Gee, for some reason, this story hasn't managed to make it out of the local news and into the national headlines:

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio – Following a pipe bomb explosion Monday night, police and federal law enforcement officials are trying to figure why a Center Avenue man turned his apartment into a bomb factory.

Police said no charges have been filed against Mark Campano, 56. Police found 30 completed pipe bombs in his apartment along with components to make more, plus 17 guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Campano is in an Akron hospital with injuries received when one of the bombs exploded.

As police and federal authorities puzzle over Campano's past and what he planned to do with the bombs, a former neighbor said Campano often railed against the government.

Barbara Vachon lived next door to Campano at the Center Park Place Apartments for several years and said he was a big reason she moved.

"He was always trying to get me and another neighbor to listen to anti-government tapes and watch anti-government videos," said Vachon. "I would never watch them. He was some kind of radical, and he didn't believe in the government."

She said there were other warnings.

"There were a few times I heard minor explosions from outside the apartment building, and he would scream that he had hurt himself," she said. "I never knew what he was up to."

Vachon said Campano seemed to be most active at night.

"There was a steady stream of creepy visitors going in and out of his apartment," she said.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms is also investigating the case.

Of course, if this had been a Muslim extremist caught with such an arsenal, we'd be getting talk-show panels on Hannity featuring Michelle Malkin ranting at length about the threat of Islamic jihad, blah blah blah. Not to mention chatty discussion on Fox and Friends and Morning Joe.

But instead, because he's just a white anti-government extremist, hey, let's just give it a big shrug.

More on the case here and here.

[H/t Susie.]

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From the very moment he was elected, right-wingers have been waiting, hoping, and watching anxiously for President Obama to take some kind of action -- any kind of action -- relating to guns. Just so they can start screaming, "He's trying to take away our guns!!!! Lock and load!!! Molon labe!!!"

Of course, he's done nothing. Nada. Zippo.

Which means they're now forced to just make stuff up.

This is never a problem for the paranoid, gun-toting right anyway. It's what they do.

Lou Dobbs was out leading the parade last night:

DOBBS: A record 1 million background checks on gun sales were completed by the FBI in the month of August alone. Those numbers show that gun owners are increasingly concerned that the Obama administration is on a mission to restrict Second Amendment rights in this country.

Supporters of those rights gathered in St. Louis over this weekend to fight attempts to strip Americans of their right to keep and to bear arms. Bill Tucker with our report.

And what exactly is the source of that fear? Um, well ...

TUCKER: Ask them why, and they recall the words of Attorney General Eric Holder on the need to ban assault weapons to help reduce drug violence in Mexico.

They point to the president's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, who personally is not just opposed to hunting, but said back in 2007 it should be banned. Or they will point to the president's consistent voting record for gun control, both in the Senate and back in Illinois.

Nor do these gun rights enthusiasts trust the newest Supreme Court justice, who in her only ruling on gun rights said the Second Amendment could only be applied to the federal government.

Hmmm. This sounds like almost exactly the same charges the NRA has been peddling since January, and yet the Obama administration has not acted on guns in any fashion.

The only new thing is the bit about Cass Sunstein, the demonization of whom began with Glenn Beck and has now spread to Dobbs' show. Dobbs and Tucker delve this in more detail:

TUCKER: All of them, of course, united under the banner of securing their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. For his part, the president does say he respects the constitutional right and promised that he will "protect the rights of hunters and other law- abiding Americans to purchase, own, and transport, and use guns."

But gun activists remain skeptical -- Lou?

DOBBS: I mean, the attorney general, Eric Holder, has said "They just want to do a few things with the Second Amendment." And the czar here, Cass Sunstein -- I mean, what's his deal?

TUCKER: He's a vegetarian, and he believes that hunting ought to be banned.

DOBBS: So, he's not big on hunting.

TUCKER: He's not big on hunting at all. But he has openly supported the right of animals to sue. He believes animals ought to have rights...

DOBBS: I'm sorry, repeat that again?

TUCKER: He believes animals should have rights, which would include the right to sue if they have been mistreated.

DOBBS: If they were hunted.

TUCKER: Or I guess hunted.

