NY Daily News writer parallels San Bernardino killer with Messianic victim
Syed Farook and Nicholas Thalasinos were two similarly ‘bigoted’ and ‘hate-filled’ men, pens Linda Stasi; commenters call her article shameful
A New York Daily News columnist has paralleled the San Bernardino killer and one of his victims, calling them two similarly “bigoted” and “hate-filled” men.
In an article published Saturday, writer Linda Stasi said Nicholas Thalasinos, one of the 14 victims of the December 2 bloodbath, was “just as bigoted” as Syed Farook, the man who perpetrated the massacre along with his wife.
“They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department. Now 13 innocent people are dead in unspeakable carnage,” Stasi said in the opening graph of her column. In fact, 14 people were killed in the killing spree by Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, raising the question of whether Stasi considered Thalasinos not to be an “innocent” victim.
Stasi’s article was headlined online, “Stasi: San Bernardino killers were radical, ISIS-loving monsters — but one of their victims was just as bigoted.” Posted on her Facebook page, it was headlined with the briefer, simple claim: “San Bernardino bloodbath born of bigots.”
They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department. Now 13 innocent people are dead in…
Posted by Linda Stasi on Saturday, December 5, 2015
“One man spent his free time writing frightening, NRA-loving, hate-filled screeds on Facebook about the other’s religion,” she went on in the column. “The other man quietly stewed and brewed his bigotry, collecting the kind of arsenal that the Facebook poster would have envied. What they didn’t realize is that except for their different religions they were in many ways similar men who even had the same job.”
While Stasi named Thalasinos in her article, she did not name Farook, saying “I refuse to add to their fame by using the killer and his murderous wife’s names.”
Stasi noted that, just like the male killer, Thalasinos, who she described as “a radical Born Again Christian/Messianic Jew,” had “also connected with his future wife online and had traveled across the country to meet her.”
She acknowledged that the killer “became half of an Islamic Bonnie & Clyde” and that he and his wife “deserve every disgusting adjective thrown at them. And more.” But she asserted that victim Thalasinos “is also inaccurately being eulogized as a kind and loving religious man,” yet he “was also a hate-filled bigot. Death can’t change that.”
Stasi based her incendiary assessment of Thalasinos, she wrote, on the assertion that “Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be ‘Freaking Awesome’ if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security. He asked, ‘IS 1. EVERY POLITICIAN IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR? 2. EVERY POLITICIAN IS A MORON? 3. EVERY POLITICIAN IS RACIST AGAINST JEWS?’ He also posted screeds like, ‘You can stick your Muslim Million Man march up your asses,’ and how ‘Hashem’ should blow up Iran. His Facebook page warns that ‘Without HEALTHY PREGNANT WOMAN (Democrats) would have NO SOURCE of BABIES to SACRIFICE and SELL!'”
As of Sunday afternoon, the column had attracted dozens of reader comments, largely outraged by the piece.
“She put voicing a political opinion on a par with murdering people,” wrote one reader, Steve Kiefer.
“I see no reason to demonize the victim for his opinions,” noted a second commenter succinctly. “He wasn’t the one who went on a killing spree.”
“The Daily News should be ashamed of itself,” added a third reader.
Read: Messianic San Bernardino victim was ‘gentile’ supporter of Israel, argued with killer on Islam
