Why Isn't Domestic Terrorism A Federal Crime? Blame A Daft Interpretation Of The 1st & 2nd Amendments

Two domestic terrorists who ought to have been tossed into Supermax by now: Robert Bowers (L) who committed the Squirrel Hill Synagogue massacre last year, and Cesar Sayoc, the Trumpie renegade who sent dozens of pipe bombs to Dem leaders, others.

Evidently, from reading a piece in The Wall Street Journal yesterday ('Legal Curbs Hobble FBI On Domestic Terror', p. A4) the  white nationalists, Nazis and other extremists can pretty well do what the hell they want in this country and get no more than a wrist slap if that-  at least from the federal authorities. As we read:

"Lawmakers from both parties have made the case in recent years to make domestic terror a crime".

Hmmm....I'd always assumed it was a crime, but clearly not if lawmakers now wish to make it such.  And why is this?

"Americans' rights to speak, organize in groups and even stockpile firearms are largely protected by the Constitution"

Which of course is a total misreading of that document. Because if you are organizing like on 8chan to attack a Jewish synagogue or a Muslim mosque, and stockpiling arms under some white Aryan umbrella ("speech") for that, then you sure as hell are a terrorist and criminal and merit the full heavy hand of the law.

Take the stockpiling weapons issue. Here again the Right and its supporters have lost all claims to common sense in interpretation of the Constitution.  Because if you are caught with a cache of military grade weapons such as shown below, you definitely ought to have your ass in the slammer.

Nazi sympathizer's Christoper Hasson's weapons stash - which ought to have earned him at least a year in the slammer on suspicion of mass murder or domestic terrorism

Take a gander at the weapons stash above. It is not innocuous or benign! There is NO good reason to have assembled such high -powered military weapons in one place. But this is the weapons stash found in February compliments of another domestic terrorist,  Christopher Hasson.

Prosecutors said Hasson was a “domestic terrorist” and that he should be detained. He was arrested  on drugs and weapons charges. Incredibly (and inexplicably) there was no DOJ alert or followup news release - as if the agency sought to contain the news that this bad guy was not a Muslim,  But as noted by David Cay Johnston at the time,  after Jeff Sessions came in as AG, the cases involving  right wing domestic terror were "downgraded", i.e. shuffled to the backburner.

We now know Hasson - who incredibly reached the status of Lt. in the Coast Guard-  intended “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country”, according to a filing to federal court in Maryland. Law enforcement officers seized 15 guns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his home.  What has become of this POS?  Nothing!    We learned in The Baltimore Sun (April 25):

"U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Day noted Thursday that 50-year-old Christopher Hasson hasn't been charged with any terrorism related crimes and is therefore entitled to be released."

So, of course, he's cleared now to assemble another more deadly cache of weapons and this next time to massacre maybe dozens of people.   Why? Because of inane, lax interpretations of the Constitution which lets the crazies and terrorists have at it while the innocent cower and shake in fear  - because, well, the law is a frickin' ass. 

How do I know this?  Because the reprobate had Democrats in his sights and his online targeting materials read like a 'Who's Who' of liberal media stars and politicians.  The filing acknowledged  Hasson to be a fan of the Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, and that he had compiled a spreadsheet of targets, including:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Scarborough, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris,  Cory Booker and Ilhan Omar, as well as Chris Hayes ('All In') and CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. 

Hasson’s  terror plot was first noted by Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University’s program on extremism and a former US anti-terrorism official.  It was, as I said, not put out there by the DOJ.   We also now know this rabid dog  had been stockpiling weapons in his cramped basement apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland - probably for months in anticipation of his Nazi-spawned bloodbath.

Here's the deal: Once you are proven to have  stockpiled weapons and compiled lists of targets it is no longer fantasy land and you have transited into hard reality. Therein you deserve being arrested, read your rights, then locked away in a secure hole to await a trial by a jury of your peers. No namby -pamby "plea bargains" either-   any more than you'd award them to an Isis butcher who just beheaded two Christian girls.

