The Joker in the Patriot Movement

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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Jan 17, 2017 8:18 am

SOROS, ‘GLOBALISM,’ AND GRASSROOTS REVOLT: HOW THE RIGHT USES CONSPIRACY THEORIES TO APPEAR REVOLUTIONARY

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“Globalism” has now replaced “communism” and even Islam, as the boogeyman of the Right, while at the same time, still encapsulating both of them as threats within its worldview. The far-Right, and the Right in general is very good at taking very complex systems and reducing them down to simple problems caused by a select group of people. As we will show, the idea of globalism both seeks to attempt to appear populist or even revolutionary, while at the same time, singling out select groups of people who the Right claims further the ‘globalist agenda.’

But where did the idea of globalism come from and what the hell does it mean? After NAFTA was passed, and globalization allowed capital to move freely across national borders while locking workers behind them, as structural adjustment programs slashed social services, took away land, and restructured economies in the service of international capital, the mood began to change in the US among everyday workers against globalization. This anger helped feed into the anti-globalization movement, as large segments of labor joined the fight against free-trade deals. But it wasn’t long until sections of the right began to bring critiques of globalization into their talking points as well, Pat Buchanan being a key example.

On the Right, discussion of global capitalism was turned on its head; into a conversation on the problem of “the globalists.” In short, the problem wasn’t a system, but a set of people, and this problem is almost always described along the lines of a conspiracy. In short, those on the far-Right framed the problem in terms of American nationalism, sovereignty, and power, pitted against the “globalist agenda.” Furthermore, the far-Right, of whatever stripe, always described the elite globalist system as being supported and maintained by a set of non-State actors, which work in it’s service to destabilize sovereignty and attack the ‘Native’ population. For some this is immigrants, for others Muslims, for the racist far-Right, it means black people being controlled by Jews, among others. But for all, it means anti-capitalists and grassroots communities in struggle which fight against the dominant social order and power structure. As Liam Stack wrote:

Globalism is often used as a synonym for globalization, the system of global economic interconnection that has been critiqued for decades by liberal groups like labor unions, environmental organizations and opponents of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But for the far right, the term encapsulates a conspiratorial worldview based on racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism…


The term also often explicitly rejects any sort of anti-capitalist analysis of the systems of power and moreover, and instead replaces a class analysis with racial and national overtones:

Lauren Southern, a host on the right-wing Canadian media site Rebel Media, explicitly rejected its use as a synonym for globalization in a video she posted online in September. She said the word meant rule by autocrats — such as President Obama, former President George W. Bush and the United Nations — who value “the false flag of diversity” and “unchecked immigration from the third world.”


Hope Hicks, Trump’s spokesperson defined globalism as such:

An economic and political ideology which puts allegiance to international institutions ahead of the nation-state; seeks the unrestricted movement of goods, labor and people across borders; and rejects the principle that the citizens of a country are entitled to preference for jobs and other economic considerations as a virtue of their citizenship.


For the ‘anti-globalists’ then, the major problems facing everyday people are not pollution, repression, or poverty, but the pooling of State power into umbrella organizations, such as the United Nations, and “the flooding” of countries by immigration. For the Right, this results in a perceived attack on Western Civilization.

And for some on the far-Right, these ideas take extreme forms. For example, Alex Jones (who called globalism “the ultimate form of slavery”) contends that the globalists ultimate plan is a one world government and that they use immigration to flood sovereign States in order to destroy them and rig elections. Jones then goes on to contend that globalist elites also have plans to kill off a massive amount of the population through genocide and extermination for the sake of consolidating their power. Jones also preaches a set of even more hardcore conspiracy theories, some of which are paranormal in character and outright fucking crazy. But in the last year, Jones has crossed over as a Trump supporter, having Trump on his show, and we’ve even watched as Trump has parroted much of what Jones says in his radio broadcasts. It’s easy to laugh Jones off, but clearly his myth of ‘globalism’ is selling.


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An image of George Soros from InfoWars’ article on globalism.

