A defiant hatred
Here's what I strain to understand about people like James W. von Brunn, the man accused of shooting and killing a guard Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum:
How can such a person live among us, as a functioning member of an interdependent society? How does one who hates the "other" so thoroughly still somehow manage to navigate the modern world in all its complexity?
Mr. von Brunn, a convicted felon who lived in Annapolis, was not quiet about his attitudes; he maintained a Web site chronicling his conspiracy theories and poisonous worldview. This man, so consumed by his hatred of Jews, his loathing for blacks and other racial minorities, was someone you or I may have just recently passed on the street. Presumably, he shopped at grocery stores, went to the doctor, visited local parks and movie theaters.
One of the most extraordinary things about the persistence of white supremacists and other purveyors of hate is just how impossible it ought to be to separate oneself completely from those who are different - especially in a diverse state like Maryland and a racially mixed city such as Annapolis.
What if a black police officer smiled and waved good morning to Mr. Von Brunn during his afternoon walk? What if an Asian doctor cared for him or a Jewish library volunteer helped him to file his taxes? How does the mind that hates process such information?
In other words, how do the von Brunns of the world cope with the overwhelming evidence that blacks, Jews, Latinos - indeed, all those whom society labels as different - are ordinary people living ordinary lives?
Michael Cross-Barnet
Readers respond:
Von Brunn was hardly a functioning member: he attempted to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve in 1981. Not an everyday kind of thing to do.
One would think such an endeavor would raise his profile among those who monitor malcontents, especially given his ongoing participation in hatemongering online and elsewhere.
It also goes to show that advanced age is not necessarily a deterrent to criminal activity. They should have kept him locked up for life.
DFL
Anti-Semitism still with us
The shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was a shocking and senseless act of violence in a place where one of mankind's most shocking and senseless acts of violence is movingly recalled.
