[Trigger warning for violence.]
Yesterday afternoon, as you've no doubt heard, a 43-year-old man named James J. Lee entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, MD, took hostages, and, after a four-hour standoff, was shot and killed by police.
Lee, who identified as an environmental activist, though his activism seems largely to have consisted of protesting the Discovery Channel, said he was inspired to action by "An Inconvenient Truth."
Thus has the meme that Lee was a leftwing terrorist begun.
But, of course, it's not quite that simple. Lee's manifesto is indeed leftwing insomuch as environmental protection has become associated with the left since conservatives haven't been particularly interested in conservation since Nixon started the EPA. Lee's eliminationist views on immigration, however, are closely aligned with several prominent rightwing anti-immigration groups, and his position on human population control ("NO MORE BABIES!") is, suffice it to say, profoundly anti-choice.
Like most of the other domestic terrorists who have struck recently, there's not a totally cohesive ideology underlying his actions. He is certainly more left-leaning than, say, Joseph Stack, but, like Stack, it's a mixed bag of grievances.
I don't have much to say about the situation other than that note of my typical "shades of gray" stuff.
[Commenting Guidelines: This thread is not an invitation to wax ponderous about Lee's psychological health.]
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