The Oath Keepers, one of the biggest Patriot groups also label globalism and globalists as their chief enemy. From the Oath Keeper page:

Arising out of the writings of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (the Hegelian dialectic), and even further back to Plato, Globalism is a belief in a Utopian world run by wise men who care for the masses with a kind, benevolent hand. This we know is a bunch of crap, because those who are leading, (and have led), the world into this collective dystopia have murdered, “collectively”, hundreds of millions of people, through wars, genocide, ethnic cleansing and eugenics.

Fascism, socialism, communism and crony capitalism are all globalist at their core. meaning the collective is supreme over the individual. It is the battle between collectivism and individualism that we should be focused on, not left versus right,republican versus democrat, or fascist versus communist, but, rather, the collectivists vs. the individual, for collectivists hide in all the political persuasions. If someone wants to take your Creator-given, natural rights from you “for the greater good”, you can be assured they are collectivists. Those who would create the New World Order, are collectivists.


In many ways this critique of globalism simply continues cold-war opposition to communism, or inserts new enemies, such as immigrants or Islam, to make it fit into this idea of globalism as anything that threatens American nationalism and ‘sovereignty.’ The Conservativpedia post on globalism again makes this point:

Globalism is the failed liberal–authoritarian desire for a “one world” view that rejects the important role of nations in protecting values and encouraging productivity. Globalism is anti-American in encouraging Americans to adopt a “world view” rather than an “American view.”

Globalists oppose nationalism and national sovereignty, and instead tend to favor on open borders, free trade, interventionalism, and foreign aid. Globalists virulently opposed Donald Trump in 2016. Instead, globalists preferred Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz for the nomination, both of whom have voted in favor of the globalist agenda as senators.

Liberals support globalism because it leads to centralized power, thereby providing liberals with an easier way to gain control. It is far easier for liberals to persuade a handful of people in centralized government to rule in their favor than it is for liberals to push their agenda on a decentralized form of government.



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The conspiracy theories of Alex Jones and his critique of “globalism” has been mainstreamed by Trump, who not only came on Jones’ show, but parrots much of his talking points.

This is why immigration is such a huge point on the far-Right, because they see it as “a tool of the globalists” to destroy State sovereignty. Of course, this myth hides the fact that mass migration of people is caused largely by the globalization of the capitalist economy, US involvement in the drug war and foreign policy, and now, climate change and lack of access to water. As The National Interest expands the far-Right position clearly:

Nationalists believe that any true nation must have clearly delineated and protected borders, otherwise it isn’t really a nation. They also believe that their nation’s cultural heritage is sacred and needs to be protected, whereas mass immigration from far-flung lands could undermine the national commitment to that heritage. Globalists don’t care about borders. They believe the nation-state is obsolete, a relic of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which codified the recognition of co-existing nation states. Globalists reject Westphalia in favor of an integrated world with information, money, goods and people traversing the globe at accelerating speeds without much regard to traditional concepts of nationhood or borders.


The overall logic of those opposed to globalism can best be reiterated and understood in simplicity by the Neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach, who stated that the coming period will be defined by a war between globalism and nationalism, where nationalists of all stripes will fight against the globalist elites, which in Heimbach view, are manifested as a racialized Jewish global ruling class. If the nationalists are successful Heimbach contends, they will then create fascist States for each of their own races. While Heimbach’s position would be seen as extreme even on the Right, in many ways, this is just the logical conclusion on an idea founded on anti-Semitism. As Stack wrote:

Far-right groups in the United States began to refer to globalism at the end of the Cold War, when it replaced communism as an idea that was an ever-present danger to the nation, Mr. Pitcavage said. They have also referred to it as the New World Order, and soon they saw its tentacles everywhere.

The shape of that conspiracy had distinctly anti-Semitic overtones, in part because many of communism’s foes had historically seen communism as inextricably linked to Judaism, Mr. Pitcavage said. Members of the far right became fixated on prominent Jews like the businessman and philanthropist George Soros.

Those conspiratorial beliefs were bolstered when former President George Bush celebrated the end of the Cold War in a 1991 speech by saying it was the dawn of a “new world order.” His use of the phrase was taken as proof by many that a globalist conspiracy really was afoot.


