HOUSTON, Texas —James W. Von Brunn, 88 years old, is the alleged lone wolf who went into the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10.  Steven T. Jones, the 39-year-old security guard, in an act of kindness, opened the door for the elderly gunman who had a concealed rifle and shot Jones in the chest at close range. Von Brunn — a Holocaust denier, with a history of anti-Semitism and extreme racist views — was shot in the face by guards who returned fire. He now faces homicide charges.

   While no one can undo the homicide of Steven Jones, we can ask whether there really aren’t other wrongdoers in carrying out the act, others and elements who act like microbes, fester and turned up the fever that leads to murder.

   James Von Brunn, born in 1920, is said to have been associated with right-wing white supremacists. It’s known that in 1964, former Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Pedro Del Valle gave Von Brunn a copy of “The Iron Curtain over America,” by John T. O‘Beaty, which Von Brunn said, “For the first time, I learned how Jews had destroyed Europe and were now destroying America.”

   “The Iron Curtain over America,” (1951) was called by the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’Rith one of the most anti-Semitic books ever written in the United States. In it, O’Beaty claimed Eastern European Jews, such as Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and Samuel Rosenman, President Franklin Roosevelt’s speechwriter, were part of that conspiracy.  The book also gave intellectual currency to some of the anti-communist outrages Sen. Joseph McCarthy was associated with.

   Del Valle also recommended Von Brunn to a position with right-wing book publisher Noontide Press, whose founder Willis Carto was a Holocaust denier, and who formed Liberty Lobby that aspired to have public policy influence.

   General del Valle previously had a very distinguished military career in both World Wars and was the first Hispanic to reach the rank of lieutenant general. In 1946 he was considered by President Truman as a possible governor of Puerto Rico, when the post was an appointive one. Del Valle retired from the military in 1948. In 1953, he and four other high-level former military officers formed the Defenders of the American Constitution, intent on purging the U.S. of supposed communist influences and they organized citizen-vigilantes to guard against sabotage and treason. Del Valle ran for governor of Maryland in 1953 but was badly defeated in the Republican primary because of his controversial views.

   At a local bar in Cambridge, Md., in 1968, Von Brunn was celebrating having landed an advertising account. After a few beers, he watched a newscaster announce Lyndon Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas, a Jew, to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Von Brunn’s crude remark drew a response from a prominent Jewish businessman, and in an altercation Von Brunn knocked the businessman to the floor. Von Brunn was arrested. Then a fight broke out with the police.

   At the trial, General del Valle testified in Von Brunn's behalf but infuriated the jury. The judge convicted and sentenced Von Brunn to two years in jail.

   There followed another situation in Idaho, then another in Redding, Calif., then a conviction for an incident at the Federal Reserve in Washington. Later, screeds came like howling at the moon on the Internet about his intense righteousness and the inferiority and conspiracy of others.

   What stands out over and over are the networks of people and organizations. Extremism was rebuffed but it mutated. A genealogy of discarded notions going back to World War II, with no intelligent currency, were the forebears of a succeeding extremist episode.

   The propaganda machines continue pitting one group against another, appealing to those parts of the brain that neuroscientists know atrophy how the mind works.

   This infection runs in packs. It is not the work of a lone wolf.

  [José de la Isla’s latest book, Day Night Life Death Hope, is distributed by The Ford Foundation. He writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service and is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (2003). E-mail him at [email protected].]

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