DOBBS: If they were hunted -- really?

TUCKER: I can't explain it, Lou, I'm just telling you.

DOBBS: I just think we should let this sort of percolate, because, presumably, the president knows this man, knows who he put there...

TUCKER: Yes.

DOBBS: ... as the regulatory czar over guns. That's truly, truly interesting.

Thank you very much, Bill Tucker.

TUCKER: You're welcome.

Cass Sunstein, the regulatory czar over guns? Not exactly. And by "not exactly," we mean, "not even remotely related to the truth."

Sunstein has been nominated to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, whose role it is to review draft regulations under Executive Order 12866; additionally, "OIRA reviews collections of information under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and also develops and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information technology, information policy, privacy, and statistical policy."

Guns are nowhere near this picture, except hypothetically (it would be possible, as a matter of conjecture, that Sunstein's office would review the efficacy of proposed gun regs coming out of the ATF). And that's it. That's the entire "connection" here.

But hey, don't worry, Lou. When the next Richard Poplawski kills three cops because he was afraid Obama was gonna take his guns away, we'll know who to thank.

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We've been reporting here at C&L for a long time on the way mainstream conservative pundits have been transmitting talking points, ideas, and a panoply of fake "facts" that originated on the extremist right and treating them as legitimate, thereby giving them credibility with the public they do not deserve, and in the process radicalizing increasing segments of the American Right.

Yesterday, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters hosted a panel of leading progressive who are ready to start speaking out about the phenomenon. It included officials from the Southern Poverty Law Center, America's Voice, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Council of La Raza, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, who set out "to examine how the mainstreaming of extremism impacts our security, politics, and culture."

The discussion follows on the heels of LCCR's timely report that was released earlier this week pointing out the toxic effects of mainstream right-wing punditry in helping to foment the atmosphere of intolerance, scapegoating, and violence that now surrounds the immigration debate. (Think Progress has more on this too.)

A classic example of this is about to occur: As America's Voice explains in a background briefing, this weekend's "America's Cause" conference will be a prime breeding ground for this kind of rhetoric:

For those who cover immigration issues, none of this hate speech is new. Nor is the fact that so-called legitimate spokespersons deliver hate-filled messages that flow seamlessly from CNN to the white nationalist foot soldier and to Congress in a flood of angry faxes and phone calls.

This weekend's American Cause conference is a vivid example of how the worlds of extremism, media and politics converge.
Look Who's Coming To Virginia:

According to the conference website, joining the Buchanan siblings at the meeting are such right-wing luminaries as: Tony Blankley, Tom Tancredo, Phyllis Schlafly, Terry Jeffrey, Ward Connerly, John Hostettler, Ken Blackwell, Christopher Horner, Richard Scott, Lou Barletta and Peter Brimelow. Leaders in the fight against healthcare reform, environmental protection, and more are joining unvarnished white nationalists to "Build the New Majority."

I've been talking about this subject on the radio quite a bit this past week, since it is the core subject of my book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. I've been pointing out how the underlying dynamic is almost identical in nature to the challenge confronting communities when they have to deal with hate crimes and hate groups in their midst -- writ large, as it were.

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Logan already gathered most of the relevant early details about the remarkable case of Shawna Forde, arrested yesterday for ordering the murder of a 9-year-old girl and her father in Arizona.

My old friend Scott North, who has been around the block with reporting on the activities of the far right in Snohomish County -- where Forde is from -- reports this morning that Forde may have been involved in another violent home invasion in California already:

On Saturday, Arizona detectives were pursuing tips that members of Forde's group may have staged a home invasion robbery in Shasta Lake, Calif., on Monday.

The victims, friends of Forde's mother, reported being robbed at gunpoint of nearly $12,000 by two men who showed up at the door and presented badges claiming they were U.S. Marshals.

Truck driver Peter Myers, 48, said he recognized one of men who robbed him after he saw news reports about Forde's arrest and photographs of her co-defendants.

He said the man who directed the robbery in his home was Jason Eugene Bush, 34. The ex-convict from Eastern Washington is a Forde associate now accused of being the gunman in the Arivaca killings.

