Two years ago I wrote a post about Redneck Revolt, a pro-gun far-Left, Antfa group.
Today, in the wake of all the internet criticism of milkshaking with cement and the beating of Andy Ngo, Vox thought it was a good idea to remind the Right that the Left has no problems using guns either.
I’m a left-wing anarchist. Guns aren’t just for right-wingers.
I am warning you, what you are about to read is a combination of mind boggling historical inaccuracies and mental gymnastics.
Right-wingers have held an unearned monopoly on gun culture for too long. Whether it’s in the halls of legislative power or in the comments under “gun bunny” photos on Instagram, there is a prevailing narrative that pegs guns and armed self-defense exclusively to Republicans, racist libertarians, and other generally Constitution-obsessed weirdos.
It’s not unearned. I cannot think of a single pro-gun Democrat. The closest I can thing of is the “I won’t take away your deer rifle while I try to ban assault weapons” politician.
Also, I love how a belief in the Second Amendment and civil rights in general makes a person a “Constitution-obsessed weirdo.”
It maintains that those on the left want to take away everyone’s guns and swathe the entire country in bubble wrap.
See every single candidate running on the Democrat side right now. Every single one has pushed for gun bans and mandatory buybacks.
But I’m an anarchist, and I call bullshit.
Eh…
I’m of the firm opinion that it’s time to not only arm the left but challenge the narrative that all leftists are anti-gun. Many are, and that’s a position I can understand and respect. But there is also a long history of armed community self-defense among the radical left that is often glossed over or forgotten entirely in favor of the Fox News-friendly narrative that all liberals hate guns. That’s simply not the case — though as history has proven, the only thing that scares the reactionary right more than the idea of losing their guns is the thought of us having them.
That is true, I fear the far Left with guns. The far Left has a nasty habit of using their guns as tools of oppression, not as tools of freedom. The Left carries guns to make it easier to carry out a lynching or a pogrom. Just look at what the far Left in Portland did with sticks and crowbars and milkshakes.
When I was in Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting the Unite the Right rally in 2017, the only time I truly felt safe was when members of Redneck Revolt — a working-class, anti-fascist, anti-racist armed community defense group — showed up open-carrying and secured the park where a number of us were gathered. The police may have stood by and done nothing as a neo-Nazi murdered one of us, but Redneck Revolt was there to offer protection — and the fascists steered clear of that park because of it.
There were no good guys at at the Unite the Right rally. Antifa is the enemy, they have proven that at every possible opportunity.
In Stone Mountain, Georgia, when a group of us marched through the streets to celebrate the cancellation of a Klan rally on February 2, we were accompanied by local activists with rifles and ARs slung over their shoulders; the police kept their distance, which was an extraordinary sight for someone used to New York City’s ultra-aggressive, hyper-militarized NYPD. As the black militant liberation group the Black Panthers showed back in the 1960s, as the Zapatistas showed in the ’90s, and as anarchists in New Orleans showed during the aftermath of Katrina, when cops and other fascists see that they’re not the only ones packing, the balance of power shifts, and they tend to reconsider their tactics.
How could we forget the terrorist acts, murders, kidnappings, bombings, and robberies carried out by the Black Panthers and Zapatistas. This is part of that rewriting or whitewashing of history where far Left racial separatists are turned into heroes.
To be honest, the thought of a world in which the state and their running dogs are the only entities with access to firearms sends a shudder down my spine.
Here, I agree.
Leftist gun ownership is about protecting marginalized communities.
No it is not. “Protecting marginalized X” has become the blank check for justifying violence. Attacking people just trying to drive home from work in the middle of Portland during an anti-Cop protest is not Protecting marginalized communities.
I’m interested in reclaiming the notion of armed self-defense from those who have long used it as a cudgel to repress dissent and terrorize marginalized communities, and emphasizing its potential as a transformative tool toward collective liberation.
This is projection. Everything that comes out of their mouths is projection. Your and my owning guns because we want to be left alone and will defend ourselves accordingly is not a “cudgel to repress dissent and terrorize marginalized communities.” Conservative gun owners are not carrying their guns into black or gay neighborhoods to scare the locals.
They want to pretend that we are as an excuse to instigate the violence.
There is a long history of leftist gun ownership, and a concurrent theme of state repression against it. As author and anarchist scott crow notes, “our current gun control laws disproportionately hobble poor communities and communities of color.”
Democrats made these laws.
As far as the state is concerned, black people were never meant to own guns at all; the Second Amendment was intended in part as a means of controlling the enslaved black population and suppressing possible uprisings.
None of that is true. That is the sort of far Left anti-Second Amendment horseshit that gets thrown around on college campuses by people who do not know the writings of our founding fathers.
That sentiment has proven to have quite a bit of staying power. In 1967, the Black Panthers staged an armed demonstration on the steps of the California state courthouse and launched an occupation in protest of the Mulford Act, which banned open carry in the state. Said law was written by a Republican Assembly member in response to the Panthers’ cop-watching “police patrols”; shortly after the protest, state legislators rushed to enact tougher gun control laws, with the full support of Republican President Ronald Reagan and the National Rifle Association.
And how quickly it goes from the real history of the Black Panthers threatening people with guns to “gun control was created to disarm black people.”
We can’t depend on the police to protect us.
Again, here, I’ll agree.
I don’t have all the answers, but the bare fact of the matter here is that violent right-wing extremism is a continuing threat that has been allowed to spread unabated in this country — a country that is itself rooted in the oppression of people of color.
No, it really hasn’t. And can this person make it any clearer how much she hates this country.
The police will not protect us; neither will the military, or well-meaning liberals, or your favorite oh-so-progressive politicians. It is not in their interest to do so, and recognizing that is imperative to the survival of those who reject this vile status quo.
This is accurate, but not entirely for the reason she postulates. Disgraced Sheriff Scot Israel didn’t protect the children of rich white people either. Never attribute to racism what is adequately explained by bureaucratic incompetence.
The way that leftists engage with the subject of firearms, conflict, and power within our own communities needs to shift toward a place where guns are considered just another tool in our struggle for collective liberation, not the sole focus.
“Our struggle for collective liberation” is not self defense in the conservative sense. Considering that the Black Panthers, Zapatistas, FALN, and other Leftist groups instigated terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and murders, we are not speaking the same language.
Until we live in a world with no police, no military, and no state, we’re at the mercy of all three — and I, at least, don’t think it’s fair to expect us to confront them empty-handed.
Such a world is a terrible place. It makes the thug with the club the king. Rule by the most violent. Which is exactly what they are going for. It is what rules the streets of Portland right now.
Make no mistake, this is crybully gun ownership.
This is branding everyone that disagrees with them as fascist so they can shoot them.
This is concrete milkshakes, pepper spray, and crowbars taken to the next level. If they can justify bashing a person in the head with a club by calling them a fascist, they can justify shooting them for the same reason.
I believe in gun rights. This is using guns for Leftist intimidation.
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