*AHEM*

[WilliamPitt]

Note: Emphasis added by me. - wrp

Jared Lee Loughner: erratic, disturbed and prone to rightwing rants
Loughner echoes concerns of Tea Party movement in videos that reveal fears about government brainwashing

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 January 2011 19.06 GMT

Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old resident of Tucson identified by police as the gunman in Saturday's rampage, left a series of indications revealing the mentally unstable state of his mind and the extreme rightwing causes he supported in the run up to the tragedy.

Just hours before he embarked on the shooting, he posted a message on his MySpace page saying: "Goodbye friends. Dear friends, please don't be mad at me." He also posted a YouTube video of written slides called My Final Thoughts. In it, he wrote: "Jared Loughner is in need of sleep."

In a series of videos, he gave a rambling account of obsessions and paranoias that appeared to be troubling him with increasing intensity up to the catastrophe. They included references to conscious dreaming, or "conscience dreaming" as he called it, a process of directing one's own dreams that he is thought to have practised. Another was a belief in the gold and silver standard of currency – a favourite topic of the rightwing of American politics that is regularly propounded by the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.

The tone of Loughner's rantings is almost exclusively conservative and anti-government, with echoes of the populist campaigning of the Tea Party movement. "Don't trust the government listener!" he said in one video, accusing Washington of mind control and brainwashing.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/09/jared-lee-loughner-rightwing-rants

...so, yeah, any and all Right-wing fuckbags who try to argue that this guy wasn't a member of their happy little band of dimwits can kiss my ass.

Twice.

On both cheeks.

I'll even spring for the ChapStick.

[AspenRose]

1. I knew the Guardian would come through.

[patrice]

2. "We the Living" is one of his favorite books. Wolf Blitzer totally forgot to mention this a.m. nt

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[Chimichurri]

4. The only ones in denial about the roots of this is the US media.

[H2O Man]

5. I wish that this were so.

However, some on DU are pretending there is no evidence of any connection.

[ClassWarrior]

38. Yeah, the river must be flooding.

They're crawling out from under their bridges like crazy, aren't they?

:rofl:

NGU.

[nadinbrzezinski]

68. I suspect some of our members rather listen to

no, not Mathews, he WAS making those connections, but others in the media.

If this don't change, civil war lies in the future.

[harun]

55. The Corporate Media knows full well the implications and causes.

They are just aggressively distracting from it because they push this garbage rhetoric every day. It is what their viewers want to see, they tune in for it.

[DearAbby]

6. Gawd I love ya Will

I feel like a cigarette after that...ahhhh

[H2O Man]

7. Thanks for this, Will.

It's an ugly time in this country. I appreciate your sane voice.

Definitely recommended.

[WilliamPitt]

12. Sane voice?

Wait for my article to come out tomorrow.

:grr:

[H2O Man]

14. Yes, sane voice .....

"You must believe me, for I am a mad man, and mad men always tell the truth!" -- Che

[tavalon]

41. Thank you ahead of time

We need your rage. I've been sputtering, just sputtering. If this were a just nation of laws, Sarah Palin would be indicted as a accomplice to a hate crime.

[spanone]

8. k&r....

[lonestarnot]

9. Waste of good chapstick on those fuckwits! Clorox to degerm yerself better.

[blondeatlast]

10. I was so hoping this came from CNN. Of course, I knew better. k/r

[Cleita]

11. They can kiss our collective asses.

I will even throw in some knee pads.

[frogmarch]

13. Thanks! I posted a link (with thumbnail)

on my Facebook page.

Since (except for my family) I think all but one of my Fb friends (old high school acquaintances) are republicanz, I expect to be defriended soon by many people. I hope I am. It'll save me the trouble of defriending them.

[Generic Other]

15. let them put that in their pipes and smoke it!

Good post, Will. Looking forward to tomorrow's editorial.

[SpiralHawk]

16. "Extreme right-wing causes" = Fear and hate

Ptoooey on the RepubliBagger Fear Freaks...

[malaise]

17. Truth will out

I'm betting not one of them will be making another threat for some time

[undergroundpanther]

18. Brainwashing?

I think that the right wing/GOP are the conspiracy they get teabaggers to fear. They deregulate to the point it's communism for the rich,disaster capitalism for the rest of us.Every point the right wing uses they DO.

