Decoding Jared Lee Loughner

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center talks to Keith Olbermann about Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner’s textual YouTube videos.

Reading through all of his materials, or the materials purported to be his, he sounds quite mad, out of his mind.

But there is a thread through the material that really seems pretty clear: That thread has to do with seeing the government as an enemy. The books you mentioned, there’s a theme that runs through all of them, particularly the Ayn Rand book: The idea of the individual against the state. There are ideas like the idea of the only legitimate currency being backed by gold and silver. It’s a core idea of the Radical Right in this country.

The idea, weirdly enough, of controlling grammar, of somehow the government using grammar to control the people, is an idea that exists on the Radical Right. There’s a particular person, a man named David Wynn Miller, who has plugged this idea over the years.

This man [Loughner] also talked quite a lot in these strange videos of his about what he called “conscience dreaming,” but I think it’s almost certainly meant to be conscious dreaming, which is an idea that also has been tossed around in the Radical Right — in particular by a kind of British conspiracy theorist by the name of David Icke.

So a lot of these ideas — his burning of the flag, his talking about the government, his treasonous using [of] mind control to control the rest of us, and so on — these are all ideas, or kinds of shards of ideas, that exist very much on the Radical Right.

And then, of course, as the Pima County sheriff said so dramatically, and so truly, you add those kinds of ideas to just the amazing level of vitriol out there on the airwaves, and also in addition to what the sheriff said coming from politicians, and it is not entirely surprising that someone like this acts out.

Who is Jared Loughner? [Countdown]

nojo
1:43 am • Sunday • January 9, 2011
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5 Comments

ManchuCandidate

7:54 am • Sunday • January 9, 2011

Grammar is only tyranny if you can’t spell or rite.

RomeGirl

1:01 pm • Sunday • January 9, 2011

It’s weird what a 21st-century criminal mind he has. If the timing is right, he uploaded those “intro” videos after he bought the gun. He wrote everything in the past tense (I’m assuming because he thought he’d die, either by being shot at or by turning the gun on himself). All that profile stuff he did, he did for this exact moment – for all of us to read it, to have his own say, in a weird way to be his own spokesman. I wonder if this will be more common going forward regarding batshit crazy people who commit crimes.

nojo

2:09 pm • Sunday • January 9, 2011

What I liked about Potok was that instead of stopping at Loughner is Batshit Crazy, he demonstrated how the batshit craziness has sources. Loughner fed off an all-you-can-eat buffet of political paranoia, grabbing a bite here, a spoonful there.

Intellectually inconsistent? Sure! But how many folks are consistent, outside philosophy seminars? Look no further than teabaggers demanding that government keep out of their Medicare.

CheapBoy

6:15 pm • Sunday • January 9, 2011

Head of Tuscon Tea-party (Trent Humphries) is on the radio here saying the sheriff shouldn’t be making “political statements” at this time where “we need to heal”.

The next Talking point was this man was “mentally disturbed” and belonged to no political party.

So that’s the message, look for it in all R/W interviews.

JNOV

6:38 pm • Sunday • January 9, 2011

@CheapBoy: In OZ? We’ve been discussing a move. Kid says video games are too restricted in OZ, so maybe NZ. The plan is to sell t-shirts on the beach.

Decoding Jared Lee Loughner

Who is Jared Loughner? [Countdown]

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