"That is the guy. He pointed a gun right at us," Myers said.

***

Arizona officials have said Bush is recovering from a gunshot wound received during the home invasion there. Myers said that description fits the tall man who bound him with zip ties and then took cash from the family's lock box.

"He was moving real slow," Meyers said.

Forde's mother, Rena Caudle, said her daughter recently visited the area. After Friday's arrest, Caudle said she made certain that Arizona officials knew about the suspected link to the California robbery.

This may just be the tip of the iceberg with this gang. Already Jim Gilchrist, the Minuteman leader with whom Forde has had a long association, is making the signs of the cross in her general direction and declaring he had nothing to do with her:

Jim Gilchrist, president of the California-based Minuteman Project and a longtime Forde ally, made it clear Saturday that his earlier support of Forde should in no way be construed as approving the actions now attributed to her.

"Am I going to come to her support at this time? Of course not. How can I?" Gilchrist said.

Forde ran her own organization, Gilchrist said.

"Unfortunately, some people in this Minutemen movement have used this movement to carry out sinister agendas," he said.

We'll see. Investigators may not be done making arrests yet.

Indeed, it's starting to look as though Forde may have been organizing basically a low-rent version of The Order: an ideological army turned into criminal moneymaking operation. Only this time, anti-immigrant nativism instead of white supremacy is the ideological driver. And when The Order crumbled in flames, it exposed all kinds of criminal dealings on the far right.

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Glenn Beck went on Bill O'Reilly's program last night, protesting his innocence after Paul Krugman ably limned the culpability that people like Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and other right-wing yammerers have in raising the temperature of the national discourse to the level that now violent right-wing nutcases are popping off like so much popcorn.

It was, of course, an extended exercise in frantic obfuscation, like a cat trying to cover its dung:

Beck: Well, first of all, the only people responsible for anybody's death are the people --

O'Reilly: Are the murderers.

Beck: Are the murderers.

Ah yes, the nonexistent "lone wolf" defense. Gee, I guess this means that those suicide bombers in Baghdad and Jerusalem are just "isolated incidents" too, and no one but the bombers themselves are responsible. At least in Beck's and O'Reilly's world.

O'Reilly: Well, now, Paul Krugman doesn't feel that way.

Beck: Oh, no. No. But you know what I found? Paul Krugman -- he's of course blaming you as -- well, you're the baby killer ... killer -- whatever --

O'Reilly: The assassin enabler.

Beck: Yeah. And I am, uh, I am responsible for all kinds of conspiracy theories, I think I'm also responsible for the Holocaust shooter --

O'Reilly: Well, lemme, lemme, lemme quote -- here's what Krugman said about you today. He's criticizing Fox News:

Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda ... .

Beck: Never said that. Never said that.

O'Reilly: But Krugman doesn't care whether you said it or not. It sounds good.

Beck: Oh, I know. Never said that. You know, the reason I did that concentration camp thing or that FEMA story was because I snapped on the air one day.

O'Reilly: No! You?

Beck: Somebody called me on the radio and I said, 'Can we stop with the FEMA camps? Can we stop with the FEMA camps? I want, one way or another, I want it yes or no.' So I went to my staff and I said, 'I want proof that these don't exist, please?' A couple -- oh, maybe about a week later they came to me and said, 'Well, we don't really have proof' -- I said, 'You've gotta be kidding me. What do you mean, we don't really have proof.' We contracted with Popular Mechanics. It took us, ah, four weeks -- the reason why it took us four weeks is because I said, 'See this video on television? I want you to find that prison, go there, and tell everybody what it is so we can A-B compare.'

O'Reilly: And they couldn't find it.

Beck: No, we found what's called the 'prison'. It's an abandoned train depot.

O'Reilly: But it wasn't a prison.

Beck: It's not a prison.

O'Reilly: But it doesn't matter what you say, or what I say. They're going to take it and -- what Krugman wanted to do was he wanted to tell is readers -- who never watch you, by the way, they never watch Fox News either -- that you are accusing Obama of building concentration camps.

Well, Beck did indeed run a noteworthy segment that actually debunked the FEMA concentration-camp theories. But it was something akin to running a single correction on A23 for a series of sensationally bannered stories on A1.

