The 58 year old killer who entered a Unitarian Church in Tennessee was set on killing liberals.
He'd learned the Tennessee Valley Universalist Unity Church was a liberal organization that supported Gays and liberal issues. He hated liberals.
The Sheriff who reported on The message the killer, Jim D. Adkisson, left behind, stated the murders were motivated by "hatred for the liberal movement."
The killer intentionally chose the Universalist United church intentionally, coming prepared to engage in a massacre, with over 70 shotgun shells, ready to keep on shooting people until the police arrived to kill him.
He does not appear to a member of any organized group, but the episode is being investigated as a hate crime.
Adkisson does not have a prior record other than two previous DUIs.
Those are the facts. Now we have to ask some questions.
Was Adkisson a member of any groups, or a church that might have fomented his hateful views?
Even if this man hopefully acted alone it is chilling to all progressive people and groups, like the Unitarians. Are we free to express our views, indeed to allow our children to perform in a church play?
Adkisson must be tried on terrorism charges and the White House and Congressional leaders must speak out against this form of domestic terrorism too, not just the inflated threat from Islamic extremists that threaten American political and economic interests abroad and help drum up defense contracts at home."
Did he listen to talk radio that espoused ideas or actions that could have inspired his murderous actions? One commenter on the ABC website commented,
Day after day so-called "conservative" radio talk show hosts go on the air and blame the "liberals" for everything that has ever gone wrong in the world often times outright lying about something to bolster the point. The target audience of these shows is the not-too-bright crowd to begin with but a certain percent of any group is going to be mentally or emotionally unstable, this particular group moreso than others perhaps? So day after day these not-too-bright, emotionally unstable folks listen to Lush Rimjaughbe and his ilk tell them that the liberal, god-hating, gay boy, gun grabbers are responsible for making their lives miserable and eventually some of them snap. When this happens lets not pretend that the right wing vitriol that they have been exposing themselves to played no role in the snapping or at the very least the choice of victims.
Did he talk to anyone who could have persuaded him not to take the steps he took? Or did he speak to people who encouraged him to think this way?
Who really killed those Unitarians? Was it the preachers who spread hatred and intolerance? The politicians who court and flatter them instead of condemning their hate speech? The media machine that attacks liberals, calls them "traitors" and suggests you speak to them "with a baseball bat"? The economic system that batters people like Jim Adkinson until they snap, then tells them their real enemies are gays and liberals and secular humanists?
If you ask me, it was all of the above.
You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest of you at Fox News.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com and is a columnist with Northstarwriters.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
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Massey said that, after learning of Adkisson's alleged involvement in the church shooting, she recalled a lengthy conversation she had with him a couple of years ago.
Massey's daughter, Cameron, had just graduated from Johnson Bible College, and Massey was eager to share the news.
But when Massey told Adkisson, he didn't react as she had expected, and she ended up having to explain to him that she was a Christian, triggering an outburst that lingered in her memory.
"He almost turned angry," she said. "He seemed to get angry at that. He said that everything in the Bible contradicts itself if you read it.
"I was shocked that he had feelings like that, because I don't have the same beliefs. I believe in the King James Bible, I believe it literally. … He had his own sense of belief about religion; that's the impression I got of him."
Look at the whole conservative agenda: Desperation verges on madness in their their sordid little game. Failure has been known to make people desperate and insane.
Deep down they must know their bucket doesn't hold any water - so they resort to lies, fixed elections, Swift-Boating, assassinations and murder.
Insane people do and say insane things.
"By their fruits shall you know them."
by
mrk * (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 299 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:22:24 PM
It might be fun to blame those right wing asses and I certainly don't think they help but it requires a large amount of mental illness to do what this man did, regardless of what he heard on the radio. If he hadn't listened to the right wing radio show folks, it would have been something else that set him off. It takes craziness to go into a place and start killing a bunch of strangers.
by
Lee Hillhouse (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:24:20 PM
The History of the Genocide in Rwanda is a must read
The book, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families" is a frighteningly good example of why people must paid attention to the evils that have occurred in our past so that History does not repeat itself.
Many people will be very surprised to learn that the Rwanda genocide started with a continual beratting and hate speech against a particular ethnic group on a number of radio stations in Rwanda .... until all hell broke loose in that country resulting in almost a million people hacked to death with machetes.
I am sure they never thought something like that could ever happen to them.
by
E. Nelson (29 articles, 5 quicklinks, 25 diaries, 335 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 6:11:53 PM
I agree, the guy went off the deep end. But sometimes, when a person is unstable, hearing a respected authority figure on the radio can be exactly what it takes to set a person off. I spent five years as part of an emergency psychiarty team and it's amazing how these kinds of things can be set off.
by
Rob Kall (891 articles, 4057 quicklinks, 350 diaries, 1925 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 9:03:26 PM
Failed Conservative Values: Violence and Brutality
a relevant story
24. Failed Conservative Values: Violence and Brutality
This article is a rather harsh critique of deeper Failed Conservative Values. In interviews, Richard Wagner told me he thinks thuggery is a failed conservative value and Herman Blackmon mentioned the lynch mob. I didn't think that either the lynch mob or thuggery were actually values. They seem more like manifestations of a value or perhaps of multiple values.
