Was James Holmes, Suspected Aurora Shooter, Inspired by Batman? [actually, Batman enemy, The Joker]

ABC's Good Morning America, via YahooNews ^ | July 20, 2012 | SHEILA MARIKAR, Good Morning America

[ETL]

"Violence like the massacre that happened in Aurora, Colo., today is a staple of action films, including Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. A similar, now haunting, scene unfurls in "The Dark Knight Rises" when a masked villain leads a violent gang into a packed football stadium and deploys guns and explosives on the unsuspecting crowd.

While there has been no indication as to the motives of James Holmes, the suspected 24-year-old shooter who is now in custody, new evidence suggests that he was inspired by the Batman series of comic books and/or movies.

Law enforcement sources confirmed to ABC News that Holmes said "I am the Joker" when apprehended by authorities. His hair was painted red, the same hair color of Heath Ledger's Joker at one point in 2008's "The Dark Knight."

[snip]

There are more parallels. In Frank Miller's iconic 1986 comic book series, "The Dark Knight Returns," the Joker murders a television studio audience by deploying "smile gas." Holmes began his massacre by setting off smoke bombs throughout the theater.

In the same book, Arnold Crimp, a disturbed man who just lost his job, pulls out a handgun in an adult film theater and kills three people. A scene from the strip shows a news anchor saying, "Three slain in Batman-inspired porn theater shoot-out." ..."

[ETL]

Here are a few things the Good Morning America writer left out: the "Black Bloc" is an ultra-violent faction of the OWS movement. James Holmes was apparently dressed in Black Bloc-type attire during the rampage. The film playing at the time (Batman/The Dark Knight Rises) (rightfully) depicts the 'Occupy' movement as evil, villainous, and anti-Capitalist. The film is pro-Capitalist, anti-OWS. Its directors proudly and openly describe themselves as pro-Capitalist Conservatives. So there is at least SOME reason to believe the attack might be politically motivated. James Holmes wasn't inspired by Capitalist champion Batman, he was inspired by Batman enemy, The Joker.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9405999/How-the-Dark-Knight-Rises-reveals-Batmans-Conservative-soul.html
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From Breitbart, one day before the shooting...

("Dark Knight" was ANTI-Occupy, PRO-Capitalist)

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/18/dark-knight-rises-review-batman-bain-ows
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From Time.com, Nov 2011...

"Occupy Oakland Embraces Nonviolence, but Debates [considers] 'Black Bloc' Tactics"

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2098891,00.html

[yetidog]

Does the popular culture encourage violence in some elements of society? Duh.

[ETL]

"Law enforcement sources confirmed to ABC News that Holmes said "I am the Joker" when apprehended by authorities. "

[cripplecreek]

[the invisib1e hand]

His inspiration? See tagline.

[cripplecreek]

I agree. Those screeching for censorship of films need to worry about a far more dangerous villain like Ayers, Van Jones, Gore, and many more.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I really don’t think painting Batman as an evil, conservative TEA Party member is going to work out for the commie ‘RATS.

[the invisib1e hand]

He was, I'm betting, enraged by it.

[MissMagnolia]

.... a masked villain leads a violent gang into a packed football stadium and deploys guns and explosives on the unsuspecting crowd.

So, it seems to me that the only 'gun control' that should be employed after this tragedy is to ban all guns, their use thereof and associated violence from Hollyweird movies, TV shows, etc. ...... /S (You know the lib directors, actors would be screaming bloody heck .....)

[Tex-Con-Man]

The left desperately wants to change the subject away from Hollywood movie violence to the NRA. Wanna guess why? On a completely unrelated note...Morgan Freeman (stars in Batman movie with James Holmes inspiration, “The Joker”) gave the Obama campaign a million dollar contribution. I wonder if anyone will call on Obama to return that money...

[catnipman]

“Does the popular culture encourage violence in some elements of society? Duh.”

Ya think? Fifty years ago practically every rural or semi-rural boy owned a .22 rifle and most were hunters, and yet there weren’t any school, or other mindless massacres like today, so one has ask oneself, “What has changed”?

[ETL]

The "Black Bloc", of which this lunatic MAY have been a part, is a far LEFT, very violent, anarchist movement.

From wiki, with links to sources at site...

"In 1986 Hamburg squatters mobilised following attacks on the Hafenstraße. A demonstration of 10,000 took to the streets surrounding at least 1,500 people in a black bloc. They carried a large banner saying "Build Revolutionary Dual Power!" At the end of the march, the black bloc then engaged in street fighting that forced the police to retreat. The next day 13 department stores in Hamburg were set alight, causing nearly $10 million in damage. Later that year, following the Chernobyl disaster, militant anti-nuclear activists used the tactic.

