Yesterday, a deranged man named James W. von Brunn shot and fatally wounded a security guard at the American Holocaust Museum. American leftists, still giddy after the murder of George Tiller, are at this moment attempting to chalk von Brunn’s actions up to “right-wing extremism”; apparently, von Brunn was a white supremacist, and typical leftist projection, they have assumed that anyone who is a racist must also be a right-winger. “Will any of Them Apologize to Napolitano Now?” crows Joan Walsh at Salon. The execrable (and typically clueless) Mark Kleiman calls the security guard in question a victim of a “right-wing nutcase.” Markos Moulitsas twitters on and on and on about von Brunn being a “right-winger.”

Unfortunately for these leftists, von Brunn left a lengthy trail of writings behind on the internet that spell out his beliefs pretty clearly. These writings indicate pretty clearly that von Brunn would have been banned within his first three comments of posting at RedState, but would likely have enjoyed a long career as a recommended diarist at DailyKos. Let’s review the bidding, shall we? What we know about von Brunn is that he:

• Hated Christians.
• Despised Bush and McCain.
• Posted lengthy rants about “Neocons” involved in Jewish conspiracies to alter U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel.
• He placed credence in 9/11 “truther” theories.

This guy sounds waaay right-wing to me. I went back and tried to find some examples of RedState members/diarists posting similar material here, but it turns out that the few who were stupid enough to try it got banned and had their idiotic rantings replaced with amusing YouTube videos. Interesting. Wonder how it goes when people peddle anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, truther conspiracy theories, anti-Christian rants, anti-“neocon” rants, and other such fare at DailyKos? I imagine it goes something like this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. In other words, a smattering of disapproving comments, a roughly equal smattering of people agreeing with the tripe you are peddling, and no evidence whatsoever that the purveyors of the site disapprove in any way of you posting such material on their site. And folks, the hit parade goes on and on and on.

So I guess the obvious question is this: if von Brunn were looking for a mainstream political activism site on which to broadcast his views to the largest number of likeminded individuals (or individuals susceptible to coming around to his point of view), would he find a warmer reception at RedState, or DailyKos? I submit that the answer to this question might be a far more useful metric of von Brunn’s political leanings than the baseless assumption propounded by unthinking leftists that because von Brunn is a racist, he must be a right-winger.

Update: Leon’s not being totally fair here. Markos addressed the inordinate amount of anti-semitism on his website, in response to an accusation from that right-winger Harold Ford.

See? It’s not anti-semitism; it’s democracy. Besides – who can control a few thousand extremists? Certainly not Markos.

– Brian Faughnan