You don't have to be Aryan to be a Nazi (but it helps)

Mein Kampf is a big best-seller in the Muslim world, and now The Guardian reports that Jeff Wiese, who carried out a massacre at his high school on a Minnesota Indian reservation, was an aspiring Nazi (sorry, "Libertarian National Socialist Green"):

Jeff Weise, the 17-year-old named in newspaper reports as the gunman in the Red Lake school shooting, may have been investigated last year in connection with a shooting threat to the school, according to posts made on a Nazi website.

Over a five-month period between March and August 2004, someone identifying himself as Weise posted numerous messages on a talkboard hosted by Nazi.org, the website of the Libertarian National Socialist Green party. The party promotes a Nazi philosophy of racial purity.

In March 2004, a chatroom participant tagged Todesengel ("angel of death") began a thread titled "Native American Nationalist?" and introduced himself as "Jeff Weise, a Native American from the Red Lake 'Indian' reservation in Minnesota". Todesengel expressed interest in joining the party and said he had done a great deal of research on Hitler, a man he much admired. Later in the thread, Todesengel changed his tag to NativeNazi.

"When I was growing up, I was taught (like others) that Nazi's were (are) evil and that Hitler was a very evil man, ect," wrote Todesengel, in a quote not corrected for spelling and grammar. "Of course, not for a second did I believe this. Upon reading up on his actions, the ideals and issues the German Third Reich adressed, I began to see how much of a lie had been painted about them. They truly were doing it for the better."

On April 19 2004, he posted to the talkboard: "By the way, I'm being blamed for a threat on the school I attend because someone said they were going to shoot up the school on 4/20, Hitlers birthday, and just because I claim being a National Socialist, guess whom they've pinned?"
[...]
He went on: "It's hard though, being a Native American National Socialist, people are so misinformed, ignorant, and close minded it makes your life a living hell."

The banner on "Nazi.org" (I ain't linking to it) is a Nazi flag colored green instead of red, and as the party's name suggests, their philosophy is an insane mixture of racial separatism, anti-semitism - and radical "deep ecology" environmentalism, complete with links to the likes of Earth First! and Grist magazine. Some of their environmentalist stuff could have been written by David Suzuki, while their articles about the Middle East could have been written by John Pilger.

It's so hard to tell the radical right and radical left apart these days.

Update: as usual in a case like this, one is left wondering how the shooter got access to the guns he used. Weise, it appears, stole at least some of the weapons (as well as a bulletproof vest and police car) from his grandfather, the local police chief.

School shootings seem more common in the United States than in other countries (even accounting for population differences), and unless America has a disproportionate number of homicidal maniacs, relatively lax American gun laws would appear to be the main reason. I'm not sure this particular case can be blamed on them, though.

Posted by damian at March 22, 2005 01:20 PM