The Political Freakshow

Why is CNN referring to WI Sikh temple shooter Page as an “alleged shooter” and that he has “alleged” white supremacist ties? He freaking had the Neo-Nazi tattoos, the very tattoos that influenced the domestic terrorism term. What gives? It’s not like WI police are going to resurrect him and put him on trial.

Well, technically, in Rome, that actually happened:

Pope Stephen VI, the successor of Boniface, influenced by Lambert and Agiltrude, sat in judgment of Formosus in 897, in what was called theCadaver Synod. The corpse was disinterred, clad in papal vestments, and seated on a throne to face all the charges from John VIII. The verdict was that the deceased had been unworthy of the pontificate. The Damnatio memoriae, an old judicial practice from Ancient Rome, was applied to Formosus, all his measures and acts were annulled and the orders conferred by him were declared invalid. The papal vestments were torn from his body, the three fingers from his right hand that he had used in consecrations were cut off and the corpse was thrown into the Tiber (later to be retrieved by a monk).

Following the death of Stephen VI, Formosus’ body was reinterred in St Peter’s Basilica. Further trials of this nature against deceased persons were banned, but Pope Sergius III (904–911) reapproved the decisions against Formosus. Sergius demanded the re-ordination of the bishops consecrated by Formosus, who in turn had conferred orders on many other clerics, causing great confusion. Later the validity of Formosus’ work was re-reinstated. The decision of Sergius with respect to Formosus has subsequently been universally disregarded by the Church, since Formosus’ condemnation had little to do with piety and more to do with politics.

Sergius reportedly had the much-abused corpse of Formosus exhumed once more, tried, found guilty again, and beheaded, thus in effect conducting a second Cadaver Synod:^[1] although Joseph Brusher, S.J. says that “Sergius [III] indulged in no resurrection-man tactics himself”^[2]and Schaff, Milman,^[3] Gregorovius,^[4] von Mosheim,^[5] Miley,^[6] Mann,^[7] Darras,^[8] John the Deacon of Naples, Flodoard, and others make no mention of this story.

Again, why is CNN (and other news networks) referring to Page’s well-documented and accounted-for white supremacist views as “alleged?”

How’s this for them being alleged:

UPDATE (4:38 p.m. CST):

Label56, the record label that distributed albums by Wade Michael Page’s band End Apathy, released a statement Monday afternoon –– one day after Page killed six Sikhs in Wisconsin –– attempting to distance itself from the terrorist attack.

“We have worked hard over the years to promote a positive image and have posted many articles encouraging people to take a positive path in life,” the statement says. “[W]e have never sought attention by using ‘shock value’/ symbols and ideology that are generally labeled as such. With that being said, all images and products related to End Apathy have been removed from our site.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Label56.com as a hate site since 2006 due to its active promotion and distribution of racist hate music. And while the label might have stopped selling End Apathy’s albums, it continues to offer such hate rock bands as Stormtroop 16, Children of the Reich, Total War and Bound for Glory.

UPDATE (12:23 p.m. CST):

Wade Michael Page was a member of two racist skinhead bands –– End Apathy and Definite Hate, a band whose album “Violent Victory” featured a gruesome drawing of a disembodied white arm punching a black man in the face. In the drawing, the fist is tattooed with the letters “HFFH,” the acronym for the phrase “Hammerskins Forever, Forever Hammerskins.”

The Hammerskins is a nationwide skinhead organization with regional factions and chapters that once dominated the racist skinhead movement in the United States.

Both of Page’s bands played with a revolving lineup of musicians, and their music was at one time featured on the Hammerskin Nation record label. In 2010, Page and his band mates –– including Brent Rackley, a member of a Confederate Hammerskins chapter in North Carolina –– played at a racist music festival called Independent Artist Uprise in Baltimore. Other bands featured at the show were Blue Eyed Devils and Max Resist, both influential mainstays on the hate music scene.

Michael Page
The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.
In 2010, Page, then the leader of the band End Apathy, gave an interview to the white supremacist website Label 56. He said that when he started the band in 2005, its name reflected his wish to “figure out how to end people’s apathetic ways” and start “moving forward.” “I was willing to point out some of my faults on how I was holding myself back,” Page said. Later, he added, “The inspiration was based on frustration that we have the potential to accomplish so much more as individuals and a society in whole.” He did not discuss violence in the interview.

Page told the website that he had been a part of the white power music scene since 2000, when he left his native Colorado on a motorcycle. He attended white power concerts in Georgia, North Carolina, West Virginia and Colorado. At various times, he said, he also played in the hate rock bands Youngland (2001-2003), Celtic Warrior, Radikahl, Max Resist, Intimidation One, Aggressive Force and Blue Eyed Devils. End Apathy, he said, included “Brent” on bass and “Ozzie” on drums; the men were former members of Definite Hate and another band, 13 Knots.