The problem with all of this talk of ‘globalism’ vs nationalism is that it holds half-truths and full lies. Neoliberal finance capitalism is a global system. Neoliberalism and globalization have left behind billions of people, destroyed the environment, and attacked the living standards of the majority of people at the benefit of a small set of elites. However this is not conspiracy, it is not the creation of a cabal of Jews, and moreover, globalization is not designed to destroy the power of national States in order to create a one world government, nor is it the project of ideological liberal/Jewish/Islamics/Communists, or ‘globalists.’ Globalization and capitalism in general needs States. It needs them to manage and control their populations and lock them in place, even as capital and goods move freely. Finally, States are needed by elites on a variety of levels in order to bring about stability and prevent revolution when revolt and crisis break out. Moreover, just because capital is more globalized, does not mean that there are not competing visions among elites themselves.

But while the myth of globalism exists to explain the world in a way that allows the Right to actually make sense to people, and moreover, to make themselves appear to actually have political agency, it has other myths to describe everyone who resists in the here and now.

THE MYTH AND REALITY OF GEORGE SOROS

If there’s one thing Right loves to throw around, it’s the idea that George Soros is behind any sort of social movement, organized protest, or dissent in general against the status-quo. This is something that is held dear by all parts of the far-Right and even the center right-wing. It seeks to make sense of popular struggles and dismiss them as simply the work of people who are paid off by an evil financial capitalist. The myth has links back to anti-Semitic works such as the original fake news piece, The Protocols of Zion, and Soros being Jewish only adds icing to the far-Right’s cake. Moreover, it also side steps the issue of the very real stranglehold that non-profits and foundation money does play in resistance movements, which is negative, that seeks to channel social movements back into politics and the State, as opposed to building autonomous power on a community level.

But who is Soros? George Soros is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and is one of the 30 richest people in the world, making billions on hedge funds and currency speculation. Far from being an anti-capitalist or revolutionary, he’s most known for as “the man that broke the bank of England,” after he neted over $1 billion in currency speculation. Along with being one of the richest capitalists alive, Soros also donates to and funds many liberal non-profits that promote the Democratic Party and it’s bureaucrats. Soros has also backed many Democratic candidates, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In 1984, Soros set up the Open Society Foundation that acts as a grantmaking network, further expanding the amount of non-profits who took on the role of providing social services; filling gaps that were created after Reagan began slashing various programs.

Because Soros does have expansive wealth, donates to what the far-Right describes as “left-wing” groups such as MoveOn.org (a front for the Democratic Party), the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and MediaMatters.org (a large liberal non-profit), along with Democratic career politicians, on top of coming from a Jewish background, those on the Right love to use the image of Soros as a wealthy Jewish elitist to further a wide range of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and in the eyes of the far-Right, every riot, strike, occupation, and disruption ultimately has one man behind it: Soros.

This is also a myth that like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or shows like Ancient Aliens, gets ratings, clicks, and votes. One of Donald Trump’s last campaign adds attacked Soros, along with the head of Goldman Sachs (where ironically Trump’s top advisor Steve Bannon formerly of Brietbart used to work), and the Federal Reserve, along with Clinton, in what many described as having anti-Semitic undertones. In 2010, Glenn Beck released a two part series on Soros, calling him “The Puppet Master,” claiming that he wanted a one world government and for himself to rule it. Again, this reduction of struggle, dissent, and unrest boils down complex situations into easy solutions; and Soros as a wealthy Jew makes an easy devil for the far-Right.


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The far-Right portrays Soros as behind the organic struggles of poor, especially black people, as a way to demonize and downplay them. This plays into the myth that a Jewish cabal controls the world and moreover, that black people are unable to organize themselves without “puppet masters.”


More at: https://itsgoingdown.org/george-soros-g ... ns-revolt/
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Thu Feb 02, 2017 1:05 pm

Jerome Corsi: From Trump Conspiracy Theorist to Trump’s Conspiracy Theorist

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Now that a professed fan of InfoWars has become president, it is only fitting that the conspiracy theory network might find a spot in the White House press room. This week, arch-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones announced that WorldNetDaily reporter Jerome Corsi will become InfoWars’ Washington, D.C., bureau chief and that he plans to cover White House press briefings.