Brainwashing is a true phenomena, abusive relationships are all about controlling others,So remember that when the GOP, marketers, lobbyists and hate TV/radio(NLP) and churches do it for are experts at it. Most people believe they are immune to brainwashing& thought control but ironically people who believe they are immune to such mind fucks renders their minds open targets for manipulators.

The thing is it is the corporations and the ad-men the tools of the rich republicans.Corporations are the biggest manipulators of public perception engineering out there.They instill fear in the ignorant,to fight the compassionate who understand the true definition of liberal,freedom & justice against those who rabble rouse .Rabble rousing is very effective the Nazis got power that way,exploiting the poor person's fears and ignorant bigotries.

I think the old rich white males know their kind of hierarchy and "culture" is a hollow imposition. They know corporations never served society,and the 'leaders' of the conservative on the outside, decadent&fascist behind closed doors old boys club are going to die and have to give up control with the last of these greedy sociopath obscenely wealthy groups of corporate pigs.They want a "new generation" to keep their hypocrite 'culture' alive. So they use tools like coultergiest,O'Reilly,Faux, CBN,and Savage to spew hate and a false certainty to incite one part of the population,to hate the 'other' parts. The rhetoric they use makes it so we remain divided and cannot find solidarity with each other .That along with the atomization of society into cul-de-sacs and 'nuclear families'the scared and isolated can more easily believe in the hateful rhetoric as true, and ignore These mega-rich creeps manipulating politics,playing good cop/bad cop and other such games with people hoping for resonance that makes a believer act and thus the bullies can claim it was not their fault..

The right wing cult leaders want to dupe and upset the emotionally vulnerable, strike fears in the minds of the powerless & narcissistic and power starved people,while striking fear in the good-hearted liberally inclined people twords the brainwashed followers of authoritarians on the right and direct that hate by implying..than when a brick lands in a Dem's office with a threat,or a congress member is killed,by the few who are so scared but too narcissistic to ADMIT it...they are tools. The GOP,fascist,eugenicist, corporate old boy network get what they want..power over& control of society to inch the nation forward in feudal sort of a slave/master fascism.The sickening culture that sociopaths THRIVE in and desire to impose .The gun nuts and militias don't want to realize they are outgunned. Left and Right is a false division.Why? because the people are being pitted against each other& fears over things the right wing joe cannot comprehend because they have made ignorance a virtue..

[ladym55]

19. Hooray for the Guardian

As I anticipated, NBC and David Gregory made SURE we ALL understood that no one could TELL Loughner's political leanings. This was the act of someone mentally unstable. (Really???) And as good ol' David led the round table of (including a new Tea Party rep from Idaho), all the reps provided mea culpas on holding civil discourse in Congress. Only Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Raul Grijalva mentioned the role of media ... and Gregory cut off Grijalva.

We need to address the elephant in the room ... the hate spewings of Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, Palin, and on and on.

We cannot conflate the left with the right here. And it's time we recognize that irresponsible speech + mental instability = disaster.

[jonthebru]

34. Blitzer the Submarine Captain did the same thing

pretending to be noncommittal repeatedly. How can these people look at themselves in the mirror??

[Mad_Dem_X]

51. It's a shame that we have to rely on foreign press

to get the truth about what's happening in our own country. Thank goodness for the Guardian and others of their ilk.

[Kingofalldems]

20. Yeah but no--the teaching freepers said he wasn't political

and both sides do it. I guess they were wrong.

[madrchsod]

21. there`s more people just like him.....

this won`t be the last

[upi402]

22. Anti-currency, anti semetics nut jobs...

that I've TRIED to debate are definitely not liberal. They may smoke pot and aren't religious - but are far from liberal. I've come across several in my years and the shooter sounds like these guys. They hate Jewish bankers, taxation, and rant about the gold standard.

[progressoid]

23. Yep I heard the same thing on CNN

Ha ha ha. Just kidding.


Our media sucks shit through a straw.

[Justitia]

39. got me! -eom

[fascisthunter]

24. Now You Did It, Will.....

always researching the facts and posting your insight here.....


go Pats!

