Right-Winger Jared Loughner

So, what is the status of that most-depressing American football game of the month - the Superbowl of Blame: pigeonholing Jared Loughner into the Left or Right side of American politics? Last we checked, it was an ugly scrimmage in the mud at the 50-yard line.

A commenter took note of my previous comment on my Sarah Palin post and replied:

"We don't know much about Jared Loughner yet, but I think time will prove he is on the Right. "

Time for you to eat crow - the foundation of your entire article has been thoroughly rended asunder in light of the recent info we've found about JL. About as far from Right wing as you can get!

Quite the contrary: the more we discover the more obvious the Right Wing connections get!:

According to a friend of his interviewed on Good Morning America on Wednesday, the conspiracy documentary Zeitgeist “poured gasoline on his fire” and had “a profound impact on Jared Loughner's mindset and how he views the world that he lives in.” He was also, according to his friend’s father, influenced by the documentary Loose Change, a classic of the 9/11 Truth movement.

...According to his friend, Zach Osler, Loughner “didn't listen to political radio, he didn't take sides, he wasn't on the left, he wasn't on the right.” Naturally, conservatives have seized upon this to exonerate themselves of charges of incitement. But it’s not that simple. ... Yet it’s the contemporary right, the right of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party, that has mainstreamed ideas from this demimonde in an unprecedented way.

...Both Zeitgeist and Alex Jones promote the idea that world events are controlled by a secretive banking cabal that is using debt to enslave us all. Zeitgeist echoes Alex Jones in warning that the United States is about to be merged with Canada and Mexico into a “North American Union” that will use a new currency, the “Amero.” ... “In the end, everybody will be locked into a monitored control grid, where every single action you perform is documented,” it says.

Zeitgeist, which came out in 2007 and has since spawned two sequels, is an Internet phenomenon. ... Its claims are heatedly debated on Ron Paul forums and anarchist websites; excerpts appear on numerous Tea Party pages. It has a global following:

...If you just watch the first third of Zeitgeist, you might think it comes from the left. It begins with an attack on Christianity, arguing that Jesus never existed, and that his legend derives entirely from pre-Christian cults of the sun. Calling Christianity “the fraud of the age,” it argues that the religion empowers those “who know the truth, but use the myth to manipulate and control societies.”

The idea of control and manipulation is the movie’s real theme, knitting together its disparate parts. Zeitgeist's second-third rehashes classic 9/11 Truth theories that purport to show that the attacks were actually an inside job. This was done, the final section argues, at the behest of a banking cabal that has repeatedly goaded the United States into war in order to solidify its wealth and power. Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at the think tank Political Research Associates and one of the country’s foremost experts on right-wing movements, points out that Zeitgeist borrows liberally from the G. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island, an “expose” of the Federal Reserve System popular with the John Birch Society, Alex Jones, and some Tea Party groups. It also draws on ideas from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, though it never mentions Jews.

...Loughner was caught up in the sort of conspiratorial fantasy Berlet was describing. His YouTube videos are often unintelligible, but in their moments of lucidity, they rail against manipulation of the currency system and the illegitimate power of the federal government, obsessions of the right-wing populist milieu. In this milieu, politicians like Gabrielle Giffords weren’t simply wrong, they were agents of an intolerable tyranny manipulating the economy and turning Americans into slaves. Hence the vitriol and intimations of violence that scared Giffords and her staff well before Saturday’s shooting.

There are other, more accessible hints that Jared Loughner is a right-winger. For example, in his sojourn around Pima Community College, he rails about PCC committing "genocide" against students. In a miserable moment of self-awareness, he also says PCC is preparing him for a life of homelessness (which is almost certainly true, considering his behavior). But where does "genocide" come from? That is an extreme exaggeration, akin to Hitler's "Big Lie" approach to seizing power.

Where else lately have we seen extreme exaggerations being used for the purpose of gaining power? The Tea Parties, of course! ("Death panels" anyone? "Socialist" Barack Obama? The menace of the "Far Left", meaning any motley assemblage of run-of-the-mill milquetoast liberals? And don't even get started regarding Glenn Beck!)

Jared Loughner heard these exaggerations, liked them, and learned to employ them himself for his own purposes.

And Loughner's other obsessions - grammar, currency, government control - all these are usually the interests of traditionalists or conservatives, and not liberals.

You can learn a lot just by listening to what a person says. No other special skills are necessary. He may not yet be firmly in one camp or another, but his drift to the Right is clear.

When the Right looks in the mirror, Jared Loughner's there, smirking right back....