Sam Webb, General Secretary of the CPUSA, wrote an important article on the murder  in Wisconsin of Indian-American people of the Sikh religion by an army veteran with more than a decade of involvement with Neo Nazi groups.

Sam  in effect spoke  for and to the conscience of  what  even  many "moderate" and "conservative"  defenders of the capitalist system in much of the world would call a democratic "civil society," a society of rights and responsibilities. 

So far we haven't heard his reasoned arguments presented by anyone  on CNN, ABC, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Times, or from most politicians who have spoken on the question. 

 Sam contends that these crimes are not "completely inexplicable nor completely random.  Nor are they fully explained by the mental instability of the assailant......of more importance, in my opinion, is the larger political environment and how it directly and indirectly effects the perpretrators of violent hate crimes." 

Sam goes on to look without "naming names" at the last thirty years of what I call respectable and not so respectable rightwing politics and media, the recycled racism, sexism, and general reaction of the religious right,  and their enablers and protectors in Congress. 

After calling for a "National Commission to Study Hate Crimes"  something that would and should be expected in society which considers itself democratic and civil and expects  to be seen that way , Sam says forcefully that the murderer "didn't appear out of nowhere.   He was a neo-Nazi and his decision to pull the trigger that led to the Oak Ridge carnage was not his alone.   He was in no small part the  the product of a rhetorically incendiary environment manufactured by extremist rightwing ideologues and their wealthy backers."

Let me as an historian add a few points to Sam Webb's serious statesmanlike analysis, some drawn from a previous PA of mine, "The "F' Word  and the 2012 Elections," written before this  atrocity.

First the background.  Neo Nazi groups, some piggybacking onthe religious right since the 1980s,  declaring themselves to be "churches,"holding "festivals." preaching terror and murder against Jews, Blacks, Latinos, et al, dreaming of race wars, the use of nuclear weapons to exterminate the "non white" peoples of the world, even the formation some inverted apartheid separatist "white homeland" in the Pacific Northwest, ocasionally leading individuals or small groups to murder  Black people, Jewish people, others. 

Then the news reports the crimes , the violence is condemned, the individuals are prosecuted, and all of this is treated as a blip in the news media.  The media often refers to the individuals as "white Supremacists," part of a "white power movement," and leaves it at that.  When, as in this case, one is dealing with a Neo Nazi murderer, that is mentioned and sometimes swastika symbols are shown, but what the Hitler fascism that these groups worship the way Germans were compelled to worship Hitler under the fascist regime was and the devastation it caused for Europe and the world is invisible.

I looked at tabloid newspapers to see what was being emphasized.  The Murdoch press liked to highlight a 9/11" tattoo that the killer had, as if this had anything to do with what he did.  Other tabloids and some major newspapers and network television focussed on the killer's involvement with the fetishistic world of Nazi Rock bands  Once more there was little context and virtually no analysis(forget even about Marxism; some traditional interpretations of abnormal psychology might have been of some value here).

In the early coverage, both Television and major newspapers like the New York Times turned to the Southern Poverty Law Center to find information on the neo fascist movement.  Let me say that the Southern Poverty Law Center is one of the truly heroic non profit voluntary organizations in the United States, exposing and monitering the actions of a wide variety of racist and fascist organizations and individuals. But can anyone see the absurdity of mass media having to turn to a voluntary private organization to get basic information about groups and individuals that preach and practice terroristic violence and seek to foment "race wars" in order to establish some kind of racist fascist state.  Not the federal government, or state authorities.  When I read that  it reminded me a scene in Josph Heller's novel,Catch-22, when the big shot generals, needing to get some information which they should know given their position, call an ordinary soldier, "ex PFC Wintergreen" who is the only one who really knows what is going on.  News networks and elite press with budgets many times greater than the Southern Poverty Law Center, not to mention "Homeland Security" and various other federal agencies, in effect, calling upon the Southern Poverty Law Center  to give them information  about individuals and groups that they not only should have known but should have taken proactive steps to prevent before this atrocity occured?  Unlike Catch-22, the reality of the tragedy trumps the comedy

There are a few other points which were blips in the press and on television but deserve to be not only mentioned but shouted.  A New York Times story reported that  a 2009 Homeland Security Report on the increased dangers of "rightwing extremism" with the election of an African -American president was denounced by  many "conservative" aka extreme  rightwing  Congressmen.  No surprise there, but  the agency according to press reports then issued an "apology" to these Congressmen and distanced itself from the report.  One former Homeland Security analyist suggested that this whole event may have reduced the number of analyists working on such "domestic terrorist" issues as against  foreign and domestic "muslim" issues.

In a discussion, on CNN yesterday newswomen Soledad Obrien, interviewing analyists, asked why there was less in the news about such groups than in the past, a reasonable question.  The responses weren't so reasonable.  One talking head added insult to injury by saying that the groups of the "patriot movement" aka anti "government" militias had in recent years begun to disassociate themselves from the "white supremacists" their former friends, as if these parmilitary groups are either patriots or constitute a movement, 

As for the killer himself, Wade Michael Page, there is speculation that he was depressed because he had broken up with his "White Supremacist" girl friend, unconfirmed reports that he killed himself.  His military background is being soft-pedaled at the moment.  His did received a demotion and a "less than honorable dischage" according to the press, but so far no one has followed up to connect this with any neo Nazi activities in the military.  There were  some disturbing early reports that his military career consisted first of working as a mechanic on the maintenance of Hawk missiles, and then, incredibly, work in the "army's psych op" intelligence and psychological warfare units, investigating and developing strategies to combat foreign and domestic enemies.

Sam Webb's suggestion of a National Commission to Study Hate Crimes should  be put forward in Congress and Endorsed by the Obama administration as a way to tell the Republican Right that it is no longer looking the other way when it comes to those who preach and encourage  fascist violence.   When I discussed some of these current events in a course that I am teaching, an intelligent older student with a working class background, criticized my comment that these groups were badly organized.  He said that they were much better organized than I thought and that they support the Republican party.  He also said that he considered himself a "moderate Republican" until he began to run into these tea party characters.  These are the people in general  who will be in the field working for the "respectable right" and the national Republican Party in the coming elections. 

Fascism in action, fascism as policy and practice, is the organization, education and implementation of "hate crimes," and the more its existence is both denied and tolerated, the more those ruling class groupings whom Sam called its "wealthy backers" are encouraged to continue their behind the scenes support. 

We have had National Commission Studying Race Relations under Truman, the Status of Women under Kennedy, the 1960s ghetto riots under Johnson, even "Student Unrest" under Nixon.  This Commission is long overdue.  Hopefully, it will be begin to explore, as the first three commission which I mentioned  did, remedies and solutions, in the form of anti-racist public educations, federal laws that copy the legislation that exists in many European countries and racist/fascist incitements to assaults against various  ethnic and religious groups, etc. 

It is too bad that Soledad OBrien, who from her comments was well meaning, didn't have Sam to interview.  Not only would she and her viewers have gotten a different point of view, but one that frankly most of her viewers could both understand and largely agree with

Norman Markowitz