The media has never really understood the militia movement, and once again are just accepting the Southern Poverty Law Center’s generalizations and distortions about it. They used to say that the difference between conservatives and liberals were that conservatives thought liberals were stupid, and liberals thought conservatives were evil. Now it would seem they think conservatives are terrorists.
I am not any more a fan of the wacky rights as I am of the wacky left, but the media’s lack of interest in understanding the phenomena is striking.
I am not any more a fan of the wacky rights as I am of the wacky left, but the media’s lack of interest in understanding the phenomena is striking.
At the same time, I think we need to stop pretending to ourselves that the RKBA movement isn’t a bit top-heavy with wack-jobs of particularly unsavory varieties, who make the media’s lack of understanding an easy condition to achieve. Based on the principle of logic that you can’t prove a negative, it is easy for the people who are, say, both racists and adamant gun rights advocates, to prove themselves to be racist, but it is effectively impossible for the rest of us who aren’t racists, to then prove that we aren’t. (Add anti-semites, homophobes, etc., to suit your tastes.)
One of the reasons to get real about this subject, is that it does sometimes influence the direction of our movement. Some years ago a significant gun-rights leader in our state confided to me that he would never support “Vermont Carry” because “[our state] has too many [n-words], so it could never work here. . .” And yet the organizations he was associated with would from time to time cite “Vermont Carry” as an ideal, for rhetorical purposes only, that they otherwise never showed Sign-One of supporting.
I have also had the experience of legislators with reputations as “sportsmen’s friends” use racist anecdotes — e.g., stories of what [n-words] did to sweet young white girls — while trying to persuade me to support Gun Control Lite legislation cast as Law and Order legislation. I was shocked that they just assumed such language and logic would be not only acceptable, but persuasive to me as a gun rights advocate. They had to learn that somewhere, and I doubt it was from the Brady Campaign or the SPLC.
I think that within any organization you are won’t have trouble finding crazies, bigots, and other people you really don’t want representing the group on television.
It doesn’t matter if it is a poltical organization, a company, or a social group. If they have enough people, they have some crazy people.
But I think the “miltia movement” is all imaginary this time. It wasn’t in the 90s but I think it is different this time. If someone knew what they were doing I think maybe they could use that to their advantage…
See also my blog post on the topic.