Then there is the Tree of Life synagogue massacre that traversed from ideation to reality. .  Eleven people were killed and six wounded in the worst ever massacre of Jews in U.S. History. The slaughter  - at a synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh  was the work of a  brain-poisoned crazy of the extreme Right  named Robert Bowers who likely got infected by Trump's own hate rhetoric.

We know that  Bowers took to "Gab", a white extremist hate site,  like a fly takes to  dog shit. There he shared a stream of anti-Jewish slurs and conspiracy theories, including repeating one long held trope of Right wing loons:

"Jews are the children of Satan"

Basically dehumanizing Jews just like Hitler and the Nazis did, turning them into an alien "Other" and hence fit for attacks.  Bowers didn't invent all this hideous brain poison, but he did imbibe it and it drove his actions like it has millions of others who even now are just waiting for the right words from their Fuhrer Trump to act.

 Bowers also frequently reposted anti-Semitic content that alleged Jews control the nation. On a doctored image of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he altered the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" to  read: “Lies Make Money.” Another post said: “Open you Eyes! It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”

Bowers was also fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) which helps immigrants settle in the U.S. In his last post before the shooting, this slime ball wrote: "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered."

Bowers, as Janice had volunteered at the time, at least needed to be locked up in a psych ward as a palpable risk to others, namely Jews.  

Then there was Cesar Sayoc, who - before his pipe bomb dissemination in October 2018 -  had been arrested nearly a dozen times in Florida, including a 2002 arrest for making a bomb threat. His criminal record in the state extended to the early 1990s, starting with his arrest for larceny at the age of 29, according to state records. Other charges of larceny, grand theft and fraud would soon follow across the southern part of the state.

In the 2002 bomb threat case, Sayoc pleaded guilty to the felony without a trial and was sentenced to probation. Probation for a bomb threat?! Why the hell wasn't he given five years? 

But then we learn the sorry answer in the WSJ piece, previously cited:

"Severe legal constraints limit what the FBI can do at hone. And anything that would allow more rigorous intelligence gather on purely domestic threats could run aground in the courts and prompt criticism in Congress."

So, let's get this straight: The FBI can go full barrel in to halt a band of Isis renegades planning to do a mass beheading and  blowing up nail bombs in Times Square.  But can't do diddly or squat if white Aryan Nations, KKK and other extremists are planning a Vegas-style bump stock mass shooting of blacks and Jews - say in Dallas.

Sorry, this does not compute! But then as we learn (WSJ, ibid.):

"Domestic terrorism isn't a federal crime in itself"


So a cabal of white nationalist, Aryans, Nazis and other refuse can plan mass slaughters to their hearts' content and no federal law enforcement agency can do a thing to stop it, i.e. "without evidence of the violent crime."

In other words, in the federal milieu we'd have to wait for the scum to blow up or shoot up innocents before making a move.   Thus:

"As a result the law enforcement response to domestic terrorism has been largely reactive instead of proactive."

What this means is that bringing down the hammer on these lethal malcontents is left to local law enforcement, such as the bust of the 15 year old punk in Volusia County, FL.  This was the imp who volunteered on a gaming site that he planned to bring his dad's M15 to a school gathering to take out as many as he could.  Of course, his whiny mom tried to defend the little savage,   screaming at the cops: "Well, he's just a little boy!"

Nope, at 15 he's no longer a little boy.  There've also been a half dozen other scumballs that  local authorities have busted who had telegraphed their plans for mayhem on Jews or  other minorities. They include one white nationalist from Ohio - who had also marched in Charlottesville 2 years ago, who even had obtained a .40 caliber weapon to take out the innocents in a Jewish community center.

Fortunately, in other words, local cops are not sitting and waiting (like the Feds) for massive violence to happen. They are taking proactive action on the basis of just the threats. As one put it on the NBC News last night:  'They better understand now that just making threats can get you years behind bars."

As it damned well should be, because threats of violence cannot be "free speech" as so many of the Right's imbeciles claim.

