i’d encourage people to donate to HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, if able. they support refugees and immigrants all over the world.
the pittsburgh shooter allegedly posted on social media, claiming that HIAS are bringing in ‘hostile invaders’ that ‘kill our people’, before carrying out the shooting.
he will not silence us. now, more than ever, we stand with immigrants and refugees, and live our jewish values publicly and bravely.
A suspect was in custody on Saturday morning after a fatal shooting with multiple casualties near the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where Sabbath services were taking place, according to local officials.
At least 12 people were injured, three of whom appeared to be law enforcement and at least eight of which were fatalities, according to preliminary information from multiple senior law enforcement officials.
It is believed the suspect was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and multiple handguns.
Congregants told MSNBC that a circumcision celebration, known as a bris, was taking place in the synagogue this morning.
Pittsburgh Public Safety tweeted on Saturday morning that there was an active shooter in the area around the synagogue and said to avoid the area. Pittsburgh Police Commander Jason Lando said there were multiple casualties and said it was imperative neighbors in the surrounding area sheltered in place.
…Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Pittsburgh field office were also responding to the shooting incident.
“There is an active shooter near the Tree of Life in Squirrel Hill. Residents, please stay indoors. Our officers are on the scene,” Pittsburgh City Councilman Corey O’Connor wrote on Twitter.
…Shabbat morning services began at 9:45 a.m. at Tree of Life Congregation, according to its website. The Conservative congregation was founded more than 150 years ago and is led by Rabbi Hazan Jeffrey Myers, who came to the synagogue in August 2017.
Saturday mornings are when Shabbat is observed in the Jewish faith and is typically a busy time at synagogues.
Squirrel Hill is considered a historic Jewish enclave and center for Jewish life in Pittsburgh, and it is considered home to more than a quarter of Jewish households in the Pittsburgh-area, according to a Brandeis University study of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish community. More than 80 percent of Squirrel Hill residents said they had some concern or were very concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism. Many also reported incidents of anti-Semitic experiences in the past year, from insults and stereotypes to physical threats or attacks, according to the study.
The fact that the mail bomber had his house improperly foreclosed on by the company of Steve Mnuchin, then-banker and now-Trump’s Secretary of Treasury, is such a perfect encapsulation of how right-wing populism works. You provide cover for one segment of elites by scapegoating marginalized people and a competing segment of elites, who you claim are in cahoots with one another.
Right-wing populism a powerful enough ideological tool that you can literally get someone to join a cult of personality around a man even as he empowers someone who directly harmed them, simply by acknowledging the potential for the redirection of raw anger. The Trump administration literally, personally damaged the bomber’s life, but he likely never even knew it, never even knew that the man behind his foreclosure was now working with the man he idolized. Following the foreclosure, he was probably just angry at the prevailing system, but his anger had no structure, no ideology (it seems he wasn’t even politically active before 2016). In absence of a popular leftist systemic critique, the hard right was able to monopolize the response to anger among many white people, redirect it, and mold it in the shape of producerism. Rather than being led to realize the way the construction of power in society actually functions to disadvantage him along the lines of class while keeping him invested in the system with compensatory privileges along lines of race, gender, etc. (see Du Bois’ “wages of whiteness” argument [pg. 700-701 here]), he instead was led to follow the fraudulent right-wing alternative: that corrupt liberal elites were using their power to ruin his life through their promotion of “globalism,” multiculturalism, cronyism, etc.
Things like this always make me think back to an anecdote from Chip Berlet’s extremely insightful “Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close For Comfort”:
Posse [Commitatus] and [Christian] Identity organizers capitalized on the farm crisis of the 1980s. Rural America faced its worst economic slump in half a century, owing largely to unfair and inequitable policies by the federal government and private banks. While most of society ignored angry and desperate rural families’ legitimate grievances, far-right activists urged resistance and offered ready scapegoats, namely, the Jews who supposedly controlled the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve. In the early 1980’s, Posse activists helped to split the influential American Agricultural Movement, while Identity theology and antisemitic conspiracy theories gained an alarming level of acceptance in rural America. One poll in 1985 found that in the farm belt 27 percent of respondents felt that ‘international Jewish bankers’ were responsible for the farm crisis.
Right-wing populism is an ideological mechanism which mobilizes people who are are wronged by elites to fight in defense of certain factions of elites rather than against the system of elites as a whole by redirecting their anger towards scapegoats who are perceived to threaten privileges that they hold along other dimensions than the one they were wronged on.
For many years this painting was known as ‘Monk with Cat’, though the figure is in fact a Rabbi. The two men carrying sacks in the background are Jews fleeing a pogrom. The Hand of God can be seen in the top-left corner, blessing the Rabbi, who may be stroking the cat for the last time before he too departs. The picture is indebted to Russian icons. We can read an analogy between the Rabbi and cat and the Virgin and Child. The painting delivers a poignant message about compassion, suffering and religious intolerance.
Where did the newest myth that the MAGA bomber is Native American come from? Seeing a bunch of racist scumbags in my local news’ comment sections repeating it. Infowars?
From what I’ve heard, he himself claimed occasionally to be a member of “the Unconquered Seminole Tribe” on social media. The Seminole have stated they know nothing of him, and according to his family, he’s Italian/Filipino. From the bomber’s particular wording, and general political leaning, it might have been part of some sovereign-citizen claim.
Mooncustafer 