Editor’s Note: I’ve given a lot of thought to whether I believe this post is appropriate. I’ve decided that it is. History is important. Context is important. If we don’t expose lies and hatred for what they are, they grow, kind of like a fungus. Ignorance leads to more intolerance.
So below the fold is a story about James von Brunn, the white supremacist who, today, killed a man and terrorized others inside the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and how he believed that the Jewish population is responsible for our income tax. If you don’t want to read it, that’s okay. Just stop by tomorrow for more taxgirl goodness.
But for today, I think it needed to be said.
Much will be written over the next few days about James von Brunn. Von Brunn, an elderly white supremacist, barged into the US Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier today and started shooting. One guard, hit during the attack, has died.
And I don’t want to perpetuate his message of hate or give him a platform but I was struck by a lot of what he had to say – and worse, how eager others are to repeat it. Central to his message are repeated assertions that the US personal income tax system is part of a Jewish plot to more or less control the world. He stresses this in his “book”, Kill the Best Gentiles: The Racialist Guide for the Preservation and Nurture of the White Gene Pool. The fourth of six strategies on the Jewish agenda, he claims, is: “Enact a personal income tax”, which falls just before “Destroy White nationhood.”
Von Brunn further claims that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, giving Congress the power to levy a federal income tax, was done at the behest of the Jewish people. He believes that the Amendment was enacted to assure bankers (which von Brunn purports are mostly usurious Jews) that they would be reimbursed “plus interest” for expenses incurred during World War I.
In fact, tax and finance seem to be at the heart of much of what bothers von Brunn. He writes obsessively about Jewish-controlled banks and attempts to undervalue US currency as part of a grand scheme. He drifts into tangents about US tax dollars spent in other nations as a way of keeping foreign banks wealthy and questions the tax-exempt status of Jewish organizations. It is, it seems, all about money.
And maybe that’s it. Perhaps it’s the current state of the economy that fueled von Brunn’s hatred enough to send him into the US Holocaust Memorial Museum today. Who knows for certain, other than von Brunn?
But it is important that we not allow rhetoric like von Brunn’s to spread without stepping in and setting the record straight. I said before that history is important, and that context is important. Taking a quote here and an event there and mashing them together doesn’t make your statement true.
The facts are that personal income tax existed in the US far before World War I, contrary to von Brunn’s assertions. It was introduced during the Civil War and ebbed and flowed until it was declared unconstitutional in 1895. The Supreme Court ruled that the income tax, as it then existed, was not constitutional because of the way that it was being imposed (under the Constitution, it would have to have been proportionate taxation). So Congress introduced the 16th Amendment to address this issue. By 1913, 36 states had ratified the 16th Amendment which allowed the federal government to impose an income tax without regard to the population of each state (it was again amended in 1916). The US entered World War I in 1917, four years after the initial amendment was ratified. No conspiracy. No takedown attempt. Just some poorly drafted legislation that had to be fixed. If you follow politics, this should come as no surprise.
Von Brunn’s skewed facts aside, his fiery opposition to our tax system remains most striking because of his underlying message. Most people don’t love paying their taxes but few of us choose to believe that the tax system is a conspiracy foisted upon us by a group of people in a subversive effort to take over the world. And today, only one such person chose to pick up a gun and kill someone because they hated that group of people.
It’s a big world out there. And we may not agree with every person, every agenda, every politician. And we may hate taxes and we may disagree with each other and with the administration about how our tax dollars are spent. But in our society, we have a process for dealing with those disagreements. And it doesn’t involve a crazy person with a gun.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of museum guard Stephen Tyrone Johns.
I think you made the right decision in deciding to publish this post. When confronted with ideas with which we disagree it is easy to ignore them, hide them, and generally dismiss them. It is far better, in my opinion, to refute them.
I also found your brief history of income tax quite interesting. Wow, I never thought I’d write those words!
Thanks on both counts!
No amount of information or reasoning can sway a person bent on being afraid.
Nicely done.
Some people pay a huge price for other people’s anger and hatred.
Clearly James von Brunn’s age did not diminish the impact his hatred had on an innocent human being, and the potential damage it could have had on many.
Thank you Kelly for courageously writing about this.
Great Post…Thank you
Great post. Everyone should read it.
Good decision publishing this.
I wish I knew what to do about hate, which I always suspect is really disguised fear. I do pray, in my own fashion, for people like this.
Thanks for being there Kelly.
Hi There,
That was a terrific post and it really needed saying. It is bewildering to me the numbers of people who can believe absolutley fantastic lies, if the lies support their rage.
I love your blog,
Nancy
It’s not a matter of history repeating itself, but people repeating history (especially its lies and hatred).
There are two sides to everything… from Jews lending money to the kings who then taxing the populace declares the Jews the source of upset and greed (hence Jews getting kicked out of places and the king not having to repay loans made)… to the protective methods of Jews keeping records and inter-marriage to control the flows of money (see wikipedia Rothchild and “Lombard” for interesting stories about banking and pawnbrokering).
Everyone had their interests to protect and there has never been history without an “US” and “THEM” and with that every “yarn” can be used to create what is desired… a sweater or a noose…
Thanks for printing this, it was definitely enlightening.
Of course this needed to be said — and not just here.
Maybe I’m just dense, but I’ve never been able to understand the fullness and pervasiveness of anti-Semitism. What is it about Jews that stirs up so many people? Is it the legacy of medieval prejudice against their non-Christian beliefs? My father was Jewish, as are all my paternal relatives. None of them conspire much about anything, and they dislike big banks and ingternational conglomerates as much as the rest of “us” do. Some of them are even Republicans!
At least we in the USA allow others to say and expound almost anything — so we can get into the heads of people like von Brunn becvause their beliefs (and irrationality) are there for all to see and read. In Germany denying the Holocaust is a crime; I think that’s going way too far in a modern, industrialized Western democracy. Freedom of speech is a precious right even though (or maybe because) it necessarily gives light to some pretty ugly and disgusting stuff.