Another Right Wing Domestic Terrorist Shooting in Quebec?

We've seen too often where the right wing fringies go off the rails, behaving violently.

One of their hot buttons is any language other than English being spoken, or any culture they identify as 'other', drawing a too narrow definition of "us" and "them".

Earlier at this year's CPAC, right wing extremist Peter Brimelaw, a dual citizen Brit/American who's first wife was Canadian, and who worked early in his career as a Canadian editor in the financial sector, delivered a rant against Canada and the Quebecois:

Brimelow stayed on message and warned that multiculturalism and bilingualism were “diseases” that could wreck American society as they empower minorities and suppress traditional American (read: white) groups. He claimed that Canada, which is officially bilingual, was a good example of how bilingualism becomes a tool of elites to help minorities (Quebecers) at the expense of the majority, and went on to call multiculturalism and bilingualism a “ferocious attack on the working class.”

Brimelow is the founder and funder of VDare, short for Virginia Dare, the first white child born in a New World  Roanoke colony which disappeared.  VDARE is considered a hate group, and both VDARE and Brimelow can fairly be considered white supremacists.  Brimelow was quoted in a 2009 CPAC related statement :

He called on the Republican Party to start focusing on becoming the party of white voters by attacking “ethnic lobbies,” affirmative action, bilingual education and “taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens.

When I hear or read conservatives protesting that Republicans and Tea Partiers do not hold, as a group, racist views, I look at statements like these from guest speakers invited (and presumably paid) at the largest and most significant conservative gathering every year, and wonder how they either rationalize this as anything OTHER than racism, or how, alternatively they ignore or accept it. 

Look at Brimelow, look at the other speakers and groups represented, then look at this shooting.  They are very much the same.

These conservatives are racist, they are anti-feminist, they are anti-gay, they are anti-immigrant.  They hold religious animosities, including anti-semites and islamophobes, with a sprinkling of anti-mormons and anti-roman catholics for leavening. There are more right wing terrorists than there are other groups of terrorists.  While all extremists are prone to violence to try to get their own way, the right has a very large share of these violent people, and seems far to tolerant of them in mainstream right wing politics. CPAC has been a perfect example of precisely that integration with intolerance, bigotry, hatred and violence.

I would argue that all of our citizens are equally and fully American, regardless of their origins, or race/ethnicity or blending of them.  That includes having a facility in multiple languages.  If anything, in order not to be left out of world participation, we should be encouraging the learning of more languages spoken world wide, not less.  Everyone should be able to be proud, openly, of who they are and where they come from; we had second class citizens in this country for too long.  It was true of slaves, it was true of Asians on the west coast who were for a time barred from property ownership and other full civil rights. It has been true at times of hispanics and latinos in this country, and it has been true of other groups as well.

My first language was English, my second, although not very proficient as a child was German, the next Spanish in elementary school, followed by the foreign language that came so easily I felt I was more remembering something forgotten than learning a new language - French.  After that came dabbling in a variety of languages, both old and modern, including medieval French and Chaucerian era English, and a little experimentation with a few synthetic languages.  That multi-lingualism or multi-culturalism should be frightening to someone, or signal any kind of diminishing rather than the enlargement of our national culture and identity is ludicrous.  Multi-lingual women must be nearly as upsetting to these old crabby narrow bigoted white men as a black president.

But that appears to be precisely what has happened here in Quebec, and not for the first time.  While I applaud Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for condemning the action, his own conservative political party has dirty hands from election fraud, and has been, like American conservatives far too tolerant of this kind of right wing extremism.

Stephen Harper was a co-founder of the radical right wing group the Northern Foundation, which in turn acted as an apparent umbrella organization for neo-nazi and white supremacist groups like the Hertiage Front; some of the connections to Harper's earlier political allies also maintained links with the Hammerskins, a U.S. and Canadian neo-nazi group that started receiving broader public attention after the Sikh temple shooting.

Here is the coverage from the Toronto Star of the shooting; no surprise, it's another crabby, flabby, old white guy with an AK-47, and a handgun, who apparently owns a sporting goods store.  Apparently he believed that terrorist activity, like crusing the internet, could appropriately be conducted in one's bathrobe and underwear.  If this old goat was so concerned about standards of culture, you'd think he'd start with being better dressed himself; but so often those standards are what they apply to OTHER people, not to themseves.  (Anyone want to make a side-bet now that he will have a large amount of ammunition in connection with his actions - you know, like they do? )

From the Star: 

Suspect in Quebec shooting identified

Richard J. Brennan Staff Reporter

Quebec police are attempting to determine whether a gun-wielding man wearing a bathrobe and a balaclava was targeting Quebec premier-elect Pauline Marois.

The shooter has been identified as Richard Henry Bain, owner of a hunting and fishing shop in La Conception, by the Journal de Montreal. The suspect, who is 62 years old and heavy-set, was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun.
MORE: One person shot dead during Pauline Marois’ victory speech

The gunman only got as far as a vestibule outside the hall Tuesday where the Parti Québécois leader was speaking when he shot and killed one person and seriously injured a second before he was apprehended by police.
According to one witness, his AK-47 rifle jammed.
As he was being led away, the alleged lone gunman shouted: “the anglos are waking up” in French with an English accent. Alternating between English and French he added: “There’s going to be f---ing payback. It’s enough. Wanna make trouble.”
MORE:Questions swirl over how close shooter got to Pauline Marois
Lieut. Guy Lapointe of the Quebec Provincial Police said Wednesday investigators were trying to establish whether “Madame Marois was the suspect’s target.” Since that possibility exists, the provincial force is “taking charge of the investigation.”
The provincial police are also looking into a report that a PQ member had received threatening messages prior to the attack.

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