Confused Young Man

Confused Young Man

I mentioned yesterday that the man being held for the murder of three police officers in Pittsburgh was reported to have a dishonorable discharge--which would have made his purchase or possession of firearms unlawful. More recent reporting is indicating that this was not the case, but it is still a pretty sorry account. From the April 7, 2009 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

In a police affidavit, Poplawski's mother, Margaret, told police her son started stockpiling weapons after leaving the Marine Corps during basic training "a few years ago."

Marine Corps records show that Poplawski enlisted in 2004 in Pittsburgh, entering boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., on Dec. 13. He was administratively discharged on Jan. 4, 2005, before he could complete marksmanship training or learn war-fighting skills.

"This happens way too often. A guy might join for a day, and then when he does something criminal we get all the headlines about how he was a Marine," said USMC spokeswoman Maj. Shawn Haney.

Poplawski later joined white supremacist and gun advocacy groups from his temporary homes in Florida and Jeannette.

He began posting messages on "Stormfront," a white supremacist online forum, in September 2006.

His writings on the site depict a young man growing increasingly angry toward blacks, Jews, multinational corporations and police officers. Posting under the moniker "Braced for Fate," he bemoaned "Zionist" control of the "federal government, mainstream media, and banking system," the nation's "drumbeat of miscegenation" and non-Jewish corporate leaders he viewed as "greedy, traitorous goyim."

Poplawski wrote that he conducted surveillance of the Pittsburgh police during Super Bowl celebrations "to survey police procedure in an unrestful environment."

He bragged about the German iron eagle tattoo emblazoned across his chest, the head of the bird emerging from his open-collared shirts, an image he thought expressed "freedom and nationalism." That image accompanies his "Braced for Fate" Web site moniker.

Bounced out of basic training in just a few weeks? I wonder what caused this? As much as I like to think of neo-Nazi idiocy as crazy, it isn't really mental illness. A better description is that it fills emotional needs for some young people who don't have much else going on in their lives. If you haven't done anything in which you can take pride--well, heck, you can at least have pride in something that is an accident of birth--your race. German and French Socialists in the late nineteenth century argued that anti-Semitism was "the stupid man's socialism." (Some of us would argue tht socialism is the "the intellectual's anti-Semitism.")

And yet, the same news story contains this bizarre reminder of the complexity of human beings:

A friend of Poplawski, Aaron Vire, 23, of Homewood, urged the public not to jump to conclusions. Vire, who is black, said Poplawski believed races should not mix sexually, but had no problem hugging black women.

"If he was such a violent guy, why didn't he kill me and my fiancee?" Vire said. "He carried a gun. He could've done me right there. Instead, he gave me a ride home.

"He was a complicated guy. I accepted him as that."

How dreadfully sad.