[spanone]

25. kick

[GSLevel9]

26. we'll know more soon.

the atheist/communist/nazi curiousity and schizophrenic tendencies have me waiting for clear evidence. If they find a Palin/Limbaugh or Hannity book or a bookmarked audio stream to Beck or a record of a donation to her teabagger opponent then it'll be clear.

[JDPriestly]

44. Why would this kid pick Giffords as his fixation?

She is attractive, but then he is 22, and she isn't all that attractive.

The lack of clarity about his philosophy or beliefs is not the issue here. The issue is that he chose to shoot a Democrat, one of the few Democratic leaders in Arizona. He chose to shoot her because his attention had been drawn to her by something.

What, other than the rhetoric on Fox News and of the right-wing commentators would have drawn an obviously disturbed person like him to fixate on a Democratic Congresswoman like Giffords?

If you watch the videos of Giffords, she is quite calm, quite mature, quite restrained in her speech. She is not extreme in any way, just kind of middle-of-the-road and very rational. She was not the sort of person who would have rubbed someone the wrong way if they met her.

But she was targeted by Palin and opposed by a Tea-Bagger in the November election. Therefore she would have been also targeted by the vitriolic right-wing radio and TV.

So that is why so many of us are figuring out that the shooter's choice of target probably reflected a right-wing political view and why we are blaming the brain-washing and propagandizing by the extreme right for this attack.

I hope you understand this better.

In these situations, you may not find direct evidence. You have to use your reason a bit.

I try not to jump to conclusions about things, but I think that what we thus far have learned and can see in this situation suggests that the most likely explanation for this young man's attack is two-fold. First, he was mentally unbalanced and very agitated, but second, he targeted Giffords and her event because of some outside influences -- most likely, almost assuredly the right-wing vitriol of Fox and the radio agitators.

[slay]

27. Thnx for posting this Will

too many of the talking heads are trying to say he was a liberal.

[FreakinDJ]

28. K&R ..... [phone] 000 000 000 000 000 000 .00

[HuckleB]

29. K & R...

[Darth_Kitten]

30. somebody post this on SP's page on Facebook.....

please. :)

[spedtr90]

31. Also in the Guardian!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/09/us-shooting-republicans-giffords-loughner?intcmp=239

"In the US, where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long timeThe shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of rightwing rage, but it is encoded in conservative DNA"

[ZombieHorde]

32. Nice find. nt

[Swamp Rat]

33. k&r

[Rex]

35. The scum of the earth Glenn Beck would have called him son.

Why we let crazy people get on TVEE and say dangerous things like Glenn does daily, is a continuing mystery to me. We can only blame the organization that employs him, he is truly a sociopath bent on causing extremists to rally around violence and kill innocent people of the opposing political party. I consider him a terrorist leader from now on.

[Jefferson23]

36. K&R

[MrMickeysMom]

37. Libertarians are Republicans who want to smoke dope, right?

That's the only confusion that may have people spinning around and flapping their arms.

Otherwise, he reads like a misinformed ranter who listens to hate radio and thinks he understands the US Constitution, which Jews are trying to destroy.

Unstable tea party-Libertarian in my book.

[Overseas]

40. K & Bloody R-wing !! //nt

[freshwest]

42. THANK YOU!

I'm so sick of their trying to turn this back on Democrats and liberals! I've been reading other websites and seeing them put liberals on the defensive for this! And the liberals are going along with it! Unbelievable!

:yourock:

[kath]

43. And it takes the foreign press to lay it all out there. Quelle surprise!

[krispos42]

45. "The Communist Manifesto" and "Mein Kampf"... both left-wing novels love by Dems

Proof? "The Communist Manifesto" was a founding book for the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics, and "Mein Kampf" was written by a National SOCIALIST.


:crazy:

[avaistheone1]

46. K&R #175

[dreamnightwind]

47. Not much there!

I read the linked Guardian article. Really very little there to support their headline. I suspect the gist of it will turn out to be correct, however I'm still interested in more concrete support of that.

History is a battleground, so to speak, and one often won by those with power and influence. I hope there is real and verifiable evidence as to where this kid was coming from, otherwise we'll be listening forever to the conventional wisdom that says he's just a random loony or even a leftist.

I thought about un-rec'ing this thread, since it seems incredibly empty, but I don't like unrec, there's no harm in anyone seeing this. Also I generally like William Pitt posts. Hopefully we'll get better info soon.

