More Home Grown Terror: Sikh Temple Shooter is Suspected White Supremacist

The killer who murdered six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before he was fatally shot by police was identified on Monday as a 40-year-old Army veteran and white supremacist.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Haanstad in Milwaukee identified the shooter as Wade Michael Page. Page joined the Army in 1992 and, according to the Associated Press, was discharged in 1998.

Witnesses told police that the gunman walked into the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin and opened fire as people prepared for Sunday service.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Page was a “frustrated” Neo-n**i who led a white supremacist band.

In an interview with a white supremacist website, Page said he’d been a part of the white power music scene since 200o, and that  his ”inspiration was based on frustration that we have the potential to accomplish so much more as individuals and a society in whole.”

If true, the Sikh Temple shooter is not the first, and surely not the last, white home grown American terrorist. In fact, America has been plagued with home grown terrorists. Although Timothy McVeigh, a U.S. Army veteran and security guard who detonated a truck bomb in front of the Oklahoma City Building in 1995, is often the first person who comes to mind when one mentions home grown white terrorist, the plague goes back much further than that.

The Ku Klux Klan, a white terror hate mob, was allowed to murder and  terrorize African Americans in this country for decades with impunity. In fact, many KKK members were also law enforcement officers, helping to shield them from authorities.

Home grown terror is familiar to those who know the history of this country.

Bernard Zapor, Special Agent with the ATF, said Monday that the 9 mm semiautomatic handgun with multiple ammunition magazines used by the attacker had been legally purchased. This too sounds familiar. Guns and hate are a part of American culture.

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