About the Massacre at the Sikh Temple

By: Daniel Nardini

Lawndale News Chicago's Bilingual Newspaper - Commentary I am as equally horrified and saddened at the slaughter of six innocent people at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, as anyone. My heart truly goes out to all the families who lost loved ones, and those who survived the massacre. This horrible act was motivated by extreme hate and a desire to wreak violence, mayhem and murder against the innocent because of their religion. This was the intention of the shooter murderer Wade Michael Page. It has been theorized that Page may have been trying to kill Muslims. We will never know who his target really was, but we know that he had killed innocent people because of their religion. What is truly scary is that unlike the mass shooting at Aurora, Colorado, which seemed a random act by a deranged individual, this act was an act of intentional extermination. Page was a neo-nazi, and the founder of the racist white music band End Apathy.

Clearly this person has always had every intention of trying to push for action against people of non-white, non-European descent, whether these actions were peaceful or not. The band End Apathy’s music lyrics are always anti-immigrant, anti-non-white, and full of violence against anyone deemed “racially inferior.” Wade Michael Page died the way he lived—full of hate, full of anger and violence, and in the end he went out taking the lives of innocent people. What is truly scary is that neo-nazi and white supremacist websites are mourning not the victims of this shooting but Page who committed the shooting. One neo-nazi and white supremacist, Alex Linder, who operates the white supremacist website Vanguard News Network, wrote that Page died for a noble cause and that all of the Sikhs “should go back to India because America is for whites.” This is another way of saying that not only were Page’s actions acceptable but that it is justified to try and use whatever means possible to get rid of those not deemed “white.”

This last part is truly terrifying and should be taken very, very seriously by law enforcement. What happened is truly an act of domestic terrorism, and no doubt there are others who may indeed be planning the same thing. Because the message of believing that one’s race or religion is superior breeds hate and anger and then eventually violence. And there will definitely be more Wade Michael Page’s out there. Domestic terrorism is no less a threat to this country than is international terrorism. What law enforcement should do now is watch and track every movement of neo-nazi, white supremacist, and Klan organizations more than ever. The chances are high that this type of act will happen again.

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