Corsi, a longtime conspiracy theorist and regular guest on Jones’ program, worked with Trump to promote the discredited birther conspiracy theory about President Obama. At one point, Trump tweeted a link to an article in which Corsi falsely claimed that Obama wears an Islamic wedding ring.


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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:37 pm

Rocktown Rebel September 30, 2009

Retaliate Against Alex Jones’ Treacherous Psychological Warfare!

An insult to one is an injury to all!

On occasion, this blog will be compelled to comment on events that occur outside of our corner of the “prison planet”, this is one of those occasions.

We have it on good knowledge that amongst the several hundred anarchists present at Pittsburgh this past weekend were at least two Virginians. Two individuals who we the authors have been personally acquainted with in the past. Neither of these individuals were natives of the Blue Ridge area, and thus had no reason to inject themselves with unbridled loyalty and commitment into the local political struggles of the region, sacrificing time, money, energy, and safety to help their friends and neighbors. Yet they did so anyway at every opportunity, acting out of genuine camaraderie and the unrelenting sway of their ethical compasses.

These two individuals, like the majority of the g-20 disruptors in Pittsburgh last weekend, are anarchists. They were among those who put their bodies on the front-lines in New Orleans after Katrina, when the public authorities “were too busy cleaning up the tourist areas of the French Quarter and protecting shops to help the poorer city dwellers”. They were among those who worked year after year anonymously scaffolding virtually every libertarian project in the Blue Ridge, and, unlike other local activists, never cashed in, never sought prominence, celebrity, the spotlight of book-signing tours and self-aggrandizing Internet communiques. And in Pittsburgh, they were among the brave souls bombarded with the technocracy’s chemical and sound weapons for standing up, for refusing to allow business-as-usual to operate.

That these comrades of ours, and the hundreds like them, would be subject to the most obscene of slanders by those media agents who proclaim with great vigor to speak on behalf of Obama’s “free market”, of the global world order; this is of utterly no surprise. When self-appointed activist leaders, such as Alex Jones, stab in the backs the working-class grunts who make possible the mass-movements they parasitize off of, out of no motivation other than sheer cynicism and opportunism, to create a publicity stunt to generate more interest in their bankrupt channels of official dissent, when this happens the waters become murkier. Ambiguity and uncertainty are exploited, manipulated, and above all expanded and proliferated. The wells of communication are poisoned. And for what?

We will not degrade ourselves, stooping down to the level of dogs, by pedantically correcting every egregious factual error in the article entitled “Provocateur Cops Caught Disguised As Anarchists At G20″ on Alex Jones’ “Prison Planet” website[1]. We leave this to the myriad other anarchist bloggers who have already jumped at the opportunity to volunteer with such an endeavor.

This is the same news service, after all, that, forgoing an opportunity for rational analysis of the situation, reported that Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui was a “Mind Controlled Assassin”[2] on the flimsiest of evidence; the fact that Mr. Seung-Hui, like many of his fellow-workers, was on anti-depressant pharmaceutical drugs, and a photograph[3] of an East-Asian man, who may or may not be Mr. Seung-Hui, posing in marine fatigues, available for a reasonable price at any military surplus store.

This is where we, as rednecks, as Virginia patriots, as workers of the world, come from when we denounce Alex Jones. Cho Seung-Hui, fellow Virginian, fellow worker, was not a “mind controlled assassin”, but a sad, lonely individual who was driven to senseless and malicious violence by a lifetime of sexual abuse, racial harassment, institutionalized marginalization, and social isolation. His victims, all fellow Virginians, all fellow workers, were not martyred by a grand sinister conspiracy, but by the senseless and chaotic cluster-fuck known as life under capitalism. In the face of a calamity that rippled through our communities like a shock-wave, Jones’ cronies rushed to the presses with the most sensationalistic lie their imaginations could innovate, with the sole purpose of capitalizing off of our suffering.

