A writer for the New York Daily News published a column Saturday night arguing that one of the San Bernardino shooting victims was just as bad as the killers by virtue of being outspoken about Islamic extremism on Facebook. Nicholas Thalasinos was one of 14 people murdered Wednesday by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik at Inland Regional Center while attending a holiday party. According to Daily News writer Linda Stasi, arguments between Thalasinos and Farook (who were co-workers) over religion mean that Thalasinos shares equal blame for Wednesday’s deaths, even though he murdered nobody.
“They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department,” Stasi. “Now 13 innocent people are dead in unspeakable carnage.”
Stasi’s phrasing is revealing: She refuses to include Thalasinos among the “innocent” and instead places him among the guilty, alongside Farook and Malik, indicating Wednesday’s shooting was his fault.
“Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot,” she writes.
And what were Thalasinos’ crimes, according to Stasi? Being an “anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy” who liked Ann Coulter, disliked Iran, and sometimes got in fights on Facebook. That, in Stasi’s mind, made him equivalent to a man who assaulted a holiday party and murdered more than a dozen people.
Stasi eagerly draws whatever parallels she can between Farook and Thalasinos. Besides each being religious (Thalasinos was a Messianic Jew), she mocks Farook for traveling abroad to meet his wife (and co-shooter) Tashfeen Malik, largely so she can then point out that Thalasinos also met his wife online.
This isn’t the first time Stasi has aggressively lashed out at conservatives. Two months ago, she called for the NRA to be classified as a terrorist organization.
