bull! He has been replaced by Mohammed Kitty.
I read stuff by people I don’t agree with. If you tried to guess my politics from the contents of my bookshelf you would find evidence of everything from far left to far right.
On the other hand, the still living Jahar told the cops why they did it, and it had nothing to do with reading right-wing literature.
A wise man once observed that “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
While it may be discomforting to learn the perspective of others, it is also a prerequisite for successfully traversing our world. It is a critical skill to infer the motivations which guide people’s actions.
The BBC is not a news outlet, it is a propaganda arm of Progressivism with one supreme goal — the smearing and marginalization and ultimate eradication of “right wing” thought and forms throughout society. That’s why they write this garbage. It’s why they will never stop writing this garbage. No actual historical or contemporary comparative analysis went into this piece. The brothers who exploded the Boston bomb were radicalized Muslims of a rather idiosyncratic Americanized variety but they were no more “right wingers” than they were Hindus. Responding with extensive analysis to this kind of garbage is, if not a waste of time, kind of futile. The BBC needs to be mocked and hooted at for their vicious but totally predictable ignorance.
I possess links to the Hamas Covenant, and I post them often. By the logic of this BBC article, I must support Hamas’ murderous goals. My actual purpose is to facilitate the reading of, and acquaintance with, the goals of my enemies. As for the way the BBC has acted, the term “buffoon” comes to mind.
Why Valerie old girl, the BBC would never characterize the goals of Hamas as “murderous”. Such a binary assessment lacks the nuance required to adequately understand the sophistication of Middle Eastern politics.
Pretty soon we’ll be told that the real thing that drove the islamic duo was they were driven to it by Christians. . . . . and the Jews. The Jews must have had something to do with it too.
It’s the BBC, so of course the Jews were behind it.
“Reading” definitely has NOTHING to do with this crime!
And, Tamerlan is dead because his brother, in his get-away, ran over him. He was probably conscious, as all the cops did was roll him over onto his stomach … so they could attach the cuffs to his wrists, which were resting on his back.
CRUNCH TIME!
Afterwards? Who got blamed for leaving the keys in the ignition? And, the driver’s door wide open?
Thomas Jefferson read the Koran, so that he would “know his enemy”, but that hasn’t stopped Islamists and their apologists from claiming the author of the Declaration was a supporter of Islam.
Well, this story had to swim from the dirty Boston Harbor, all the way across the Atlantic. Which reminds me of a WW2 story. Back in those days lots of adults were still ignorant of “where babies came from” … and “how long it took,”
So, this GI, in Europe for two years … got a letter from his wife at home … telling him his letters to her were so hot she got pregnant. Depending on what you know, I guess, then these things can be believable.
Meanwhile, these two KILLERS were more into using pressure cookers, NOT in their recommended ways … But as something to carry to a marathon … where they had every intention of it exploding, while they ran away!
The “vast right wing conspiracy” thing actually belongs to Hillary Clinton. And, now that’s she’s said “WHY DOES IT MATTER” … And, this is considered “testimony” about Benghazi … We can see the BBC no longer even cares about truth … But ways they can insult Americans … As if we didn’t save their skins in both WW1 and WW2.
Many still do feign ignorance of where babies come from. Nearly half of the population believe that they are an emergent phenomenon from “viability”. While a substantial number, including our current president, believe that they are an emergent phenomenon from birth. It’s really quite discouraging to observe the expression of a latent psychosis in a large part of the first-world population.
They need to be more specific. The “right-wing” in America is defined explicitly by the principles recorded in two documents: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution; and implicitly by Judeo-Christian philosophy which inspired them.
What association, exactly, does BBC believe exists, or wish to manufacture, between Tsarnaev and classical (i.e. authentic) Americans? Surely they must know that unlike “left-wing” ideology, right-wing ideology is highly diversified and defined by national origin. They cannot legitimately suggest that people of every nation are of like-mind and kind.
Well, yes. Some concepts don’t translate well across the Atlantic, and to Americans the European press can seem to have originated on Planet Bananas.
In Europe (which includes Britain, even if they sometimes like to pretend otherwise) they’re all socialists, save for a smattering of monarchists and anarchists. The left-wing/right-wing schism is along different lines than in the US.
