In early August, Sikhs close to Milwaukee were gunned down by a man with a distorted view of selective faiths of people. There was no warning. This was a random massacre.
Wade Michael Page, the shooter of the Wisconsin massacre, was part of violent skinhead communities like Hammerskin Nation. Even being a part of such a notoriously violent group Wade expressed no warning signals before lashing out and committing such a heinous crime.
Hate groups are just that. They serve no productive purpose and attempt to dismantle the foundation people’s tolerance is based on. With attention focused on terrorism originating overseas, it is understandable why hate groups have been able to thrive and grow more so than ever
Mark Potok said,“Perhaps, it’s finally time for Napolitano to take this problem seriously and rebuild and strengthen Homeland Security’s intelligence capabilities to face a clearly mounting threat.”
Although Potok brings up a great point, a random act of violence shouldn’t be considered the call to arms against these groups.
A clearer understanding, perhaps comes from David Gomez, “Society should focus on identifying and developing protocols to deal with the mentally ill.”
Something clearly wasn’t right in Wade’s head for him to commit this mass murder.
Treating this as a case of mental illness instead of blaming hate groups for the cause of this crime seems like a more appropriate matter. The opposition may say that mental illness would be a cover up for a planned demonstration from these violent groups.
In reality anyone can state their opinion about what they think it is. The truth in it all is the crime was random. It was also not pre-meditated by the entirety of any of the hate groups Page belonged to. Instead it was acted upon by a single man therefore holding him responsible.
J.M. Berger said, ‘Have we been so focused on Al Qaeda that we’ve lost sight of an extremist problem at home?’ In a way, yes. When our country displays strong military presence in a certain country, one can understand why the government’s main focus is there.
Money is being poured into these countries to aid the military. Naturally the government will be more attentive to the places they are sending soldiers.
J.M. Berger also talks about the military, encouraging them to do more to combat extremism in its ranks. This jumps back to Page who was allegedly radicalized while he served in the Army.
Although it is easier to point a finger and blame the entire military, soldiers at all stages of training are taught to accept their fellow soldiers as brothers. Without this key fundamental the U.S. would be a largely less effective fighting force. So after analyzing that side of the spectrum it is clear that this is false claim.
“The armed forces should have known better after terrorist attacks like the Oklahoma city bombing, which was carried out by its extremist veterans,” Matt Kennard said.
It is quite simple to make the ties that in both crimes the men were veterans of the United States.The stereotype that men are radicalized because of being in the military is hearsay.
The majority of people who commit crimes every day such as murder are not veterans. If the medical student who committed the Aurora theater shooting was a veteran it would have been highlighted and put in the spotlight that he was a veteran.
The talk of the world would have been, he was radicalized in the military and that is what made him do it. Assuming things like this leads everyone in a circle to not finding any answers.
The U.S. is definitely lacking attention towards these hate groups. However, by portraying these groups for the cause of a single man’s actions is wrong.