Label56 promotional materials for two albums on which Wade Michael Page played.

In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center has found that Page also attempted to purchase goods from the neo-Nazi National Alliance, then America’s most important hate group.

Or this:

Law enforcement officials in Wisconsin say that Wade Michael Page’s tattoos tipped them off to the possibility that his shooting spree in a Sikh temple was domestic terrorism. But what exactly did those tattoos tell them? Using photos of Wade from his white-power band’s Myspace page, it’s possible to see what concerned police: Much of his body reads like a poster text for white nationalism.

In particular, a tattoo on Page’s left shoulder(pictured below) suggests he was a committed devotee of white-power ideology. The tattoo consists of a large “14” in Gothic lettering superimposed on a black cross in a circle. The cross, known elsewhere as “Odin’s Cross,” is “one of the most popular symbols for neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. It’s also used as a logo by Stormfront.org, one of the world’s most-visited racist web forums.

The “14” itself is particularly telling: It’s a reference to “the 14 words,” a racist credo first set down by David Lane, the cofounder of a white nationalist terror group known as The Order. (The Order—whose name was inspired by a similar group immortalized in William Luther Pierce’s racist novel, The Turner Diaries, a favorite of Timothy McVeigh’s—has been active for nearly 30 years and was implicated in the 1984 murder of Alan Berg, a liberal Jewish radio host.)

As formulated by Lane, the 14 words are reportedly inspired by a longer passage from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and form the basis for Lane’s “88 Precepts” (PDF), in which he lays out The Order’s founding philosophy—including its condemnation of homosexuality, abortion, and “mixing and destruction of the founding race.” (88, too, has special significance for neo-Nazis and other white hate groups.)

In their entirety, the 14 words—commemorated on Page’s skin—read: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Mother Jones has also obtained a copy of a 2010 interview with Page, courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center, conducted by his band’s white-power record distributor, Label 56—you can read the full text below.

In the interview, Page describes how he traveled to Southern California to play bass for a series of skinhead bands called Youngland, Celtic Warrior, Radikahl, Max Resist, Intimidation One, Aggressive Force, and Blue Eyed Devils. He also spoke openly about the frustrations with society that led him to start his own racist band, End Apathy, in 2005. “A lot of what I realized at the time was that if we could figure out how to end peoples apathetic ways it would be the start towards moving forward,” he said. “Of course after that it requires discipline, strict discipline to stay the course in our sick society.”

Hell, or even this:

Wade Michael Page, the man suspected of killing six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Wisconsin, was a member of a racist skinhead band, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Soon after Page was identified as the suspect Monday morning, the SPLC reported that he founded the band End Apathy, which the organization described as a “racist white power” trio.

A MySpace page for the band describes them as an “old school” band with “punk and metal” influences.

“The music is a sad commentary on our sick society and the problems that prevent true progress,” reads a description of the band on the MySpace page.

Page was interviewed in April 2010 by the music website Label 56 — which the SPLC describes as a “white supremacist website.” In the interview, Page said he started the band because he wanted to “figure out how to end people’s apathetic ways” and that it would “be the start towards moving forward.”

The band’s songs, Page said, were based on a variety of topics including, “sociological issues, religion, and how the value of human life has been degraded by being submissive to tyranny and hypocrisy that we are subjugated to.”

Page said he was born in Colorado and had been playing music since he was 13.

According to police, Page enlisted in the U.S. Army in April 1992 and was serving in the psychological operations unit out of Fort Bragg, N.C. He was discharged in October 1998, though the specific circumstances of his discharge are not immediately clear.

Page does not mention his military career in the Label 56 interview, but he does refer to his life since leaving the Army.

“Back in 2000 I set out to get involved [in music] and wanted to basically start over,” he said. “So, I sold everything I owned except for my motorcycle and what I could fit into a backpack and went on cross country trip visiting friends and attending festivals and shows.”

According to Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center ‘s intelligence project, the group has been tracking Page since 2000, when he allegedly attempted to purchase goods from the neo-Nazi National Alliance. The National Alliance, according to the law center, was once considered “America’s most important hate group.”

There has been no recent activity on End Apathy’s MySpace page and some online reports suggest the band broke up last year.

According to police, Page, 40, lived in an apartment building in Cudahy, Wisc. Authorities searched the building Sunday. The landlord there told authorities Page held a night job making welding supplies. Neighbors said they believe his girlfriend recently broke up with him.

Police say Page, whom they initially described as a heavy set Caucasian man with a shaved head and numerous tattoos, stormed the Sikh temple Sunday morning. He allegedly shot six people to death and wounded three others. Wade was killed outside the temple in a shootout with police officers.

Relatives of Satwant Kaleka, the president of the temple, told WGHP-TV that he was killed fighting the attacker.

Authorities have said they are treating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism, though no motive has been established in the case.