This alone is enough to denounce Alex Jones, to discredit him entirely as a source of factual journalism. Yet it’s far from the extent of Jones & co.’s crimes:

In the face of courageous proletarian mass-uprisings in ‘05, Jones penned a piece entitled French Riots: Plan Engineered by Globalists[4], a racist tirade which claimed that “the mainly Algerian Muslims causing the chaos hate the country that has afforded them a greater living standard than their birthplace ever could”, and that “the melting pot of multiculturalism does not work, it has never worked and it was never intended to work. The Algerians in France do not want to be part of the Western fabric because they fundamentally hate it to its very core. This is not helped by promotion of decadent and hedonistic lifestyles pumped out from every cultural and media orifice.”

Time after time, Alex Jones has pushed the white nationalist line on U.S.-Mexican immigration, siding with the Minutemen over anti-fascists, featuring Lou Dobbs[5] and other “MSM” anti-immigrant gate-keepers on his website, claiming that “the elite are using the enraged Mexican mobs as a weapon of conquest to slit America’s throat and sacrifice its sovereignty on the altar of globalism” as well as implement a “blueprint for race-based genocide directed against blacks and whites in America” in order to turn the U.S. into “a third world cesspit”[6], falsely claiming in order to generate white supremacist angst and terror that the sell-outs and bureaucrats at La Raza are “reconquista” radicals[7], updating his website with headlines such as “Illegals targeted South Carolina sheriff as gang-initiation”[8], and so on. (Rest assured, we at Rocktown Rebel are playing the world’s smallest violin for the South Carolina sheriff)

Alex Jones charges $1500 a month for advertising on his various websites. Among his past clientele include “Scriptures for America”,[9] an organization headed by notorious “Christian Identity” pastor Pete Peters, who once asked, rhetorically: “Is there a Jewish conspiracy against America? Do Jews control America’s media? Do Jews have a death grip on America’s government? [...] Do Jews prevent a free press in America? Are Jews against freedom in America? Do Jews want total people control? Are Jews liars? Do Jews want to put America under tyranny? Must Jews leave America if America is to survive?”[10] Book titles available on the Scriptures for America online catalog include Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Dream, Our Nightmare, Death Penalty for Homosexuals is Prescribed in the Bible, Interracial Marriage — Right or Wrong?, My Personal Experience with Jewish Power, and Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel’s The Six Million Holocaust.

On one episode of his radio show, a caller stated “It it is incorrect to call a modern day Jew an Israelite. They are not Israelites, they are ‘Israe-Lies’. [...] The ‘true Israel’ is ‘ the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Germanic and kindred people, commonly called the white race, which has been demonized.” Alex concurred, explaining that it’s “true that about 80–85[%] [...] of Jewish people are Khazarian”, and that “80% of Jews are a mix of Germanic and Asian, whereas your mainline Semitic Arabs are a mix of Negro, Caucasian, and Asian”, going on to explain that ” you have the Caucasoids, the Negroids, the Asians, and those are your three major groups”.[11]

Other featured on Jones’ various websites include “6-Year-Old Boy Raised By Homosexuals Wants to Kill Himself”,[12] “Playboy and the (Homo) Sexual Revolution”,[13] and “Unmentionable Vice [referring to homosexuality] Goes Mainstream”.[14]

Jones has professional relationships with Holocaust denier Mike “whatreallyhappened.com” Rivero and anti-Semitic fascist pastor Texe Marrs[15]

Jones is able to afford to live in an affluent Austin suburb[16] due to his sale of overpriced Infowars and Prison Planet DVDs, T-shirts, baseball caps, bracelets, and other mass-produced merchandise. (As the blog we stole this from put it, “there’s a war on...for your wallet!”)

