"Birther" violence

The right-wing extremist and conspiracy theorist who killed a guard at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. was, among other things a s0-called "birther": one of the ultra-paranoid wingers who continue to insist, despite the wide circulation of proof to the contrary (see previous post), that Obama's birth certificate has been suppressed to cover up the fact that he was not born in the US and is therefore not a legitimate president.

He represents the strange constellation of paranoia and racist hatred that has come to characterize the right-wing fringe egged on in coded fashion by media commentators like Rush Limbaugh and the folks at Fox. The unifying theme is a sense of white victimization at the hands of a multi-faceted cabal that includes, in various paradoxical iterations, communists, bankers, Jews, Muslims, non-whites, the liberal elites, the state bureaucracy, and the mass media.