A white supremacist’s murderous rampage

What happened

Federal investigators were probing the seedy world of America’s white supremacist movement this week after an avowed neo-Nazi shot dead six people, and wounded three others, at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee. Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran who had the date 9/11 and racist symbols tattooed on his arms and body, opened fire on Indian-American worshippers with a semiautomatic handgun as they filed into the temple for meditation. “He did not speak,” said Harpreet Singh, “he just began shooting.” The temple’s president, Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, bravely fought with the gunman—buying time for others to hide—before taking two fatal shots. When police arrived, Page shot Lt. Brian Murphy eight to nine times at close range as he tended to a victim in the parking lot. Another officer returned fire, hitting Page, who then killed himself with a shot to the head. Murphy, 51, was in critical condition.

The FBI said Page acted alone, and it was investigating the attack as a possible act of “domestic terrorism.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors the white supremacist movement, had been tracking Page for a decade because of his involvement with neo-Nazi organizations and racist, skinhead bands such as End Apathy, Aggressive Force, and Definite Hate. One song he played featured the lyric, “Wake up, white man, for your race and your land.” Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the SPLC, said his organization had insufficient evidence to report Page to a law-enforcement agency. “There are tens of thousands of people like this,” he said.

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What the editorials said

“Another week, another act of senseless violence,” said the Louisville Courier-Journal. Page bought his murder weapon legally, just as accused killer James Holmes legally acquired an assault rifle and 6,000 rounds of ammunition before the recent Colorado cinema shooting. The Second Amendment guarantees our right to bear arms, but in 1791, “that meant a musket”—not semiautomatic weapons and bullet magazines designed for instantaneous mass slaughter.

No law will ever “keep guns out of the hands of those intent on killing,” said the Boston Herald. Nor will there ever be a fail-safe way to identify extremists and mentally ill people prone to violence “until, of course, it’s too late.” Why Page targeted the peaceful Sikhs remains a mystery. He might have mistaken them for Muslims, as Sikh men wear turbans and have beards. “But then perhaps haters with a slim grip on reality don’t really need a reason.”

What the columnists said

Page’s radicalization began in the military, said James Dao in The New York Times. While serving in the Army from 1992 to 1998—when he was discharged for being drunk on duty—the gunman fraternized with neo-Nazi sympathizers and developed a resentment of black soldiers, who he believed “got all the promotions and were not disciplined for misconduct.” After leaving the military, he quickly built up a “résumé” of racist tattoos, said David Li in the New York Post. His left shoulder bore a simple print of the number 14, shorthand for the white supremacist credo, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

We ignore these hate groups at our peril, said Errol Louis in TheDailyBeast.com. In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security warned that the election of the first African-American president had enraged extreme right-wing organizations and racist “lone wolves,” creating a real danger of domestic terrorism. Politicians and pundits on the Right condemned the report as a smear on conservatives and a distraction from the real threat of Islamic extremism. The department’s domestic anti-terrorism unit was subsequently “discredited, defunded, and largely disbanded.”

Compared with the Aurora massacre, the Wisconsin shooting generated far less attention, said Rene Lynch in the Los Angeles Times.Perhaps that’s because it’s the fourth gun rampage this year alone, with mass killing sprees in an Oakland college classroom, a Seattle café, and the movie theater in Aurora. Now, when a heavily armed psycho mows down people, Americans are no longer shocked. Our response is “weary resignation: Yet again.”