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[Note: I was interviewed last night for CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 program to discuss lone wolves. My interview didn't air yesterday, but Cooper indicated they'd be reporting more on the "lone wolf" phenomenon tonight, so here's hoping my interview airs this evening. In the meantime, here's a warmup report, featuring the first of Cooper's pieces.]

When the Department of Homeland Security issued that law-enforcement bulletin on right-wing extremists two months ago, the mainstream right's chief shrieking point was that somehow the bulletin had conflated them with the extremist right-wingers.

Some typical headlines: "DHS Report Labels Conservatives as Radical Extremists". "The DHS Declares Everyone In America Is A Domestic Terrorist". "DHS To Target Conservatives." "New DHS Domestic Terrorism Report Targets Millions of Americans". And on and on. The upshot: Homeland Security was labeling conservatives America's chief terrorist threat.

But if you read the actual report, here's what it says is the chief domestic-terror threat America faces:

DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Information from law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.

[..] DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts.

[..] Similarly, recent state and municipal law enforcement reporting has warned of the dangers of rightwing extremists embracing the tactics of “leaderless resistance” and of lone wolves carrying out acts of violence.

Now, here's the odd thing about "lone wolves": Right-wingers like to use the solitary nature of this kind of terrorist act to dismiss them as "isolated incidents." But in reality, the continuing existence of acts of this nature demonstrates primarily that the radical right in America is alive, well, and functioning better than it should. And the continuing -- and as we've seen this week, ultimately futile -- attempts by the right to whitewash their existence from the public consciousness have played no small part in helping that trend continue.

Watch the above video for an instructive comparison in how this is handled by a right-winger like Fox's Bill O'Reilly, and a more rational, rather centrist approach taken by Anderson Cooper and his guests on AC360 last night.

O'Reilly declares the matter over -- move along, move along -- because this was just a "lone nutcase." Meanwhile, Cooper and the SPLC's Mark Potok and anti-racist activist David Gletty have a thorough an rational discussion of what lone wolves are about.

As Potok explains, the "lone wolf" concept was popularized in the late 1980s by an Aryan Nations leader named Louis Beam as an extension of his strategy of "leaderless resistance." One white supremacist, a fellow named Alex Curtis, even went so far as to develop a "point system" for lone wolves.

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We're learning more and more about the man who walked into the Holocaust Museum in D.C. this morning and opened fire on a guard.

First, more personal details from MSNBC:

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as James Wenneker von Brunn, 88, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, NBC News reported. NBC said he may have had connections to hate groups or anti-government groups.

... Von Brunn is believed to have had contact with law enforcement in the past, according to NBC. A D.C. Superior Court jury convicted a man by the same name in 1983 of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board.

The case involved a 1981 incident in which police arrested Von Brunn at the board's headquarters carrying several weapons. He was convicted and later released from federal prison in 1989, records show.

What this tells us, of course, is that he was "sovereign citizen" -- just like Dr. George Tiller's assassin. If he was attempting a "citizen's arrest" of Alan Greenspan as far back as 1981, that almost certainly means he was an adherent of Posse Comitatus ideology, and very likely Christian Identity as well.

VonBrunn had a Website (now unavailable) where he promoted his online book, "Kill the Best Gentiles". Here's a screen grab:

Here's how he described his 1981 arrest:

In 1981 von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison. He is now an artist and author and lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore."

I contemplated putting up the first six chapters of his book so people could see how far gone this guy is, but it's too vile. Here's a sample of his short work:

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Good God. This looks like the latest episode in what is looking like the spate of right-wing violence we've been predicting:

WASHINGTON - At least two people were shot at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on Wednesday, authorities say.

D.C. police spokeswoman Traci Hughes said a person walked into the museum with a rifle and shot a guard. Hughes says the shooter was also shot.

Hughes says the victims' conditions were not known. Both were being rushed to a hospital.

I was just in the Holocaust Museum on Friday. It is a sacred and hallowed place, and this man was clearly out to defile it. More details as they arrive.

