Note: I'm avoiding the usage of the shooter's name. I don't think a desperate desire for attention played a role in the Arizona shootings. However, I know that a lot of celebrity shooters are motivated by the desire for attention, and I don't want to further the notion a potential killer might have that murder is the way to get famous.

Far too quickly after the Arizona shootings, the extreme right media flooded the country with ridiculous propaganda saying the shooter was a "liberal." It was designed to confuse and obscure the far right views of the killer and distract attention from the role Sarah Palin's terrorist gun target map played in the killings. As one would expect, the corporate media used the rhetoric to say that the facts being presented by the left were comparable and any attempt to understand why the shootings happened was crass partisanship.

This makes it all the more important to get the real facts out there. The first clue, aside from the target of the attacks and Sarah Palin's map, was the shooter's rantings about gold and silver currency. Basing currency on precious metals is a long piety of the fringe right. However, there are other examples of the shooter's fringe right ideology, some of it too far to the right to even show up on Faux News.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok:

1) He believes that government uses grammar as mind control to enslave people.

From Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates:

2) The shooter objects to the "second United States constitution" which includes the amendments passed after the Civil War.

From the shooter's YouTube Channel:

3) People shouldn't allow governments to create currencies for them.

4) He claims that referring to him as a terrorist is an "Ad hominem" attack. (This one is especially obscure, but especially nerdy rightists are fond of saying that any criticism, legitimate or not, is that kind of attack.)

5) He says that "you don't have to accept any of the federalist laws." (This one requires a bit of unpacking. The far right despises federalism because they think that it gives the central government too much power. "States rights" anyone?)

6) He spews the right's drivel about property owners having a revolution.

7) He believes that he is being denied his civil rights. (It is common for white supremacists to have this view.)

8) Anything that inconveniences him or causes him problems is "unconstitutional" without having a valid or even reasonable reference to the text. (The rightist spin doctors often make fake allusions to the constitution because they know their flocks will never read it. The wealthcare law suddenly becomes "unconstitutional" though it is not. Environmental regulations are "unconstitutional" because they say so.)

9) He has an irrational hatred for the academy.

Most people have been relying on second hand descriptions of the shooter's YouTube Channel and videos. I have read that the channel had been taken down. Either that isn't true or it is back up. In any case, if you actually watch his absurd videos (fortunately they are short), you get a vastly different view of the shooter than the rightist bias spun in the corporate media. I don't blame you if you don't want to get near that nasty YouTube channel, but somebody needs to do it in order to get at the truth about the Arizona shootings.

The shooter's views may seem so over the top and bizarre that you are tempted to dismiss them as crazy. Keep in mind that the ones I referenced above are accepted as fact by many on the right fringe. A lot of people think that Glenn Beck's stuff is just random shit that comes off the top of his head. Actually, most of the things he says on TV are swiped from far right discourse on the Internet elsewhere. The shooter accepted some things that are too fringe (at least for now) for even Glenn Beck to use on his show, but Faux News' legitimizing of so much fringe right nonsense creates political and ideological space for the wild bullshit that some of the rightists spew and which the shooter bought into.

You may want to dismiss these views as crazy and idiosyncratic. They certainly are not idiosyncratic. They are part of the fringe right's world view.