On 1 May 1987, a peaceful peoples fest in Berlin-Kreuzberg was attacked by West German police.[7] In consequence of the unprovoked attack, thousands of people attacked the police with rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails. The riots became famous after the police had to completely pull out of the so called "SO 36" Neighborhood in Kreuzberg for several hours, and rioters looted shops together with residents.[8]

When Ronald Reagan came to Berlin in June 1987, he was met by around 50,000 demonstrators protesting against his Cold War policies. This included a black bloc of 3,000 people. A couple of months later, police intensified their harassment of the Hafenstraße squatters. In November 1987, the residents were joined by thousands of other autonomen and fortified their squat, built barricades in the streets and defended themselves against the police for nearly 24 hours. After this the city authorities legalised the squatters residence.

On 1 May 1988 [Communist May Day], radical left groups organised a May Day demonstration through Berlin-Kreuzberg, ending in riots even heavier than the year before. The police were attacked with steel balls fired by slingshots, stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails. On 2 May, headline of the Berlin newspaper B.Z. was "Beirut?? Nein, das ist Berlin!" (Beirut?? No, it´s Berlin!). The riots finally became a tradition in Berlin-Kreuzberg and have recurred every 1 May since, but never as fatally as in the first two years.[9] When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met in Berlin in 1988, the autonomen hosted an international gathering of anti-capitalist activists. Numbering around 80,000, the protesters greatly outnumbered the police. Officials tried to maintain control by banning all demonstrations and attacking public assemblies. Nevertheless, there were riots and upmarket shopping areas were destroyed.[10]

In the period after the Berlin Wall, the German black bloc movement continued traditional riots such as May Day in Berlin-Kreuzberg, but with decreasing intensity. Their main focus became the struggle against the recurring popularity of Neo-Nazism in Germany. The "turn" came in June 2007, during the 33rd G8 summit. A black block of 2,000 people built barricades, set cars alight and attacked the police during a mass demonstration in Rostock.[11] 400 police officers were injured, and also about 500 demonstrators and activists. According to the German Verfassungsschutz, the weeks of organisation before the demonstration and the riots themselves were amounted to a revival for the militant left in Germany. Since the "Battle of Rostock", traditional "May Day Riots" after demonstrations every May 1 in Berlin, and since 2008 also in Hamburg, became more intense, and violence of the autonomen against police officers and political enemies at demonstrations of radical left groups have dramatically increased.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc

[ETL]

His inspiration? See tagline (If Bill Ayers had a son, he'd look like James Holmes.)

"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at"
--Bill Ayers (1970), quoted in New York Times, September 11, 2001:

Article: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1>
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"Dig It. First they killed those pigs [ie, rich people], then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"
-Weather Underground leader and wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, referring to the Manson murders

Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09
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Bill Ayers: "I considered myself partly an anarchist then and I consider myself partly an anarchist now. I mean, I'm as much an anarchist as I am a Marxist which is to say I find a lot of the ideas in anarchism appealing."
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"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English..."
--B.H. Obama
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"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==

[Shady]

Sorry, ABC is not a credible news source.

[Pit1]

Where is the booking photo. Tired of this H S mug shot. Lets see the moron for what he is.

[cripplecreek]

You might want to do a wiki search of Andrew Kehoe before declaring that there were no school massacres. The worst in US history was in 1927.

[the invisib1e hand]

that's a very useful post.

but all the media will talk about is the movie.

Somebody needs to start asking the media what "Black Bloc" is. Repeatedly.

[Revolting cat!]

From Joe Morgenstern's Friday WSJ review:

Batman movies may be a bit of a special case, what with fanatical fanboys trolling the Internet to root out negative opinions of their supersolemn hero. But the Dark Knight's acolytes don't have a monopoly on intolerance of dissent. They're part of a rising tide that threatens to drown Internet discussion in shrill opinion. The editors of Rotten Tomatoes have the right to excise such clearly intolerable comments, and the responsibility to improve procedures for screening out new ones. Once that's done, however, the comments function should be fully restored. Free speech for the many shouldn't fall victim to abuse by the few.

[Revolting cat!]

Oops, here's the preceding paragraph of the review to provide context. Read this post first (as I know you will):

I may have saved my life without realizing it by liking "The Dark Knight Rises" sufficiently—or disliking it with sufficient restraint—to have my review categorized as "ripe" rather than "rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes, a popular website that aggregates movie and DVD reviews. For those of us who write about movies to provoke discussion, these reductive categories are awfully silly, but they're also symptoms of the love/hate, either/or ethos of contemporary discourse. In the realm of the Internet, as well as talk-radio and politics, that discourse has been growing ever more poisonous, and now the poison has contaminated Rotten Tomatoes. Earlier this week the website was forced to shut down its user comments on "The Dark Knight Rises" when negative reviews—officially adjudged "rotten"—by two of my colleagues, Christy Lemire and Marshall Fine, provoked floods of vile responses that included death threats

[ETL]

Fifty years ago practically every rural or semi-rural boy owned a .22 rifle and most were hunters, and yet there weren’t any school, or other mindless massacres like today, so one has ask oneself, “What has changed”?

Most of these things of recent times are 'copycat' crimes, influenced in part by excessive social network and media attention.