UPDATE: MSNBC's Pete Williams is reporting that the suspect was an elderly man who belonged to white-supremacist organizations. More details shortly.

UPDATE2: Here are the details so far from Williams:

The suspect, who was not identified, was reportedly a man, born in 1920, who had possible connections to hate groups or anti-government groups.

(Please donate to C&L's 2009 fundraiser if you can. We need your support.)

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Well, you had to figure this was coming:

The Justice Department on Friday opened an investigation into the killing of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller to see whether the accused gunman had accomplices.

The department will investigate possible federal crimes in connection with Dr. Tiller's slaying at his church on Sunday in Wichita. State prosecutors have already ruled out seeking the death penalty against the accused gunman, but federal prosecutors did not rule out doing so as they announced their own investigation.

"The Department of Justice will work tirelessly to determine the full involvement of any and all actors in this horrible crime," said Loretta King, head of the department's civil rights division.

Anyone who played a role in the killing, she said, will be prosecuted "to the full extent of federal law."

The sound of sphincters clenching from people like Randall Terry and Cheryl Sullenger could be heard for miles and miles.

You can read the text of the DOJ release here.

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Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the Fox talkers have been busy proclaiming their utter innocence in the assassination of Dr. George Tiller -- as well as the innocence of the anti-abortion groups that were harassing Tiller prior to his death. They've been adamant that only Scott Roeder, the assassin, bears any actual culpability.

Which may be why one of their former guests, Jill Stanek, has been busy playing the anti-abortion version of Radio Rwanda by posting pictures and addresses of the nation's only two remaining late-term abortion providers. Emily Douglas of RH Reality Check (via Jill at Feministe) has the details:

[S]ome anti-choice activists -- even now -- seem only too happy to aid and abet the crazy ones who will resort to violence. Or else why, three days after the assassination of a medical doctor who provides late-term abortions, did Jill Stanek post on her blog photographs of the clinic of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, another physician who provides late-term abortions and who has said he is willing to take over providing services at Dr. Tiller's clinic?

By way of introduction, Stanek writes, "Let's take a station break to view photos of Carhart's "nondescript building," taken in March 2009 on the day it reopened following refurbishment after a fire (NOT blamed on pro-lifers). It was almost immediately shut down because Carhart reopened without getting an occupancy permit, as I previously reported, and was running his electricity off a generator..." She and her readers just want "to take a look." Why? She wants to prove her point that it's a dingy building? Over Carhart's safety, and the safety of his staff and patients?

This is a woman that both Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have featured on their Fox News programs as an ostensibly credible witness. Ellen at Newshounds pointed out last year after the Hannity appearance just how dubious a witness Stanek actually is.

Appropriately, The General has written to Stanek's pastor, suggesting a rifle-blessing ceremony.

OK, enough. We finally reached our breaking point with Glenn Beck on Friday night.

Crooks and Liars has always been a watchdog site -- we watch the liars and thieves and crazies who come on your TV sets and we run the clips so you don't have to watch their shows. We always strive to find the wingnuttiest, most hypocritical, most mendacious and outright asinine examples we can find every day -- and nearly always they come from our friends on the right.

But Beck has recently become a special case. Every day for the last couple of months, when we've surveyed the wreckage of that day's right-wing video, Beck's have been the craziest, wingnuttiest shows out there. If he is where the American Right is heading, he bears watching.

But at some point the circuits just overload.

Friday night's show, which was all about extending Beck's previously stated belief that Obama is marching us into fascism, and helping plump Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism thesis, was that point.

Since I'm a student of the subject of fascism, I've written a lengthy response at my blog. But I'm not going to burden C&L readers with it.

We're not going to drop covering Beck altogether. We'll continue to report it whenever he makes a dangerous pronunciamento, of course, because our reasons for monitoring him in the first place have never gone away: His rhetoric is laden with particularly dangerous extremism, and he has the potential to wreak great damage. Indeed, that reason for keeping watch on him couldn't be more acute. And so simply reporting the dangerous stuff will keep him on our front pages enough.