European right-wing means socialist and nationalist, left-wing means socialist and internationalist. Extreme European right-wingers are fascists. Extreme European left-wingers are communists. There are of course many minor variants. To Americans the distinctions aren’t terribly important; they’re all totalitarians. We’d call them all left-wing. It’s not clear that very many Europeans have even the vaguest idea of what the American right-wing is really about. They just assume that it has some similarity to the European right-wing, which couldn’t be more wrong. They simply lack the conceptual machinery to recognize it.
I agree and have observed the effort to reduce diversity and its proper characterization is intentional. In order to escape the stereotypes and the prejudice they engender, and to enact competent judgment, I prefer to recognize the merit of individuals and cooperatives by their actions, and the merit of philosophies or religions by their principles. I hesitate to rely on labels or general language unless it can be established to be authentically and consistently representative, which is actually not such a common occurrence. That is to say, there is diversity in individuals and the cooperatives that they form, and in their philosophies and religions, too.
rantbot,
In Europe (which includes Britain, even if they sometimes like to pretend otherwise) they’re all socialists, save for a smattering of monarchists and anarchists. The left-wing/right-wing schism is along different lines than in the US.
European right-wing means socialist and nationalist, left-wing means socialist and internationalist.
Europeans claim to view the Democratic Party as “centre-right”, so they can only perceive of anything further right (the GOP – the Northeastern Establishment GOP at that) as outright Fascist, if not “neo-Nazi” (that would be the conservative base, presumably). Libertarians can only be “anarchists”, if not an extraterrestrial alien species…
Arguments in online political (or even non-political pop-culture) forums popular with both Europeans and North Americans make a lot more sense when you keep that in mind.
n.n: The “right-wing” in America is defined explicitly by the principles recorded in two documents: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution; and implicitly by Judeo-Christian philosophy which inspired them.
There are plenty of Americans who support both the Constitution and Judeo-Christian philosophy on the political left, so that isn’t the distinction.
The political right in the U.S. is still encompassed by the conventional definition. Generally, those on the right prefer a more “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution. The hierarchies they support tend to be natural hierarchies, in contrast to those on the left, who want to a more equitable society, with a social safety net.
The comments on this at the Daily Mail are hilarious . Someone said the guy isn’t even white.
Take tha you swarthy bastard !
ISLAMIC SUPREMACY is currently the most murderous, intolerant, and genocidal in the world and over the centuries has always been one of the most murderous – along with Marxist/Communist supremacy – aka the Russian, Chinese and Korean Communists.
At the top of the current murder/killing groups is the pro-Abortion group…and theirs is also a satanic manifestation as the Texas pro-abortion protestors showed in singing hymns to Satan.
Compared with these the KKK and US white supremacists are very small potatoes.
HOWEVER, the Tsarnaev Brothers and their Mother were/are Islamic Supremacists. There is substantial evidence that leaves no doubt of that.
In addition, Nazism is a sister ideology with Islam. From the beginning of World War II the kinship between the Nazis and Islamists was very close and chummy with both groups sharing the same goal: Extermination of the Jews.
To show their kinship, Nazi flags still fly over Gaza now and then.
It has recently come to light that in his youth JFK was an admirer of Hitler and the chapter of his autobiography that was deleted from publication expressed this.
(Ironically, from another British paper, Daily Mail) LINK
GHW Bush’s father was also an admirer of Hitler’s National Socialist Party ideology. As the BBC once reported, and in 1933, with a group of powerful rich industrialists and bankers, tried to overthrow the FDR administration and establish Nazism here in the USA. The General they recruited ratted them out.
FDR pragmatically compromised with these power players and the socialist New Deal was born.
This may explain the US leftists apparent and yet inexplicable kinship with Islamism despite the fact that Islam proclaims itself homophobic and is male chauvinistic to the extreme.
Sorry, the “Business Plot” is just another left-wing conspiracy theory with no real evidence behind it.
BBC reported this as fact.
I think in fairness to JFK, I think that it should be pointed out that he was quite young at the time, and it was really his father who was the Nazi supporter at one point, and that some of what the young JFK said was to try to rehabilitate his father, whose quasi-political future was essentially destroyed by this, when the Nazis turned out to be more than just proponents of a socialism with a crony capitalist bent (this form of socialism still has an allure to rich leftists to this day, as evidenced by their embrace of Obananomics). I think that a lot of us would be embarassed with what they did and said as late adolescents and very young adults, and JFK maybe less so here because much of it appears to be more out of paternal loyalty than true belief.
So then why is he portrayed as a hero on the cover of the leftist rag, The Rolling Stone magazine?