I think this kind of "analysis" discredits liberals. Come on, some psychotic person snaps, and with no factual information at all to go on, we jump to the conclusion this guy was baited into doing this?
I used to really like this site, but it seems to have gotten too strident and sensationalistic. I don't think any of this is consistent with Obama's message of trying to bring some civility to our public discourse.
by
Tom Cobb (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:26:17 PM
Don't you feel the conservative appeal to fear and violence to solve problems - like going into Iraq, US prison system, segregation, torture, hate radio, etc. helps foster the overall climate?
by
Edwin Rutsch (64 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 155 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:35:40 PM
A troubled soul aided and abetted in his rampage by every neo-Nazi right wing dipshit on the radio and television. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and the rest of the vermin who daily use their corporate sanctioned forums to sanction pogroms and hate crimes may not have pulled the trigger but they were demons dancing in this pitiful and pathetic social miscreant's head.
They should all be prosecuted as accomplices to terrorism under the full weight of the USAPATRIOT Act, what the hell is it good for if it doesn't protect us from this sort of insipid domestic terrorism.
Just my two cents
EE
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Ed Encho (8 articles, 19 quicklinks, 57 diaries, 396 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:27:09 PM
I guess it's a good thing that the 1955/Homegrown Terrorism Act hasn't been made law yet, or my dear friends here would be arguing that anybody who ever gave money to this nut-job should be prosecuted and thrown into one of the camps.
For heaven's sake, it's about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
This a-hole was a total nut-job who deserves to go to prison for the rest of his life. Period. End of story. I don't care if he listened to Rush and Hannity. I don't care if he ate twinkies and nutrasweet. I don't care if he watched Faux News. NONE OF IT MATTERS. He killed innocent people. He should be punished. END OF FRIGGIN' STORY. (Personally, I'm just glad he didn't get the cowards way out of Suicide by Police -- so many of these creeps do that.)
I'm betting he gets off on an insanity defense, and the right wing will be right behind him, even though they HATE the insanity defense the rest of the time.
Let's make the right wing media OBSOLETE by winning the arguments and proving them wrong, not by banning them for their stupidity, vile words, and hypocricy.
by
Charlie L (2 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 737 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:37:41 PM
There is a responsibility for creating an atmosphere of hate. That's why there are laws against inciting to riot. The Nazis, Rwanda government, etc, first create an environment that allowed the manifestation of hate and intolerance to be manifest.
I think responsibility is more complicated than you are alluding to. Your term, personal responsibility seems to reference the conservative definition of 'individual responsibility'. Here are some more thoughts on that.
28. Failed Conservative Values: Jeeni Criscenzo on Scapegoating
I interviewed Jeeni Criscenzo in Sacramento, California. Jeeni brought up the prevalent use of scapegoating by conservatives. I find it curios how a Conservative Movement that preaches individual responsibility is so adept at finding scapegoats and not taking true responsibility. I think it has to do with the type of responsibility they preach. It is not the unqualified progressive sense of responsibility, where you feel responsible for yourself and the society around you, but rather conservatives always talk about a qualified 'individual responsibility' which actually is really no longer true responsibility, but rather a value of selfish self-centeredness. It's like taking the value of love or caring and saying we're for 'individual love' or 'individual caring'. The values lose their meaning and are turned into nothing but the Failed Conservative Value of individual selfishness and greed.
I would even go so far as to say that the above named are the definitive cause of the Dividing of Americans. Divided WE fall, but their ill-gotten gains from the hate they spew will cushion them from the consequences.
by
grassroots (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 41 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:51:00 PM
You have a guy with a busted brain. Then you have a bunch of people you don’t like. So you decide the people you don’t like, are the cause of this busted brain! Apparently, you are unfamiliar with a basic rule taught in Philosophy 101 – “Correlation does not imply causation.”
In short, it apparently never occurred to you to ask, “Did the busted brain get caused by the speech of people I don’t like,” or Do people with busted brains put people I don’t like on their reading lists?”
Then again, busted brains and people you don’t like may have no connection, whatever. I don’t recall the two busted brains at Columbine, or the one at Virginia Tech, or the two kids who did a random killing of an academic couple in New Hampshire or Charlie Manson, having any of the people you don’t like on their reading lists.
If you are going to credibly explain violent behavior, you’re going to have to do better than this.
by
Sherwin Steffin (15 articles, 26 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 103 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 7:50:52 PM
As much as I'd like to blame this on any and everyone who preaches hate and prejudice and use this to stifle their rhetoric, I'm afraid I have to agree with you. If the man read comic books, I don't think we'd be blaming superman. Or maybe we would??
by
Mark_T (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 11:46:22 AM
The events that happened in that Tennessee church is just a mirror of what USA politically and sociologically. There are a lot more chauvinist, right-wingers and racists in this country, than socialists. And remember folks that right-wing ideology is evil, and leftist-ideology is good, humanist and moralist. Remember folks that this country has always been fascist since 1776. USA has a fascist tradition, founded and ruled by slave-owners, and committing wars of plunder and exploitation against the people of this world since 1776
by
LincolnMarx (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 69 comments)
on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 5:57:11 PM