But I dunno about the rest of you, but I've had my fill of the Daily Krazee from Planet Wingnuttia, particularly the silly stuff like the weeping and the ongoing affair with that great right-wing mind, the Spawn of Lucianne. Beck's "912 Project" looks likely to devolve into a cult we can just call Jonahnism. It's been fun, but it's simply right-wing dumbassery for its own sake.

We get it, Glenn. Hopefully everyone else will, eventually, too.

One of the hallmarks of the militia movement of the 1990s was the way it inspired violence: by essentially loosing the moorings of their followers from reality by promulgating a toxic brew of conspiracy theories, right-wing historical revisionism, and a bevy of false "facts" and claims against government officials and liberals generally. Chief among these, of course, was the belief that Bill Clinton and the New World Order were coming to take their guns away -- which, of course, he never did, though he did manage to pass an assault-weapons ban.

So when we point out the toxic effects of the revival of this kind of irresponsible rhetoric, it's because there's a real history behind it. It's not mere presupposition to point out that fearmongering that promotes palpably false and distorted claims often brings violent results; we already are too familiar with this causal relationship from experience.

The difference between the 1990s and now? When I was hearing talk like this then, it was coming out of the mouths of the Bo Gritzes and John Trochmanns -- the leaders and fanatical ideologues who drove the militia movement.

Now, it's coming out of the mouths of people with mainstream media programs: Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter.

Media Matters has compiled a video documenting how rabidly the "Obama wants to grab our guns" meme has been broadcast to the True Believers of the American Right including Beck -- who reiterated his belief the Monday after the Pittsburgh shootings:

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Bill O'Reilly is unhappy that evil liberal bloggers are connecting the hateful, violent, and paranoid rhetoric coming from the likes of himself and Glenn Beck to actual incidents of violence.

So he and Beck sat down to talk about it last night. And of course, much unintentional hilarity ensued:

O'Reilly: As you may know, the Factor and the Glenn Beck Program are enjoying huge ratings. ... On the flip side, CNN and NBC, their cable networks are doing very poorly. In the first quarter of the month, Fox News had 10 of the Top 10 cable news programs. That means the others didn't have any. We had all 10.

That's causing anger and desperation on the left. And now some of these haters are accusing Beck, me and others of inciting violence. As we reported last night on Policing the Net, these despicable people are now using murder to attack people with whom they disagree.

With us now to respond is Glenn Beck. So you understand that this is just the jealousy factor.

Beck: Oh yeah. ... [Nattering about ratings]

O'Reilly: Now, you had actually addressed -- for the folks that don't know what we're talking about, the tragedies in Binghamton and Pittsburgh, where 14 people were killed in Binghamton and three police officers in Pittsburgh, were driven by madmen. People who flip and they go in and they do this. And then these commentators, if you want to call them that, Internet fanatics, whatever word you wanna use, say, 'Oh no, O'Reilly and Beck, because they are complaining about the state of the union right now, they're responsible.'

It's absurd. It is hateful, obviously. I tend to ignore it. But you actually did something on it, on your show.

Actually, Bill, the connections to violent incidents we pointed out had nothing to do with you "complaining about the state of the union right now." They had to to with mainstream conservative commentators like you and Mr. Beck irresponsibly promulgating conspiracy theories and political beliefs systems that are both paranoiac and bereft of any factual basis in the real world, such as the notion of a looming One World Government or the claims that the government is building concentration camps and that Obama wants to take our guns away.

Because all three of these claims, as we saw this weekend, play out in horrific ways in real life. It's classic fearmongering, and the fact that it produces violent behavior should not surprise anyone.

Not that these guys care about that. They're too giddy about those most excellent ratings.

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An astonishing thing seems to have happened to the case of Richard Poplawski and the three dead Pittsburgh policemen: It's been turned into a story about dog pee -- and not about the fact that Poplawski was fueled by a toxic mix of white-supremacist/conspiracy-theorist paranoia and mainstream-media fearmongering, including from the likes of Glenn Beck and Fox News.

Maybe the media are collectively embarrassed by the way this case demonstrates how they play an important role in whipping up the far-right crazies out there -- and they should be. Because not only did Richard Poplawski avidly participate in white-supremacist online forums and right-wing conspiracy-theory sites, he also avidly consumed mainstream conservative media, particularly Fox.