Former FBI special agent Cliff Watts in his recent WSJ Review piece, 'Our New Terrorism Problem' (Aug. 10-11, p. C1)   writes:

"Today's white supremacist terrorists band together online, further radicalize themselves and fire one another up in much the same manner as their jihadist counterparts."

And we know for a fact the El Paso mass killer (Patrick Crusius) got his launch for butchery on 8 chan where the local den of cockroaches cheered him on.  One even writing:

"The new guy deserves some praise, he reached almost a third of the high score."

Referring to a third of the nearly 60 slaughtered in the Orlando Pulse nightcliub massacre.  And as I pointed out at the tie:

"If the FBI had been monitoring the site they'd have been alerted to his plans, put a GPS or other tracking on his vehicle, then taken him out before he even got to the outskirts of El Paso  Then 22 lives could have been saved.  "

And as Cliff Watts aptly noted (ibid.):

"The overall goal is clear and urgent: detect violent white supremacists online and intercept them on the ground by increasing the volume of intelligence and the speed with which it is shared among federal, state and local law enforcement officers."

Adding:
"As white supremacists have been pushed from more mainstream social media platforms, they have descended on less policed, more anonymous platforms such as Gab.com and 8chan."


Hopefully, we can soon get the Feds to catch up with local law enforcement to bust the domestic terrorists and also ensure they're all put away long enough to never darken anyone's door with terror again. Or at least give them each 5 years each in a federal pen for making threats, even if they don't carry them out.

See also:

Terrorism

Should We Fight a War on White Terrorism?

by Harry Blain | August 22, 2019 - 6:24am | permalink
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And:

Constitution, Civil Rights, Civil Liberties

Are Terrorist Watch Lists Expanding Under Trump?

And:

Donald Trump

Trump's Putrid Anti-Semitism; But Oh Well, Just Another Day in America

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

Aussie Reich Fascist Mass Killer Brenton Tarrant Shows Trump's Threats Of Fascist Violence Have Even Infected Down Under

All of the Right wing mass murderers have taken their cues - and xenophobic  hate memes  - from the two ultimate fascists, Trump and Hitler.


Even as we learned yesterday the Connecticut Supreme Court had overturned a previous ruling and the "re-do" enables Sandy Hook families to sue Remington Outdoor Co. for its shameless peddling of toxic male (i.e. "Be a man, get an AR)  adverts, another mass killing erupted in another part of the planet 10,000 miles away.  This took place in Christchurch New Zealand where a self-proclaimed Aussie "actual fascist" (Brenton Tarrant) executed 49 faithful at two Mosques.

The scum right winger actually live streamed his butchery on Facebook, according to news segments shown this a.m. (CBS Early Show, MSNBC) which now places the maggot in the company of the most detestable vermin on Earth, i.e. slime like Anders Breivik,  and the U.S. synagogue butcher, Robert Bowers who was charged with 44 federal counts in the Tree of Life massacre.

Recall that Bowers, a  46 y/o truck driver and Pittsburgh resident was a committed poster on "Gab"  then the  'go to' haven for Nazis, White Nationalists, Aryans and other extremists.  Oh, and plenty of Trump supporters too. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the local CBS affiliate KDJA reported that a “white male [with] a beardwalked in yelling ‘All Jews must die’.”

Most appalling is how Tarrant,  the Aussie butcher, defiled one of the finest nations on Earth  (and the site for many splendid scenes from 'The Lord of the Rings' series) and traced his feral motivation to the Trumpist anti-immigrant, White Nationalist virus spreading in this country.  As he texted (shown on CBS this morning), after the slime was asked openly if he was a supporter of Trump:

"As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose, sure!"

Painting himself also as a "savior" in  a “manifesto”  posted online before the attacks ('The Great Replacement') in which he fancied himself  ensuring "the existence of our people and a future for white children."  - Hence, he evokes the nonsense self-portrait of many of the other Reich kooks recently-   such as Christopher Hasson, who had laid away a store of arms , e.g.

