Shooting at Jewish Centers

[Content Note: Guns; violence; antisemitism; white supremacy; eliminationism.]

Yesterday, in Overland Park, Kansas, a 73-year-old white man killed two people at a Jewish community center, then got in his car and drove to a Jewish retirement community, and killed one more. He shot at two more people, but missed them. The man was then taken into custody, and there were reports that he shouted antisemitic phrases, which, at the time, police would neither confirm nor deny.

Tonight is the first night of Passover.

Today, we have more information on the shooter and the shooting:

After officers arrested Frazier Glenn Cross — an Aurora, Mo., man better known as F. Glenn Miller — Sunday afternoon, authorities said he went on a rant inside the patrol car. Though Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass wouldn't say what Cross hollered, a television crew captured him on video while he was handcuffed in the back of the car.

"Heil Hitler," Miller yelled out, and then he bobbed his head up and down.

Four hours after the shooting rampage was first reported, Douglass said in a news conference that it was too early to know definitively what the shooter's motives were, but added: "We are investigating this as a hate crime."

During the police chief's press conference yesterday afternoon, he said the killer used a shotgun, and may have also used a handgun and an assault rifle.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, "Frazier Glenn Cross" is an alias of Frazier Glenn Miller, a "longtime anti-Semite" who has spent most of his life in the white supremacist movement.

Miller is the former "grand dragon" of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which he founded and ran in the 1980s before being sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for operating an illegal paramilitary organization and using intimidation tactics against African Americans.

After subsequently forming another Klan group, the White Patriot Party, he was found in criminal contempt and sentenced to six months in prison for violating the court settlement. He went underground while his conviction was under appeal but was caught by the FBI with a weapons cache in Missouri. He served three years in federal prison after being indicted on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of SPLC founder Morris Dees. As part of a plea bargain, Miller testified against other Klan leaders in a 1988 sedition trial.

Miller is a raging anti-Semite who has posted more than 12,000 times on Vanguard News Network (VNN), whose slogan is "No Jews, Just Right." VNN founder Alex Linder has openly advocated "exterminating" Jews since December 2009. Miller, a close partner to Linder, has called Jews "swarthy, hairy, bow-legged, beady-eyed, parasitic midgets." Miller is also one of VNN's largest donors and he printed and distributed thousands of copies of VNN's newsletter, The Aryan Alternative.

This man is a terrorist. And there is no fucking way he should have had access to guns.

I am so desperately sorry for the families, friends, neighbors, colleagues/classmates of the people who were killed. Two of the victims were grandfather and grandson. My condolences to the Jewish people in the community in which this happened. And to every Jewish person who is feeling the reverberating threat of this heinous act, you have my sympathy, my support, and my profound anger.