Trying to understand why Indian boy wanted to join Nazis

Jewish World Review ^ | 3-28-05 | Leonard Pitts, Jr.

[SJackson]

Apostles of hatred find message easy to spread

I just visited the Web site that fascinated Jeff Weise, the 16-year-old who shot up his high school last week on the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota.

There, I learned that the tribes of humanity must be separated or risk destruction by assimilation. That Jews are a "fanatical religious-ethnic" group conspiring to control communications media. And that for all the dubious talk about a "Holocaust," you never hear about the good things Adolf Hitler did.

I also read the posts that Weise left on the site's bulletin board. I was particularly interested in the one asking if the group would accept him, given that he was a Chippewa Indian. Weise was friendless, his father was dead, his mother in a nursing home, so there was something poignant and needy in the asking.

In all, I spent half an hour on nazi.org. It gave me a headache.

Used to be easier to laugh this stuff off. Once, when I was in college, a man in a "White Power" T-shirt came into the bookstore where I worked. My friend Cathy, who was white, promptly plopped herself in my lap, pecked me on the cheek and asked loudly when I might be "home" for dinner.

[peyton randolph]

He was nuts. I don't need to know why. I would like to know how all of the warning signs that this kid was two poles short of a teepee could have been ignored.

[hershey]

This boy had an extremely troubled past. Adolescents are hardly ever in their right minds, since half the time they're searching for some kind of identity. Plus, he was a Native American, and that comes with a whole host of ingrained issues/problems/anger/etc.. (Maybe he was a victim of bullying, as well, but it's hard to figure out why he'd kill his grandfather...unless he didn't want his grandfather to face the aftermath.)

[ClearCase_guy]

I believe the boy was a Libertarian-Green-Socialist-Nazi.

Now, the Libertarians don't have a reputation for using force, so I don't think this kid reflects especially badly on Libertarians.

Greens? They advocate violence all the time. They sabotage stuff, start fires, and commit all kinds of crimes. Why isn't the media playing up the Green Violence angle?

Socialists? Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc, etc. Socialism killed 100 million in the 20th century. Big, violent ideology. Why isn't the media playing up the Socialist Violence angle?

Oh, the kid was a Nazi? Guess that's the cause! That was easy! Doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's OK. Indian boy advocating White Power. Whatever. Just so long as we found the "root cause".

[mountaineer]

The whole paternalistic, chronic state of dependency known as the "Indian reservation" system doesn't help matters, in my opinion. This is an interesting Associated Press story on American Indian teens - the teen pregnancies, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. - and how those who have left the reservations do so much better.

[lionheart 247365]

THIS KID HAD NEON WARNING LIGHTS ON HIS FOREHEAD FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.................................

[DJ Taylor]

"this kid was two poles short of a teepee"

Anyone who has raised a teenager knows that all teens are “two poles short of a teepee.” If a child ever needed parents who will guide them, instruct them, and lead them, it is during these critical years. Jeff Weiss had neither parent when he needed them the most.

If you have teenagers, and you have not been closely involved in their lives to date, you better make up for lost time before your children lose their way, as did Jeff Weiss.

[Paloma_55]

[[[The whole paternalistic, chronic state of dependency known as the "Indian reservation" system doesn't help matters, in my opinion. This is an interesting Associated Press story on American Indian teens - the teen pregnancies, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. - and how those who have left the reservations do so much better.]]]

You have hit the nail on the head.

While getting rid of that system might not eliminate such actions from taking place, it would free a lot of people from lives of waste and destruction.

The whole reservation system was wrong to begin with. It segregated people. We should declare their land private property and make them US citizens and then let them blend into society.

[usgator]

Angry, lonely, full of hate, constantly picked on, probably mental problems ... nazi psychos prey upon people like this.

Did you see the animated cartoon he made ... this kid was a ticking bomb, sad that others had to die before anyone noticed what a danger he was.

[mountaineer]

I agree. There's no logical reason for treating American Indians as anything other than citizens, with all the rights, opportunities and responsibilities enjoyed by the rest of us. I hold out no hope that Congress ever will do anything to change the BIA and the system, though.