[LawnKorn]

48. Fox News and the Main Stream Media can spin it all they want, but we knew Loughner was right wing

I could tell from the beginning that Loughner was a mind numb robot carrying out some twisted concept of social revolution. He was the unfortunate victim of mental derangement coupled with predatory preaching of right wing talkers with their slick media presentations.

[LawnKorn]

49. K&R

[BrklynLiberal]

50. European mediais beter at reporting what is going on in the US than the vast majority of US media.

Thanks for posting this.

[Swampguana]

52. It's scary over on the right side

[truebrit71]

53. The presstitutes in the M$M are in full-on sanitizing mode..busy distancing themselves..

..from the nutters they willfully coddled in the run-up to the election..

If he was a left-wing nut they'd be screaming about it from the roof-tops, but because he is a fringe member of their side they focus on his mental status, and not his (apparent) belief system...

[NewJeffCT]

54. As I said on facebook, there is a whole cottage industry out there

trying to rewrite history & make Hitler a leftist (national SOCIALIST, after all...) Do a google search on "hitler leftist" and you'll get a zillion hits.

If they can try to do that with Hitler, I'm sure they'll make this guy out to be to the left of Karl Marx if he has one or two political positions that can be construed as not doctrainaire conservative.

[Jennicut]

56. Nazism is Fascism.

It is outrageous that anyone thinks Fascism is a socialist left wing idea. It can have a mix of both left and right but it was never an outright leftist idea.

I think this definition on Wikipedia says it perfectly:
Fascism (pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined extreme Sorelian syndicalist political views along with nationalism. Though normally described as being on the far right, there is a scholarly consensus that fascism was also influenced by the left, but with a focus on solutions from the right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

[NewJeffCT]

57. Jennicut...

I realize that, and any serious scholar does as well. However, the dittoheads & people who watch Fox News have been shown to be less informed about the actual facts and far more likely to believe falsehoods/lies than people who watch/listen to other news sources.

Remember, we've also had Ann Coulter writing a book to defend Joe McCarthy and Michelle Malkin writing a book in defense of the Japanese internment camps from WW2 within the past several years.

[Jennicut]

58. I know, and it makes me so angry. I have argued with my own mother about this

She is a conservative that watches Faux news and believes Fascism is a left wing ideology. My parents were born and raised in Connecticut and I just don't get their extreme views. They have mentioned several times in the past about moving to the south because we are too "liberal" here but I doubt they would do it because they still want to be close to their grandchildren. By the way, I am very happy we have a new Governor in our state...and a sane one. We are very lucky in CT.

[NewJeffCT]

60. Malloy will be an improvement over Rell

However, I don't envy what he's going to have to do to balance the budget - he's going to have to piss off everybody, as it will be a combination of raising taxes, cutting spending on vital programs and also consolidating a lot of state agencies (which will mean some job losses due to job duplication) Hopefully, with the Dems also in control of the legislature, we can get some real change for the long term.

[Jennicut]

61. Yes, Malloy was left with a lot to deal with. Hope many in the state understands this

[ismnotwasm]

59. Even his most incoherent rants

The early ones released I mean, sounded Libertarian. Add a little teabaggery, and what do you get? Another untreated (Thanks you disgusting RW pukes) mentally ill person with easy access to weapons and a teabag approved message. Probably from Teabagger God, who is into smiting.

[mirrera]

62. K&R

[CLANG]

63. And I'll spring the the handi-wipes!

[ashleyforachange]

64. its such a shame...

that we have to continue to rely on foreign press to give us accurate news.

[Jamastiene]

65. Kick

I wish I could Rec this again.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

66. Kelly (Rep opponent) on "removing" Giffords: "Get on target [...] shoot a fully auto M16 w Kelly"

Jesse Kelly (Rep. Gifford's opponent):

"Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."

[Bernardo de La Paz]

67. "Kelly places the crosshairs squarely on Rep. Giffords" -- Kelly's own website w pic

"Kelly places the crosshairs squarely on Rep. Giffords" -- from Jesse Kelly's own website; full size picture at link:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/flashback-giffords-opponent-had-m16-shooting-event-help-remove-gabrielle-giffords-from-office.php

[HuckleB]

69. Kick.