Federal prosecutors said the threat came shortly after the CFTC brought an enforcement action accusing the former commodities trader and two of his companies with operating unregistered investments.



McCrudden threatened officials in emails and web postings at the SEC, CFTC, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the National Futures Association, authorities said.



"Go buy a gun, and lets get to work in taking back our country from these criminals," McCrudden allegedly wrote, in a statement calling for the four regulators to be abolished. "I will be the first one to lead by example."

For some time now, it's been something of a reflexive response by media pundits, particularly conservatives and "moderate" liberals, to point to mental illness when some violent and unstable person commits a horrifying act in the name of extremist right-wing beliefs. If they're just mentally ill, you can't blame the people whose ideas they happened to pick up, can you?



Thus we have witnessed a steady stream of "isolated incidents" in which angry, mentally unstable men walk into churches and shoot their liberal targets in the head, or walk into public spaces and open fire, or crash their planes into government offices and gun down police officers. Yet when all these, and a long list of similar incidents, occur, they are dismissed as "isolated incidents." Because, you see the perpetrators are just "nutcases."

there is indeed an abundance of evidence that not only was Loughner's rampage a political act, it was an act of domestic terrorism committed by someone who had been unhinged by far-right conspiracy theories.



Let's review just the facts we already had in hand, even before this weekend:



-- Loughner self-identifies as a terrorist. (See the videos he left behind; in our version, the page in which he identifies himself as a "terrorist" is at the 1:00 mark).



-- He also clearly has adopted two strands of right-wing conspiracism: He believes that American currency is "phony" because it no longer is on the gold standard, and he believes Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theories about "mind control." The SPLC's Mark Potok has more on this.



-- He had developed an unhealthy fixation on Giffords, but his hatred of her was largely political in nature and not personal.



-- There was a powerful campaign of demonization directed at Giffords throughout the 2010 campaign, including but hardly limited to Sarah Palin's attack ads -- much of it featuring rhetoric condoning the idea of targeting Giffords with guns.



-- Giffords was a mainstream moderate Democrat -- a classic target of hatred from the conspiracist right, which despises real liberals but reserves its special venom for centrist Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.



If you have any doubt that this was an act of terrorism -- and is thus inherently political -- just consider one of the basic criteria of the definition of the word: Were people -- not just the public generally, but the target group as well -- terrorized by the act? Clearly the answer is yes: Democrats in Arizona, who already feel on edge, are clearly feeling terrorized now.



It cannot be emphasized enough that the target of a political act is a powerful indicator of the perpetrator's intent. Terrorists always intend to send a message with their acts, and the message is conveyed in the persons who are are targeted and become victims of their violence. There's no doubt that Jared Loughner sent a message with these killings: The lives of government-coddling Democrats and their enablers are forfeit.



And if there was any doubt that Loughner was unhinged by right-wing conspiracism, there was the report on Wednesday's Good Morning America:

Last week we introduced you to another greed-obsessed anti-government fanatic, Charles Turner Habermann , a social parasite/trust fund baby who was arrested for threatening to kill Democratic elected officials Jim McDermott, Chellie Pingree and Manny Perez. Now another one has been arrested, Vincent McCrudden of Long Island, a money manager who hates regulators. Hates them so much, in fact, that he's been threatening to kill them, dozens of them. A clear danger to society, he was denied bail and is rotting in jail. The 49 year old fouled-mouthed MCCrudden had threatened to kill 47 U.S. officials, posting an online "execution list" on his website that included Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler and his arch-nemisis Dan Driscoll of the National Futures Association.McCrudden wrote threatening e-mails to his targets, like this one to Driscoll: "It wasn't ever a question of if I was going to kill you, it was just a question of when... And now, that question has been answered. You are going to die a painful death.""But..."They're coming after you next? This guy (who made the video above) isconfused and caught up in himself. I bet he's a Ron Paul supporter. Dave Neiwert is neither confused nor a Ron Paul supporter. He's also the most preeminent expert on right-wing rage and violence. Writing about the teabag terrorism Tucson massacre in a post called Violent Rhetoric And The Mentally Ill , he makes a lot more sense than the video maker.He made an even stronger case at Crooks and Liars this morning:Of course, there are worse things than violent right-wing terrorism. Imagine this on every channel, every radio station, every day, all day-- just this.

Labels: David Neiwert, violence