The classic instance of this: A few weeks ago, Poplawski posted a clip of Beck talking about FEMA concentration camps on the neo-Nazi Stormfront forum site. (You can see the clip from the show in question above.)

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters noticed yesterday that the New York Times completely ignored the white-supremacy aspect of the story, running an AP story that only briefly alluded to Poplawski's paranoiac fears and instead focused on the dog-pee-on-the-carpet angle. David Waldman at Daily Kos noted a similar trend.

MSNBC, which ran the same story, had this for a headline:

Meanwhile, Mark Pitcavage at the Anti-Defamation League published his findings Monday:

-- Poplawski believed that the federal government, the media, and the banking system are all largely or completely controlled by Jews. He thought African-Americans were "vile" and non-white races inferior to whites.

-- He also believed that a conspiracy led by "evil Zionists" and "greedy traitorous goyim" was "ramping up" a police state in the United States for malign purposes.

-- Web sites like the neo-Nazi Stormfront forums and the anti-government conspiracy Infowars site fueled his racist, anti-Semitic, and conspiratorial mindset.

... Poplawski bought into the SHTF/TEOTWAKI [S--t Hits The Fan/The End Of The World As We Know It] conspiracy theories hook, line and sinker, even posting a link to Stormfront of a YouTube video featuring talk show host Glenn Beck talking about FEMA camps with Congressman Ron Paul. When the city of Pittsburgh got a Homeland Security grant to add surveillance cameras to protect downtown bridges, Poplawski told Stormfronters that it was "ramping up the police state." He said, too, that he gave warnings to grocery store customers he encountered (but only if they were white) to stock up on canned goods and other long-lasting foods.

Well, at least Dennis Roddy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- who was one of the first reporters on this story -- carried most of the details and more in his Monday story:

Accused cop-killer Richard Poplawski spent hours posting racist messages on an extremist right-wing Web site, decrying blacks and Latinos and warning of forthcoming economic collapse fueled by the "Zionist occupation" of America, an expert in political extremism has determined. Earlier, he had praised the "AK" rifle as his ideal weapon.

It was an AK-47 that police say Mr. Poplawski used to gun down three Pittsburgh police officers who arrived at his house Saturday morning in the midst of a domestic dispute.

An account kept on Stormfront, a gathering place for racial extremists and others from the far-right show Mr. Poplawski's increasing belief in a coming economic and political collapse in the days leading up to the time of the deadly standoff in which he is charged with killing three Pittsburgh police officers.

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I'm proud to announce today the publication of my fourth book: The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, by PoliPoint Press.

The book is an outgrowth of the work I've done over the years at my old blog Orcinus, where the chief subject since the very first post has been the intersection of right-wing extremism and mainstream politics. Indeed, anyone who's read my work over the years -- especially those Koufax-winning series on fascism -- will recognize at least some of the prose contained herein.

It's also probably worth noting that the subject of eliminationism encompasses all three of my previous books as well: In God's Country was about the Patriot movement, which I describe there as proto-fascist; Death on the Fourth of July deals with one of the main manifestations of eliminationist violence -- namely, hate crimes; and Strawberry Days was about one of the worst episodes of officially sanctioned eliminationism in the country's history. So The Eliminationists represents a sharpening of the focus into a subject I think is going to preoccupy many of us shortly.

Indeed, as this past weekend's events have demonstrated, the need to discuss this issue has never been clearer or greater -- and it may become even more so over the coming weeks and months.

The book is currently available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. We're still waiting for the books to work their way through the distribution chain and reach people's local bookstores.

Because of that, we'll have a chat here hosted by Digby on May 2, by which time the book should be on store shelves. I'll also be chatting at Firedoglake on May 16, and some undetermined date at Daily Kos.

We're also planning to run pertinent excerpts from the book here at C&L in the coming week or so. And in the coming weeks, I'll be hosting a series of other journalists who are similarly concerned about the issues the book addresses in live chats here at C&L.

And I'm looking forward to every bit of it.

(You can also read Tristero's lovely review over at Digby's Hullabaloo.)