No Spiritual Surrender

cyclideon

In the gun control debate, one reason why self-defense against tyranny is brushed off so often is because a lot of folks making that argument love tyranny.

No conservative militia would defend their black and brown neighbors against state violence. None of them lift a finger against ICE. They always defend the most repressive elements of the state, from the police to the army. They always make excuses for grotesque wealth inequality. They’re happy to attack whistleblowers at the service of the deep state (the only reason some of them criticize it now is because they think it’s politically biased, as opposed to the enormous power it wields).

The vast majority of marginalized people, including myself, don’t believe that mainstream gun culture favors our freedom. It’s exclusively authoritarian, made by and for traditionalists, nationalists, and others like them. These people want to regulate what kind of marriage is legitimate, what bathrooms trans and non-binary people can use, whether their kids are gay or straight, who can come into the country, and so on. At their worst, they’ll kill us themselves. The idea that those same people will stop LARPing the American Revolution and actually fight tyranny today is hilarious. Nobody believes it.

It’s terrible, because the core argument is correct. Taking guns away from the public and leaving the state with the authority to use them is terrifying. The state is always the greatest purveyor of violence. In the US, where police regularly profile and kill black people for the most trival bullshit, robbing them of even the slightest chance of an equal playing field is incredibly dangerous. The old Black Panther Party was able to prevent police violence against black people by open-carrying guns, and because of this, conservatives at the time were strong proponents of gun control. Liberals love to quote Ronald Reagan on the topic …

Americans don’t go around carrying guns with the idea they’re using them to influence other Americans. There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons. 

… but either don’t know or gloss over the fact that he was justifying a racist law, passed in response to the Black Panther Party resisting racist police.

We see the same reactionary underbelly of gun control today. The justification behind New York’s stop-and-frisk law “is to disarm likely suspects, although it has become a general law-and-order measure, particularly to enforce gun laws.” Existing laws, especially stop-and-frisk, disproportionately target black people. As much as authoritarians of different stripes would like to claim otherwise, laws are not neutral in practice. We are socialized into hierarchies. The existence of law is proof enough; the idea that we can isolate law in a vacuum, away from hierarchically-defined behavior, is absurd.

Gun control doesn’t just control the distribution of guns. It controls people. And more often than not, it controls marginalized people.

Back in 2012, there were 1,360 militia groups in the US. How many of those do you think were radical? Anti-racist? Anti-fascist? Can you even name one? Whatever answers you came up with, I’m sure they were deeply uncomfortable. This is not a position we want to be in. This is why a radical gun culture is overdue for us. This is why we need individual and communal self-defense. We’ve made some progress with organizations like Redneck Revolt, the John Brown Gun Club, Trigger Warning, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, and probably a bunch of local groups I’m not aware of. But we’re still outgunned. Radicals need to make a complete break with liberalism on this front. That doesn’t mean fetishizing violence, as authoritarians do. It means recognizing that the freedom of one is the freedom of all. It means recognizing that this principle actually means something, and that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to defend it. It means a profound love for your neighbor — no matter what race, gender, or sexuality they are — that transcends any political or philosophical principle, and that love is not the same as being passive.

That’s what self-defense against tyranny really means.

cyclideon

This will probably be my last interaction with this post, but it’s an important one.

In Wayne LaPierre’s speech to CPAC on February 22nd, he targeted the left in multiple segments. He called out — by name — Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Socialists of America. At one point, he had to remind the audience that he didn’t mean resist them with guns, but through legal and constitutional means. Leading an organization that’s practically wedded to the state, he has to make that distinction.

As I stated at the end of my OP, there are over a thousand militias in the country. Few of them are left-wing, and the vast majority probably listen to the NRA. LaPierre may not intend violence against radicals, but you can bet that somewhere out there, right-wing militia groups are stocking up guns and ammo. Waiting for an excuse to use them on us.

We have almost nothing in comparison.

We need to change that. Now.