BBC Claims that Boston Bombers had 'Right Wing' Literature

The Tsarnaev were radical Muslims. This ought to be be beyond dispute, but the BBC tries its hand at muddying the waters by claiming that the brothers had “right wing extremist” literature. The problem is, the Beeb’s Hillary Anderson, author of this piece on the Tsarneaves, doesn’t really understand what “right wing” or “extremist” actually mean.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev subscribed to publications espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories.

He also had reading material on mass killings.

Until now the Tsarnaev brothers were widely perceived as just self-styled radical jihadists.

“White supremacy” tends to get portrayed as “right wing” by the media but it’s actually the province of groups that include the KKK, the Nazis and Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger. Two of those three are demonstrably creatures of the left, not the right. The Klan began as the Southern Democrats’ terrorist wing. At the height of its power, it was strongly aligned with the Woodrow Wilson wing of the Democratic Party, which was far from “right wing.”

Plenty of left-wingers have perpetrated mass killings. Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot all come easily to mind. The objection likely to be raised against the previous sentence is “But, Hitler was right wing!” He was to the right of the communists, but as a socialist (Nazi is an abbreviation of “National Socialist German Workers Party”), he was far from right wing. The Nazis were left-wingers.

The programme discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev possessed articles which argued that both 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were government conspiracies.

Another in his possession was about “the rape of our gun rights”.

Reading material he had about white supremacy commented that “Hitler had a point”.

Of those, only one fits neatly into “right wing” now — the gun talk. Conspiracy theories about 9-11 and Oklahoma City cut across ideological lines. Or did the Beeb forget that until he got caught, former Obama czar Van Jones, a communist, was a 9-11 conspiracy believer?

The Beeb’s writer apparently has no understanding of just how popular Hitler is around the Middle East. His alliance with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem — who was Yasser Arafat’s great-uncle — brought Islam into World War II on the side of the Nazis. Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion both strongly influence the radical Muslim groups and even mainstream thought across the Islamic world today. So, saying that “Hitler had a point” lines up quite well not with anything identifiably right-wing, but with Islamist ideology.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev also had literature which explored what motivated mass killings and noted how the perpetrators murdered and maimed calmly.

There was also material about US drones killing civilians, and about the plight of those still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.

None of that is strictly right wing. Or — do you know who else frets about the plight of those still imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay?

Barack Obama, that’s who.

The BBC should retract its story alleging that the Tsarneavs had “right wing extremist” literature. They had all kinds of extremist literature, much of which fit well into far left and Islamist thinking.