While mourning continues over the shooting deaths of five members of the staff of the Annapolis Journal Gazette, including four journalists, by a deranged pro-Donald Trump and neo-confederate-supporting madman, Trump doubled-down on his incendiary comments about the press, again referring to the media as the “real enemy of the people.” Trump also continues to bash the Democratic Party, claiming it has a “death wish.”
Trump’s casual call for his ardent and mentally-unbalanced supporters to commit acts of violence against his opponents and the free press is reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s sponsorship of violence against Jews, opposition figures, and the press. This call to violence manifested itself on November 9-10, 1938 in the infamous Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) when Nazi storm troopers broke the windows of Jewish stores, homes, and synagogues throughout Germany. Walter Henry Nelson, the son of a U.S. diplomat in Berlin, recounted what a janitor cried out about the Nazis after the violent attacks, “They must have emptied the insane asylums and penitentiaries to find people who’d do things like that!” Today, the same could be said about Trump’s supporters who call for journalists, government employees, and Democrats to be put to death in a massive pogrom.
Last week, the former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s “Alec Station,” the pre-9/11 “Bin Laden Issue Station,” which was tasked to keep tabs on Osama Bin Laden, called on his blog for “millions of well-armed citizens who voted for Trump” to commit mass murder of “a long and very precise list” of Trump opponents. Michael Scheuer wrote of Trump’s opponents, “if Trump does not act soon to erase [them], the armed citizenry must step in and eliminate them.” Scheuer’s target list for murder includes former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former FBI director James Comey, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, former chief of the FBI’s Counter-espionage Section Peter Strzok, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, former CIA director John Brennan, former National Security Agency and CIA director Michael Hayden, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, all of the Democratic members of the Congress, all of the members of mainstream media, all of the employees of the FBI, and all immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. Scheuer then wrote that he would be elated from the “utter joy and satisfaction to be derived from beholding great piles of dead U.S.-citizen tyrants.”
As the Berlin janitor said in 1938, they must have emptied the insane asylums to come up with people like Scheuer, who, it should be pointed out, is not the only deranged Trump supporter to call for the murder of Trump’s opponents.
Some Trump supporters appear to be answering the clarion call of Trump’s threats against the Democratic Party and the media. During the evening of July 17, shots were fired into the window of Albany County Democratic headquarters in Albany, New York.
In April 2017, vandals spray-painted Lubbock County Democratic Party headquarters in Lubbock, Texas with neo-Nazi and pro-Trump slogans. The graffiti included the number “14 88,” which is associated with neo-Nazi and white supremacist causes.
On July 19, 2018, a suspicious package was found outside the offices of The Sacramento Bee and the building was evacuated. In January of this year, a Michigan man, Brandon Griesemer, was arrested for threatening to kill CNN employees at the network’s Atlanta headquarters. His threats were made in 22 phone calls to the network. Taking a cue from Trump’s constant reference to the “fake news media,” Griesemer said, “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down,” adding, “Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours . . . I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to fucking gun every single last one of you.” This past March, a man was arrested for phoning in a bomb threat to WJAC-TV in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, pro-Trump vandals struck the St. Paul, Minnesota, headquarters of the Democratic Farm Labor Party.
Media outlets have also been victimized by vandals. In May of this year, a rock was thrown through the door of Our Lives magazine in Madison, Wisconsin. The magazine’s readership is largely drawn from the gay community.
In April of this year, vandals defaced a campaign poster for Newark, New Jersey, councilman-at-large Luis Quintana with a swastika. Similar Nazi vandalism has been reported across the United States. Targets have included mosques, synagogues, African-American churches, Buddhist meditation centers, government offices, homes of interracial couples, commercial signs, schools, cemetery headstones, university and college campuses, African-American-owned vehicles, and store fronts.
Trump’s cult-like and hate-filled supporters, like the Nazis who took to the streets during Kristallnacht in support of Adolf Hitler, have taken up the gauntlet to commit murder and vandalism on behalf of their leader.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2018 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
One of these things is not like the others.
You know how the guys torching cars at the demonstrations are always cops. Scheuer sounds more like a provocateur than a nut.
What those right wing nuts need to remember is that there are folks in the country who do not agree with their position. I’m willing to bet there are other current and former CIA officials who do not agree with Michael Scheuer. If he’s promoting a shooting war against Americans in this country. He needs to remember a bullet doesn’t care if you have former CIA official printed on your business card. Nor does it care if you have a badge or a uniform. A bullet is apolitical and nonideological.