To carry out a terrorist purge of retribution in his febrile brain. (Fortunately this cretin was busted in time).  Meanwhile, Tarrant also expressed delusions of grandeur in his lame manifesto, professing his act was intended to "create conflict between two ideologies in the United States on the ownership of firearms."

Well, you're a tad late there, Roscoe.  That battle of ideologies has been ongoing with max intensity since the ban on assault weapons was lifted over 20 years ago.

None of these recent violent mass slaughters just sprang spontaneously but have clearly been percolating as more and more words from Trump and his platoon of White Nationalist crazies have been spewed out.  They've stirred up hate with their vile rhetoric -   often praising neo-Nazis and other filth.  Now we know the virus has even reached to "down under".

In this latest hate outbreak we've learned forty-nine people have been shot dead and 48 injured in attacks targeting Muslims at two mosques during Friday prayers in Christchurch,  This makes it   the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history, with more slain in Kiwi land than all of last year.  Prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, described the atrocity as a terrorist attack - which is what it was - and said Friday had been “one of New Zealand’s darkest days”. Police commissioner Mike Bush said explosive devices in a car had been defused and urged all mosques across the country to close their doors for the time being.

 Tarrant, the 28-year-old, Australia born asshole,  actually helped prosecutors when they got hold of his live stream footage on Facebook, showing him driving to a mosque then opening fire. 

Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, called the massacre a “rightwing extremist attack”- which is spot on.  But one wishes he'd have gone further and pointed to Trump as the immediate source of the White nationalist cesspool.

The toxic change since Trump's arrival has also been documented and verified by the SPLC .  The organization (to which I belong) has found the number of U.S. hate groups hit a record high last year at 1.020.  Most appalling, the number has jumped 30 percent since 2014, and followed three consecutive years of decline following President Obama's time in office.  The center also noted: "The rise in hate movement coincides with President Trump's campaign and presidency."

I know the average American has the attention span of a gnat, and even less memory of recent political events, far less historical or violent ones. But it shouldn't be too much of a stretch or mental demand  to recall the incendiary words of the Swine-in-chief  often just before major massacres or displays, such as the Synagogue massacre by Robert Bowers. 

Is Trump partly responsible for triggering these murderous misfits? Is the Sun a star?  Does a bear shit in the woods? Is gravity real? Dotard has regularly called reporters "enemies of the people" and encouraged his zombies to "knock the crap out of protesters". A good summary of Trump's rhetoric, in speeches and ties to Neo-Nazis, appeals to White Nationalists can be found here.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2018/2017-year-hate-and-extremism

Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal  put it  best on MSNBC  last month after the Hasson bust::

"All the accounts together show that Trump is engaged in a serial murder of the Constitution and rule of law. He fires anyone investigating him who wants to seek the truth,  whether it's McCabe or whether it's Comey or even Jeffrey Sessions. He puts in place constitutional jokes like Matthew Whitaker.  He tries to discredit and destroy investigations.  He dangles pardons at people who could help him out in any trials. He declares national emergencies without warrant. He discredits judges. All together  this is someone who is unfit to discharge his duties as our chief executive officer."

Oh, and let's not forget his most recent outbursts and threats of violence!   

As exposed by blogger Cody Fenwick (see first link below):

"Speaking with Breitbart News, President Donald Trump delivered a garbled but nevertheless disturbing statement in an article published Thursday that many interpreted as a prediction — or possibly a threat — of political violence. Though the outlet didn’t provide an outright transcript or quote the questions Trump was responding to, it said the following remark came in a discussion about “how the left is fighting hard”:

“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this invest[igations]—that’s all they want to do is –you know, they do things that are nasty. Republicans never played this.”

And assorted poor thinkers are unable to process how it is so many crazies, murderous mutts and degenerates are unleashed in his name!

See also:

Donald Trump

‘A Threat of Fascist Violence’: Trump’s Ominous Comments to Breitbart Reveal His Worst Impulses

AND:
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Asked Trump to Do Just This One Thing after the Mosque Attack — and He Completely Failed

And:

David Leonhardt

It Isn’t Complicated: Trump Encourages Violence

Excerpt:

"I’m well aware of the various see-no-evil attempts to excuse this behavior: That’s just how he talks. Don’t take him literally. Other Republicans are keeping him in check. His speeches and tweets don’t really matter. 

