Recent shooting in Pittsburgh -- POSSIBLE wingnut attack

[Kievan Rus]

I live in Pittsburgh and the story is still breaking, so it may not be judicious to jump to conclusions yet -- but considering the guy that murdered three cops earlier this year in Pittsburgh was another Freeper-posting, right wing racist nutcase, plus the other attacks committed by right wingers earlier this year throughout the United States, it isn't a stretch. I'm not jumping to conclusions right away and am not definitively saying it's a wingnut attack; it may and probably has nothing to do with wingnuts at all; but it may after all. It just shows how prevalent right-wing acts of violence have become that every time one of these things happen and I first hear about it happening, I initially believe it to be motivated by right-wing hatred; for example, in the year or two after September 11, I'd expect it to be radical Islamists such as al-Qaeda, Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

There was a shooting at a health club in Pittsburgh this evening, with five confirmed victim fatalities. From what early reports on KDKA (the local CBS news affiliate), all of the vicims were women as it was a shooting attack on an all-female aerobics class. If that is in fact true, it sounds eerily similar to the 1989 Montreal Massacre in Canada. An avowed anti-feminist nutcase went into a college in Montreal, Quebec and went on a shooting rampage, murdering fourteen women before killing himself. A handful of the most extreme "mens rights" screwballs refer to the shooter, whose name was Marc Lepine, as a hero; not unlike how militia nutcases lionize Timothy McVeigh, or the radical Islamists lionize the 9/11/2001 hijackers.

It was probably a personal dispute or just a crazy person committing an act of violence, but there is always the possibility that it's motivated by right-wing hatred. The radical right is a hate-filled movement that has no respect for anybody who is not white, anybody who is not male, anybody who is not heterosexual, anybody who is not Protestant, anybody who represents the United States Government, and anybody who generally does not think the way that they do. Any time that there's an attack against blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women, Jews, Roman Catholics, liberal Protestants, Muslims, GLBT persons, local/state/Federal goverment employees, Democrats, moderates, and conservatives that aren't raving lunatics, you always wonder if a wingnut is causing chaos when news breaks on something like this. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that the ultra-radical right is becoming increasingly violent. When the Holocaust museum was shot up, I thought a wingnut did it and I was right. When the three policemen were murdered in Stanton Heights in April, I thought a wingnut did it and I was right. This tragedy may very well have had nothing to do with wingnuts, but wouldn't be least bit surprised if it did.