The blood libel is a centuries old antisemitic lie that Jews engaged in the ritualistic killing of non-Jewish children to take their blood and drink it/use it in the Passover Matzo/etc. It was given new life in the modern area by Arabs and Palestinians who have spread the lie that Israelis steal organs from Palestinian children to use a spare parts for sick Jews. This rumor even spread to Haiti after Israel sent a field hospital to aid in the international recovery effort after the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
In general the blood libel is one in a trend of antisemitic canards (stereotypical lies). Other common ones are that Jews control the media, control the banks, control the government, and are not patriotic or have dual loyalty to Israel and the nations of their citizenship. These lies have surfaced time and time again against the Jews and was justification for antisemitic attacks.
The French dragged out the accusation of disloyalty during the Dreyfus Affair. The Germans used all of them to justify the Holocaust.
The reality is these canards are ways for people who cannot rationalize the world around them and feel like they have no control over their own lives to scapegoat some other group for their problems.
“It’s not me or random chance, it’s the Jews who secretly control everything that’s the problem.”
In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting it is EYE POPPING to watch almost all of these antisemitic canards dragged out against gun owners in general and the NRA in particular.
Kurt Eichenwald went to twitter to attack gun owners who own AR pattern rifles for wanting to kill American Troops.
Here is Joe Scarborough saying exactly the same thing on his show.
See, gun owners are disloyal to America and want to kill American soldiers.
Writer Brett Arends also questioned the loyalty of gun rights advocates. Either they support gun rights or they support mass shootings.
There is no room in these people’s minds for a person to be a law abiding, patriotic, gun owner.
Next is the conspiracy that the NRA – as some sort of nebulous entity – secretly controls Congress with money.
Here is a California state Rep explaining how all gun owners and gun rights advocates are collectively responsible for this one shooting because they control Congress.
In response to the news the Rep Steve Scalise would continue to support gun rights after being shot, this was the response by some on Twitter.
Forget principles, it’s all about the NRA money.
A writer for WaPo tried to explain, poorly, how the NRA owns Congress.
ZOMG!!! Only $3.5 Million since 1998, that’s…. nothing. But never mind that $3.5 Million is a drop in the ocean of political money, it’s NRA money and that’s bad.
The LA Times published an article making the same claims about how this shooting is caused by the NRA and “fist fulls of money.”
Here is Rob Reiner explaining how the NRA has a “death grip” on Congress. Or not explaining. It doesn’t matter how this doesn’t make sense, it’s real to Rob Reiner.
It’s not just Congress but the Media that the NRA controls. Apparently CNN things that the NRA is so powerful that we can’t even talk about gun control on TV.
Lastly, we have the idea that the NRA is a subversive force in America that works against her best interests.
The San Francisco Gate published an article how “White men with guns are America’s real terrorists – and the NRA is enabling them.”
Brett Arends said the same.
These are the same people who went out of their way to explain why Antifa is just a tiny little group and how they are not terrorists and never mind them anyway, the real “terrorists” to them are law abiding citizens who want to preserve a Constitutionally protected right and prevent the collective punishment of other US citizens.
These are the same conspiratorial lies over and over again. A small group of others – this time (generally not-Progressive) gun owners and the NRA – amasses some unparalleled political power through money to control the government and media, and is disloyal to America, putting their desires for power above the safety of poor non-NRA children.
Same shit, different scapegoat, and just as ugly, hateful, and bigoted.
I’ve been posting this a lot lately. The NRA is far from the top spender:
NRA spending: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082
Top spending: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i
After all the fluff and PC BS, it comes down to the reality that this is what they really think of firearm owners and anyone else that has the audacity to not follow their goodfacts.
I look at this very simply. The fact that some people are criminals has no relevance to my rights, because I am not a criminal. That applies to my right to write what I want, my right to play baseball with a baseball bat, and my right to own and use a firearm, among many other things.
If someone argues that I as a law abiding person should not own a firearm, my question in reply is “what are you planning to do to me that you would not be able to do so long as I am armed?” And I might add “Μολὼν λαβέ μητροκοίτης”.
ZOMG!!! The NRA has spent $3.5 million over the past 20 years? Death grip on Congress!!!!
But Mickey Bloomberg can pledge — and spend — $50 million in ONE YEAR to elect gun-banning candidates, and it’s all hunky-dory.
Huh.
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Also, at what point do the anti-NRA headlines become libel and/or slander?
SF Chronicle: “White men with guns are America’s real terrorists – and the NRA is enabling them.”
As a white man with guns, the SF Chronicle just accused me of terrorism against America, and leveled the charge that the NRA is aiding and abetting terrorists. Both are serious crimes, and such accusations are a clear attempt to impugn character and cause reputational damage, but the author and paper present no evidence of any criminal code being violated. It’s completely baseless, and any reasonable person would know it, and the author/paper likely know it as well. Yet, the accusation has been made, in writing, in public. (legal terms highlighted)
So we have:
1. Clear written, public accusation of criminal activity.
2. Clear written, public attempt to cause reputational damage.
3. Zero admissible evidence in support of criminal accusation.
4. Significant evidence the author and editor knew or should have known the accusation is baseless.
How is this not libel, again?
As if the NRA is one thing. It is 5 million gun owners. All five million of us should sue!