But they do matter. The president’s continued encouragement of violence — and of white nationalism — is part of the reason that white-nationalist violence is increasing. Funny how that works."

It's No Secret The Synagogue Shooter Is Another Reich Wing Hater Who Got Marching Orders From Trump

Robert Bowers, the Alt-Right slime who slaughtered 11 Jews Saturday, and his favored social media mascot, Pepe the Frog.


"This isn’t complicated. It’s not a conspiracy plot hidden in pizza ingredients. It doesn’t need to be interpreted by a mystery character hiding behind a Sesame Street name.  Republicans have spent years building up the idea that immigration is an existential threat to America. Republicans have also spent years alleging that Jews are secretly funding both immigrants and protesters. What Bowers did on Saturday morning is the direct result of that one plus one = 10 dead and counting. Bowers’ finger may have been on the trigger. But a lot of Republicans encouraged him to pull it. Including Donald Trump."  Mark Sumner, Daily Kos, Oct. 27,  Synagogue Shooter Explained Exactly Why He Killed - Republican Conspiracy Theories'

"To hear the Republicans you'd believe all these violent acts are just spontaneous events like some weird meteorological event. All of a sudden strange things happen, sun changes  positions with the Moon, floods appear, tornadoes erupt.....as if there is no coherent explanation for the mass killings, the hate crimes. It's incredible!"  - Julia Ioffe, today on 'Morning Joe'.

"During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly used imagery and tropes known to be associated with anti-Semites and propaganda against Jews. On July 2, 2016, he tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton next to a Star of David against a background of cash. When this was criticized, he deleted the tweet. The image originated on a neo-Nazi forum, according to Mic. (Trump also retweeted other neo-Nazis during the campaign, including an account called @whitegenocideTM" -  Cody Fenwick, 'Is Trump Anti-Semitic? Here's What The Evidence Shows', on smirkingchimp.com

Eleven people were killed and six wounded in the worst ever massacre of Jews in U.S. History. The slaughter  - at a synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Saturday-   was the work of yet another brain-poisoned crazy of the extreme Right who likely got infected by Trump's own hate rhetoric.  Dotard Trump called the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue “a wicked act of mass murder” and decried "antisemitism in all forms", but once again it was all posturing for the benefit of his acolytes, zombies and especially Right media.  This filth is no more sincere than Devin Nunes and the other traitors that continue to provide him cover.

Indeed, Trump's contribution to anti-Semitic hate memes, and rhetoric was reported last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center in its Spring, 2017 issue, e.g.


A good summary of Trump's rhetoric, in speeches and ties to Neo-Nazis, appeals to White Nationalists can be found here.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2018/2017-year-hate-and-extremism

Look not only at what Trump says but what he does, and what he did was stage another  campaign rally in Illinois as scheduled, despite the massacre.. Can't have his Reepo lackeys losing "momentum" just because 11 people were blown away by another hate -driven psycho:  That would be Robert Bowers, a truck driver and Pittsburgh resident who is reportedly 46 years old.

There was no doubt Bowers held far-right views.   After all he was a committed poster on "Gab"  now the haven for Nazis, White Nationalists, Aryans and other extremists - oh, and plenty of Trump supporters too. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the local CBS affiliate KDJA reported that a “white male [with] a beard …walked in yelling ‘All Jews must die’.” Social media accounts in the name of Robert Bowers contained antisemitic rants, and most notably for me - on the NBC newscast of Saturday  evening - when social media posts were displayed, I froze the screen and spotted images of "Pepe the Frog" attached to his Gab posts. 

