The race, creed, color, and hue of domestic terrorism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As if the Oklahoma City bombing weren't enough... and then so much else.

Terrorism is supposed to be about the Other, and specifically the Muslim Other, so we have been told, so have the stereotypes played out since 9/11, and actually since long before, but the evidence amounts to something different altogether.

And the latest major act of domestic terrorism, committed by a white man against Sikhs, is yet more:

The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band...

Wade Michael Page was a member of two racist skinhead bands –– End Apathy and Definite Hate, a band whose album "Violent Victory" featured a gruesome drawing of a disembodied white arm punching a black man in the face. In the drawing, the fist is tattooed with the letters "HFFH," the acronym for the phrase "Hammerskins Forever, Forever Hammerskins."

The Hammerskins is a nationwide skinhead organization with regional factions and chapters that once dominated the racist skinhead movement in the United States.

The Journal-Sentinel has more:

The shooter who opened fire before worship services Sunday at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek and killed six people before he was killed by police is Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran, U.S. Attorney James A. Santelle said Monday.

He said officials believe he purchased the 9mm handgun legally in Wisconsin.

Page, 40, served in the military approximately between 1992 and 1998, Santelle said. Other sources familiar with the investigation said Page was assigned to psychological operations, or PsyOps. He apparently was last stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C.

But I'm sure this will be treated, at least in the media, as an isolated incident, an act of inexplicable violence committed by a "lone wolf."

This is how we avoid dealing with the root causes of such hateful violence in any meaningful way.