I hope this guy didn’t have any children. If he did, they will have to grow up with the knowledge that their father was a cowardly, evil, mass murdering idiot.

So can we assume he shot and killed Sikhs because he thought they were Muslims? The irrational hatred of Muslims appears to be spilling over to other groups.

What an idiot? He did not know what level of crime is hatred. To hate people doing no harm to anyone beside being a vital part of the society. The government should ban all kinds of hatred groups and these people should be eradicated as these elements are not worth being a part of the society.

The headline is misleading. Skinheads have no unifying political orientation. There are racist skinheads, yes, but also traditional apolitical ones and even anti-racist skins.

“So can we assume he shot and killed Sikhs because he thought they were Muslims? The irrational hatred of Muslims appears to be spilling over to other groups.”

Blame Faux News for this, they group them all together and the sheep that watch believe it.

9/11 was caused by Jews. The idea that a racist would attack musilums because of 9/11 is laughable if it wasn’t so serious.

Ms. Kayden,

We can assume he murdered innocent people because he was insane, stupid and full of hate.

Is there any information on what hate group this bonehead was affiliated with? From the bands listed it would seem he was a member of the Hammerskin Nation (Max Resist was originally a Hammerskin band – Blue Eyed Devils made up of Hammerskins and Atlantic City Skinheads).

I call on the right wingers to lay down their arms, and give up their hate. Those who don’t, will pay with their souls.

Maybe it was true in the 80s and 90s, but SHARPies are really thin on the ground these days. It’s a pretty fair bet that if you meet a skinhead he’s a racist. Certainly there are exceptions that prove the rule, but it’s not an issue I would go to the mat for.

@Inderjeet Singh –

It would indeed be a welcome change to ban hate, but how would the government define it? It would lead to a bad precedent of censoring free speech. Anyone with an agenda could accuse someone else of being part of a hate group (even SPLC is accused of being a hate group by some ultra-right extremists).

“Heard nothing like that on NPR. From NPR he was Military up to 2009……You guys picking someone with the same name?”

NPR must have the wrong guy. Boston Globe is reporting that Wade Michael Page was discharged from the Army in 1998. ^[5]

Thank you Direwolf…skin movement was never racist to begin with..it was hijacked by neo nazi scum..

NPR reported that he was in the military until the late 90s or 2000-ish. I didn’t hear anything about him being in the military recently. In fact, the local (Milwaukee, WI NPR affiliate) reported that he had been out of the military for a decade or so.

One can be in the military and still be in Neo-nazi bands. There are a lot of different people in the military. Sadly, some are racist terrorists.

Where is Anti-Racist Action when we so clearly need it?

Just FYI, John Abarr, above, has good credentials when it comes to hate:

^[6]

@Brett re Inderjeet Singh’s comment

Good point.

Certainly I don’t think any laws on expression would stand in this country but I do think it is possible to aggravate crimes with a hate bias. I leave it to the legal experts to determine how effective that would be in actual prosecution.

Just have to say how saddened I am by this horrible crime. Sikhs esteem the preciousness of human life as one of the core principles of their faith and are well integrated not only in our society but in Commonwealth (i.e. “Western”) countries in general.

I’m guessing that it didn’t really matter to Page that Sikhs are not Muslims. What mattered is that they were not “white”.

Thousands of Sikhs fought alongside British and American troops against Nazi’s in WWII. FACT. Sikhs fought in the trenches of WWI also.
Sikhs fought in all major campaigns to help freedom.
Do not forget this and inform ignorant, vile, stupid racists that believe in hatred and not the truth.
This is truly sad as Sikh temples encourage openness. Will this all change now in America?

Ian, the bands he played in were Hammerskin-affiliated and he played at HSN shows and was at Hammerfest in 2000 and many shows since then. I dunno for sure if he was a patched member, but there’s definitely a connection there, and probably an affiliation.

NPR is reporting that he was in the Army from 1992-1998 and are also reporting his ties to the white power movement. Same dude ^[7]

Funny thing… Sikhs also served in the Wehrmacht during WWII: ^[8]

I have to admit that I was one of the ones who, on hearing about this awful tragedy, immediately thought that the gunman must have been an Islamophobe who was just too stupid to know that Sikhs aren’t Muslims. But on further reflection, I find that line of thinking rather troubling. For one thing, it almost seems to suggest that if Page had attacked a mosque instead of a Sikh temple, well, that would be understandable, if not excusable.

But fundamentally, it’s generally impossible to tell simply by looking whether a person of South Asian heritage is a Hindu, a Muslim, a Sikh, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian or even a Christian. And for someone like Page, who apparently subscribed to the patently false, intellectually ridiculous and morally evil ideas of (neo-)Nazism, there would be no need to make any such subtle distinctions: If their skin is brown, shoot ’em down.

If you strip away the fake logic and the overlayering of religious fanaticism and cultural imperialism, the basis of the rabidly anti-Muslim rhetoric of a Pam Geller, Robert Spencer or David Horowitz is much the same.

If someone is sincerely convinced that Muslims are misguided and need to be convinced of the error of their ways, dialogue and rational persuasion would be the proper means of tackling the problem. The rhetoric of violence and eliminationism just reveals how much the Islamophobes believe that “those people” just aren’t capable of understanding or responding to reason the way “we” are.