 Yes, folks, Pepe the Frog - a onetime innocent cartoon creature - had mutated into the realm of venomous racial hate as first reported by the SPLC in September, 2016. This was some 5 months after being adopted  by the vermin of the Alt -Right White Nationalists of Trumpdom. Pepe memes subsequently became ubiquitous across 4chan, Reddit, Imgur, Tumblr, and other social media and image-sharing sites, and most often became adopted by the  Nazis, KKK, generic Alt Right and others.

No surprise then in late September,  2016, Pepe's green visage was designated a hate symbol by the  Jewish Anti-Defamation League.  The ADL's online hate symbol database is designed to help law enforcement, educators, and members of the general public identify potentially hateful images.  Thus explained Oren Segal, the director of the organization's Center on Extremism. He said that in recent years, hate symbols have proliferated online.  To be exact here, ever since 2016 - the year of Trump's  Russkie-assisted win- hate incidents against synagogues have proliferated. According to the ADL they increased by 57 % this year over 2016,  before Trump's election. So it was no surprise vile graffiti like this surfaced all over after the dumpster fire of an election:

Basically, Trump with his campaign hate speech and other expulsions afterward, had given permission for the crazies to come out of the woodwork.
Now, with things like the co-option of Pepe the Frog by Reich wing lunatics, anti-Semitic images are originating and circulating primarily on social media. Gab.com, Reddit's enclaves and 4chan provide a welcome haven for many of these losers  - like Robert Bowers.  

How did what was once an innocuous cartoon frog go so perverse? The Daily Beast spoke to a white supremacist in May, 2016 to try to find out.  As Dotard's hate campaign was really revving up -  the Daily Beast source said there had been a concerted effort on the site 4chan to "reclaim Pepe" from normal people in late 2015.  The image was clearly considered a useful vehicle to disseminate certain memes.  No surprise it has also been part of  many of the 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in the past year, many coincidental with one of other Trump words, actions.

"Nazi Pepe" then made its way to Twitter, where people who regularly tweeted messages supporting white nationalism and anti-immigrant views quickly absorbed it into their Internet repertoire. People who identify with those extreme movements (like Bower did) added the frog emoji to their Twitter handles. 

Unnerved by the insidious spread  of this hate meme, by August, 2016, Hillary Clinton gave her now-infamous speech denouncing some of Donald Trump's supporters, particularly the segment known as the alt-right, as a "basket of deplorables. A couple weeks later, Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo on Instagram that depicted him and other supporters as "The Deplorables" -- a play on the poster from the movie "The Expendables." In the lineup? Pepe.

Two weeks after that, the ADL made its official designation. Oren  Segal, the ADL representative, said that while the ADL was researching harassment of journalists on Twitter -- particularly the use of the triple-parenthetical (((echo))) around names to designate Jewish people -- they began to notice Pepe's face coming up more frequently. Segal said people on his staff were aware of Pepe's original, inoffensive incarnation, but it was clear that the frog had since become associated with anti-Semitic opinions online.

As usual Trump has sought to disavow any remote connection of his hate speeches, including calling the Nazi marchers in Charlottesville last year,  "Some very fine people",  e.g.

White Nationalists marched last  August with Tiki torches in Charlottesville, screaming "Jews will not replace us!"  They then gathered the next day where they killed Heather Heyer, and mercilessly beat protesters (below right)

I mean, good grief, it shouldn't take a Mensa level IQ to grasp that if a guy is pandering to hate symbols like these Neo-Nazis and Alt -Right Trump lovers, and attaching them to his "Gab"  social media refuse, he is one with them - whether in fact he formally belongs. "If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck" etc.

We now also know when Bowers took to Gab, he had shared a stream of anti-Jewish slurs and conspiracy theories, including repeating one long held trope of Right wing loons:

"Jews are the children of Satan"

Basically dehumanizing Jews just like Hitler and the Nazis did, turning them into an alien "Other" and hence fit for attacks.  Bowers didn't invent all this hideous brain poison, but he did imbibe it and it drove his actions like it has millions of others who even now are just waiting for the right words from their Fuhrer Trump to act.