Doh!
That is the younger one. The BBC likes pretty boys.
Why can’t they just take him at his word? They don’t need to parse his library to find his motivation – he’s said what it was…
The Left see themselves as gentle doves while they consider everyone else to be an aggressor except, of course, if the aggressor is a radical Islamist, a union member, a homosexual bully or the like. These aggressors, we are told by the Left, have their ‘rights” to fight (riot, destroy, maim, kill, etc.) anyone who disagrees with them.
Some leftists even sympathized with the 9/11 WTC hijacker/murderers and they sympathize with ‘Major’ Hasan, the Ft. Hood murderer.
Yet they call George Zimmerman a murderer.
And Trayvon a saint.
Proof that they have their heads charged to an alternate current that detaches them from reality and plain evidence.
And so it should not surprise anyone that some of the youth on the left are seeing at least the younger brother as the handsome, but troubled, impressionable youth, that have proven to be a mainstay of female desire for years, as evidenced by the record sales of that issue of Rolling Stones with his picture on the front.
neo-neocon: White supremacy is neither of left or right
That is incorrect. The left is conventionally defined as advocacy of greater social equality; the right as supporting social hierarchies; liberal as supporting equality and liberty; and conservative as supporting established institutions. In the extreme, the far left advocates absolute equality; the far right advocates absolute inequality.
http://zachriel.blogspot.com/2005/07/liberal-v-conservative.html
With this in mind, white supremacy is clearly a right wing ideology.
neo-neocon: As for Hitler, few on the left ever acknowledge (or ever will) that Hitler was a socialist
Hitler advocated for a hierarchical society with an absolute leader, along with a theory of superior races and nationalities. Of note, Nazism was considered right wing at the time, and during the intervening generations, as well.
neo-neocon: Do most criminal mass killers have political motivations that involve either left or right?
Mass murder is a means, not an ideology. It’s a result of extremism, where the ends are used to justify the means. It’s the ends that define the political ideology.
neo-neocon: And among politically-motivated mass murderers, although I’ve not seen a study, my impression is that the left is very well-represented indeed.
Agreed.
neo-neocon: unless you consider all religious fundamentalism to be of the right.
Religious fundamentalism is on the right.
neo-neocon: “Government conspiracy theories” are hardly the sole province of the right, to say the least.
Of course not.
Except that since “right-wing” generally means nationalist, it depends WHOSE right-wing. Love of Hitler shows loyalty to Islam, where this stuff is in, not the US.
It’s the wrong right-wing. 🙂
mzk: Except that since “right-wing” generally means nationalist, …
Conservatives generally support nationalism as a traditional institution. The Right generally supports national exceptionalism. Nazism is an extreme example of that phenomenon.
mzk: Love of Hitler shows loyalty to Islam, where this stuff is in, not the US.
Not sure what that means. However, nationalism is certainly prevalent on the American right.
Nice straw man you got there. Be a shame if sumthin’ should happen to it.
Apologies. That comment is in response to Zachriel.
“liberal as supporting equality AND liberty.”
Uuhuh. Like ol’Ben Franklin said about that:”Democracy(ie-“Equality”)is 2-wolves and a sheep sitting down to supper. Liberty is the sheep coming fully armed and ready to contest the meal.”
NeoConScum: Uuhuh. Like ol’Ben Franklin said about that:”Democracy(ie-”Equality”)is 2-wolves and a sheep sitting down to supper. Liberty is the sheep coming fully armed and ready to contest the meal.”
The attribution of the quote is most certainly not Ben Franklin. In any case, that’s the idea of liberalism, a balance between the values of equality and liberty, which are often in conflict.
“The left is conventionally defined as advocacy of greater social equality; the right as supporting social hierarchies; liberal as supporting equality and liberty; and conservative as supporting established institutions.”
It’s good — for your own spirit as well as for the human cause — that you have finally admitted that the Obama regime and its supported as fascists.
Not sure how you decided that, but it sounds like silly hyperbole.
fascism, a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
There is a report that the some of the papers that are shown in the BBC’s story were not published until days after the incident.
Might have someone done some creative article writing and editing?
More to he point, the Arab world is well known to be in love with the Nazis. Mein Kampf sells well. “Saint” Anwar el-Sadat’s ode to Hitler is also quite well known.
The problem is a lot deeper than Islam. The entire Arab world could go secular tomorrow, and we would still have a problem.
If wings could be sprouted pigs would fly.