AN 88-YEAR-OLD white supremacist with alleged links to the British National Party has been charged with murder following the fatal shooting of a security guard at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum.
James von Brunn remained in critical condition at a Washington hospital yesterday after two security guards shot him during the attack at the museum on Wednesday.
Police said Von Brunn walked into the museum carrying a concealed rifle and shot Stephen Johns (36), a security guard who tried to stop him.
A search of Von Brunn’s car produced a notebook with anti-Semitic jottings and criticism of US president Barack Obama.
“You want my weapons – this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do,” one of the notes said.
The museum remained closed yesterday as security was stepped up at Jewish schools, synagogues and community centres in Washington. Wednesday’s attack came less than two weeks after the arrest of a far-right anti-abortion activist for the murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller.
“This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms,” Mr Obama said.
“No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honour those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world.”
A Holocaust denier, Von Brunn was a regular contributor to far-right websites and the author of an anti-Semitic treatise called Kill the Best Gentiles.
“We’ve been tracking this guy for decades,” said Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks hate crimes. “He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil. He’s an extreme anti-Semite.”
Todd Blodgett, a former Reagan White House aide who worked with extremist groups before informing on them to the FBI, said he met regularly with Von Brunn in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people,” Mr Blodgett told the Washington Post. “He had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he’d always say it would be Jews.”
Mr Blodgett said he and Von Brunn had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National Party, which raised funds for the British far-right party.
Von Brunn was imprisoned during the 1980s after he attempted to kidnap members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He had walked into the central bank’s headquarters in Washington, armed with a revolver and a knife, planning to make a “citizen’s arrest” of the governors and to charge them with treason.
At his trial, Von Brunn said he wanted to “deport all Jews and blacks from the white nations” and declared that “Jews were the greatest liars that have ever afflicted mankind”.
Federal investigators were yesterday trawling through Von Brunn’s internet postings for evidence that could support hate crimes charges. Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office, described Wednesday’s attack as an act of domestic terrorism.
“We know what Von Brunn did yesterday at the Holocaust museum. Now it’s our responsibility to determine why he did it,” he said.
“We have to ask ourselves did all these years of public display of hatred impact his actions.”