 Bowers also frequently reposted anti-Semitic content that alleged Jews control the nation. On a doctored image of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he altered the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" to  read: “Lies Make Money.” Another post said: “Open you Eyes! It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”

Bowers was also fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) which helps immigrants settle in the U.S. In his last post before the shooting, this slime ball wrote: "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered."

Note this insane jabber was scribbled despite zero evidence of any such "invaders" doing anything of the like. It is evident that by this time, the brain poison had an analogous effect on Bowers' mind to what Jim Jones' cyanide-laced purple kool aid had on his followers.  Note also the analogy of Bowers' words ("invasion", "invaders") to how the Right media depicts the migrant caravan moving north from Mexico. Coincidence? Nope, this is how they - and Trump- roll.  Stoke fear into the denizens. Hope that this fear triggers a mass turnout on Nov. 6th, but also view any chaos or mass violence as perhaps, collateral damage.

For example, we now know (CBS Early Show, today) that Bowers believed the caravan was caused by Jews and supported by HIAS. That's when he then tweeted, "Screw your optics, I'm going in!"   Would he have been that energized if Trump hadn't been pounding the "caravan" as an existential threat at every damned rally he had? I say, doubtful. So it merely took his already virulent anti-Semitism in conjunction to what he interpreted - from Trump's rhetoric - to be an immediate threat, to act.

Interestingly, this nut was disaffected with Trump for not pushing hard enough.  But as Julia Ioffe has noted, it is evident that having worked his unhinged mutts up into a fevered frenzy with his toxic trash talk, many - like Bowers- have been left frothing at the mouth with perceived promises unmet. The slime Bowers actually accused Trump of not going far enough to achieve the political goals Bowers wanted.  Days before the shooting, he wrote: “Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist. There is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation"  he asserted.

Who would ever have believed one of Trump's deplorables would at some point out -Trump Trump? Well, Janice has warned of the possibility for some time. "Just wait", she said two weeks ago, "at some point one of these vermin is going to take Trump's words so much to heart he even wants to do more harm, and go further!"  Yeppers, and we've seen it now in two cases in the past week, his lunatic violent fringe wanting to one up the Donald the Thumper - one by actually dispatching bombs, the other by dispatching Jews.

Lest anyone buy into the notion that Bowers was a lone nut extremist  who simply went too far but unconnected to Trump's vile rhetoric, think again.   From a report in The Guardian Saturday, residual anti-Semitism had been a long standing virus in the Pittsburgh suburb. Locally, the epithet “Squirrel Hill Jew” had long been used to describe people from this tight-knit liberal enclave, blocks away from Carnegie Mellon University.  This according to The Guardian.  That Bowers was one of those who regularly used the term but whose anger bubbled up over the top into murderous action, spurred by Trump's rhetoric is therefore more than credible.

As the above link to the SPLC report noted, with Trump's ascension into power, hate and extremism had found a voice in the White House. White Nationalists, Aryans, Neo -Nazis and KKK finally had their man in control and they were liberated to do whatever they wanted, thus the unthinkable increase in attacks on Jewish synagogues this year and the spread of hate graffiti.

No surprise one resident of the Squirrel Hill community, quoted in The Guardian, said:

“I’m sure everybody in the community feels like it’s an attack on them,” adding that he "had feared such an attack for years".  Another woman said she had struggled to understand how the national epidemic of violent hate — so vivid and relentless on the media but in many ways still distant — had arrived at her doorstep.

“I can’t believe it has spread out this far,” she said.

But so long as Trump is rallying his crazies, it will.   The fact this pissant could "condemn the attack on the synagogue' but at the same time turn around and heap attacks on his critics, shows his words are empty as far as any condolences. They're merely a pause before he launches the next hate screed on the media, the caravan, the Dems, you name it.

See also:

• Trump's phony 'caravan' hysteria led to the Synagogue murders: Adam Serwer for The Atlantic

Cody Fenwick

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Donald Trump | Judaism

Is Trump Anti-Semitic? Here's What the Evidence Shows

Daniel Doubet

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And:

It Takes a Village to Make a Hate Crime