[Luddite Patent Counsel]

"you better make up for lost time before your children lose their way, as did Jeff Weiss."

Lose their way? LOSE THEIR WAY? A kid who "loses his way" gets a nose ring, or listens to Slipknot, or takes a joy ride in a stolen car. A kid who offs his grandparents, steals a patrol car, then shoots the bejeezus out of his school and kills a bunch f people has not "lost his way": HE'S FREAKIN' NUTS, FERCHRISSAKES!!!! HE'S A HOMICIDAL MANIAC!!!! The only way we will prevent the destruction of our society by the "therapeutic culture" is to stop pretending that these nutjobs are just one counseling session away from being Greg Brady. "Heck, if someone had just reached out to him, he'd be right as rain." This wingnut was getting all kinds of extra help and attention, and he still went off. Nuts is nuts, and the sooner we all recognize it, the better off we'll be.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The Red Lake Tribe owns 830,000 acres of some of the most beautiful land on earth but no one is allowed to "own" or rent a piece of it. They are wealthy beyond imagination, full of pride for the Red Road (collectivism) but wouldn't lift a finger to help an obviously sick young boy.

[LS]

It just doesn't make sense. I mean, Heil Sitting Bull?

[rave123]

The kid had a lot of self hatred. He hated what his grandfather was - a Native American.

[sweetiepiezer]

Hello, he was on prozac.
If the government could put 2 and 2 together.
Columbine= anti-depressants
Red Cloud=anti depressants
Andrea Yates=anti-depressaants
1,000's of suicides a year=anti-depressants.
Come on people, we have to wake up, these drug companies have to stop pushing these drugs like candy.
Radio ads now say, if you feel suicidal on these drugs, contact your doctor immediately-------
Way to late for a lot of people.
But I know nothing will be done.
Wyeth makes Billions on one drug alone.
Nothing can be done.
It is called MONEY!!!!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[AmericanChef]

The kid wasn't a Nazi. He wanted to be one because he was disturbed, and it made him feel like he belonged to something special.

However, that explains but does not excuse what he did.

Reservations raise, on average, depressed human beings, and reservations are laughable in light of the gambling trade. Let's dissolve those treaties and let folks join the rest of the country.

[sweetiepiezer]

BTTT!!!!!!!!!!!

[Uri’el-2012]

SSRI kills !

B'shem Y'shua
chuck

[AmishDude]

Did anybody see the South Park where Cartman goes to Halloween at school dressed as Hitler? Everyone is outraged and Cartman is forced to watch a video on how bad Hitler was. Cartman finds the parades and salutes and anger really cool. He doesn't know much else about them.

[elmer fudd]

When I was in school we were taught that Nazism was on the far right of the political spectrum, basically as far away from communism as you could get. Now, by age 14 or so I had come to the conclusion that I loathed both communism and socialism and since I was taught that Nazism was it's polar opposite I became somewhat attracted to it. It didn't hurt that Germany had earned a reputation for building quality products, making scientific discoveries and somehow this little country had managed to conquer nearly all of Europe at one point. I was also very fascinated by the military, (enlisted in the reserves right after my 17th birthday), and the wehrmacht of the third reich is one of the most fascinating ever. If you don't believe me just check out the time devoted to it on the history channel. It probably also didn't hurt that all the political groups I hated tended to look at a swastika the same way a vampire looks at a cross. I suppose now that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but at the time I was thinking, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Then there was the racial thing. After hearing repeatedly about how evil white men had been it was refreshing to see a philosophy that took a very different view of things, especially since I was one of those Aryan types.

Anyway, after a couple of years the whole thing ran it's course. I never considered myself a Nazi, but I guess you could say that I did sympathize with them a little. Eventually though it dawned on me that Nazism really didn't have any positive attributes aside from cool looking uniforms, that I would detest living under such a regime, and that it wasn't the polar opposite of communism at all.

I was never historically illiterate, and things like the holocaust were probably what prevented me from fully embracing Nazism and eventually turned me away from it entirely. That and the fact that I have a very strong libertarian streak in me and I hate having the government tell me what I can and can't do.