Media Silent About Beck, Jones Influence On LAX Shooter
Two days ago LAX terminal 3's security was breached by a 23-year old guy with an assault rifle who shot his way past security checkpoints and got all the way to the boarding areas before he was stopped by airport police. As one might have suspected, that 23-year old kid appears to have been heavily influenced by the likes of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones.
SPLC reports that Paul Anthony Ciancia's manifesto "seemed to put him squarely in the conspiracy-minded world of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement." In that same report, they discuss the explosion of these groups in the past few years, and go on to discuss the Patriot movements dim view of the DHS.
So-called Patriots also increasingly see the DHS, which produces intelligence assessments of extremists that are distributed to other law enforcement agencies, as an enemy and even a collaborator in the New World Order conspiracy. Many believe DHS has targeted their movement and is somehow connected to the alleged construction of concentration camps by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The purported camps are thought to be meant for those Americans who resist a coming national seizure of all weapons from U.S. citizens.Friday's shooting is important on a number of different levels, beginning with the AR-15 Ciancia was able to obtain apparently while living in California, which has some pretty strict state-based laws, including a statewide assault weapons ban. It raises questions about responsibility of high-profile "media" figures like Beck and Jones and begs for a renewed spotlight on our current NRA-controlled national debate over something as simple as universal background checks.
You might think it's a great topic for the Sunday shows. I certainly expected it to be. I went looking to see what the topics of the day are, and to my surprise, there was skeletal coverage (see video above) of the shooting, and no mention whatsoever of the influences on the shooter.
Are Alex Jones and Glenn Beck off limits for criticism now? After all, they're the primary peddlers of the anti-government, paranoid thinking so prevalent among anti-government nuts. There is a reality to what they do, after all. Call the government evil and invasive often enough, concoct enough scenarios of how "government" is the amorphous scary bogeyman aiming at innocents everywhere, toss in some NSA paranoia and libertarian claptrap and you get a guy with an assault weapon not just shooting people outside the security checkpoint, but targeting unarmed government agents because he can.
Why isn't this something to discuss? Why shouldn't the libertarian "I hate government set" represented by Beck and Jones be accountable for reaching into someone's darkest fears and stoking them?
Arming the TSA or attributing this to a 'lone wolf' isn't the answer. From what I've read, Ciancia wasn't mentally ill. He may have suffered from depression or anxiety, but not to a point where he left reality. No, that happened when these maniacs on TV and radio started talking about One World Order, Agenda 21 and the gold standard.
Evidently that's too weighty for the delicate ears and eyes of the Sunday show viewer. After all, why talk about paranoid maniacs and dead public servants when you've got Obamacare to kick around?
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