Sikh Temple Shootings in Wisconsin

Sikh Temple shootings in Wisconsin

On Aug. 6, 2012, the temple was preparing langar, a Sikh communal meal, for later in the day. However, the gunman came to the temple and killed six people inside a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. He was killed in a police shootout was identified as 40-year-old army veteran Wade Michael Page. Page was discharged from the army in 1998 and declared ineligible to re-enlist, according to a U.S. defense official. Police were treating the mass shooting as a performance of domestic terrorism. This is not the terrorism. However, this mass shooting occurred because of his high racism and discrimination.

First of all, no one would exactly know why Page did this mass gunfire on that sunny day. However, when we were looking at Page's activity and his belief and thought, we could assume that why Page killed so many people in the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Page was the member of the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights agency that fights anti-Semitism. Moreover, They were also investigating possible ties to white supremacist groups and other racial motivations. Page had ties to white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups, reportedly being a member of the Hammerskins. Neo-Nazism borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including militant nationalism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and antisemitism. Holocaust denial is a common feature, as is incorporation of Nazi symbols and admiration of Adolf Hitler. It is related to the white nationalist and white power skinhead movements in many countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism). In addition, He entered the white power music scene in 2000, White power music is music that promotes white nationalism and expresses racism against non-whites, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_power_music), becoming involved in several neo-Nazi bands. He founded the band End Apathy in 2005 and played in the band Definite Hate, both considered racist white-power bands by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As we could see from his activities, he was very proud of being white and his in-group social dominance orientation leaded him to believe the discrimination of non-white and page started to being stereotyping out- group.

In addition, Page and the Neo-Nazi group had a range of tattoos on his arms and upper body, which were represented to appearance his links to white supremacist organizations. From their behaviors, assuming one of the psychological themes Out-group homogeneity effect, which is that people tend to see members of in-group as very different from each other and, at the same time, tend to underestimate the differences among members of other group. This happens because people simply interact more with members of their