Jones co-operated with an FBI subpoena for a list of InfoWars readers’ IP addresses after a Roanoke man used his site to threaten police officers. Jones explained that he’s “not [...] happily handing over peoples’ IP addresses” but that threatening law enforcement “isn’t a joke”.[17]


All this creates a context for Jones & co.’s latest deception. That context is psychological warfare against the libertarian left by parasitic right-wing third positionists who advocate anti-Semitism, racialist nationalism, schizophrenic masonic/Illuminati conspiracy theories, anti-feminism, and totalitarian-minded moral crusades, whose leaders sell this madness and disinformation to live comfortably as others starve. Far too long has this incessant milieu slandered us from afar, while infiltrating us and recruiting our ranks from within. Too much amnesty has been given within our camp to Jones and his accomplices, as if they were some lesser force of fascism in comparison to the Identity militias, the Klan, the skinheads, the Minutemen. At the forefront of our vision now stands this unavoidable fact: the only difference between Jones & co. and these other forces of fascism is a more pronounced aura of tact and sophistication on the part of the former.



https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library ... al-warfare
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 21, 2017 11:44 am

No Soros Required: An Anarchist Letter to an Occult Author

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To these symbolism-ridden theorists everything ultimately has one source, a humanistic monotheism pulling the strings.

For them there is no real protests, merely paid provocateurs; no systemic racism, merely sensationalist stories; no actual problems save for the aberrations to Adonai’s architecture that are surely alien in nature.

How do you explain something to someone who refuses to believe in its existence? That’s what I’ve been struggling with for about 13 hours as the due date of this report inches closer and closer each passing minute. I have no words and must fight back thoughts of pistol-whipping you. I have been shocked and appalled by the ungodly amount of kool-aid kooks that have infested the magical scene and placed an all-powerful god behind everything and you are right there with them.

Ferguson? CIA.
Berkeley? CIA.
Bernie Sanders? Clearly not the CIA! Whadda take me for, an idiot? Why he’s a former MKULTRA sleeper cell newly activated to bring down our illustrious republic.

Let’s say, just for the sake of Lady Gaga being a secret Satanic priest, that every action by radicals for the past year has had CIA agents nestled within them.

Recent leaks have indicated that the CIA successfully infiltrated all of the major French political parties leading up to and after the 2012 elections. While cause for concern nobody in their right mind would consider French politics a “creation of the CIA,” as if the entire country was nothing more than American spies donning fake mustaches and berets in an elaborate ruse to get what they desire. The riots due to the recent “accidental” anal rape of a black Parisian by police have less to do with American empire and more to do with the scandalous idea that cops can violate someone’s anus with a baton so violently it requires surgery and get away with it.

See? No Soros required.

But that’s the trick, isn’t it? You have to live in the same world those people do. If you live in a world where police simply “are the good guys” he must have done something to deserve that; if you can’t possibly imagine a world beyond the peaceful protests of the 1960’s the call for riots has to be the work of some secret Chinese agents. There must be some hidden motive, some grand scheme by the jews Illuminati, just like Capitalism CAN’T be the problem because it’s worked so well for you and all your tech company buddies. And so you look outward onto the writhing mess of forces currently mauling each other and pick whichever one you don’t like the most as the REAL enemy.

Because it has to be simple. Because you cannot allow thoughts or ideas that might quite possibly shake your ideological foundation to exist.

And above all it of course cannot be Capitalism. Certainly can’t be the same thing that you’ve benefited from and that’s killed millions or crushed their souls in mind numbing tedium.

Let’s take a quick look at the social climate of the United States:

There is a pervasive and disturbing pattern of racial discrimination across America often resulting in extrajudicial killings/beatings by police

Social inequality has hit record levels

Millennials will be the first generation in a very long time to be worse off then our parents

The American people attempted to choose a candidate through the normal electoral process only to have it rigged in broad daylight.


Is it that far-fetched that people are getting increasingly pissed? Might be tired of an economic and political system that has them barely making ends meet? That the bankruptcy of the same politics your parents and you championed fills them with nothing but disgust?

No, can’t be that. Far easier to think the CIA or George Soros or Lizard Aliens have been planning this from the beginning, shapeshifting reptiles roving the countryside and giving stacks of cash to college kids that can’t afford healthcare to stand around and make trouble. Must be those same bastards from Mars that got all those black people pissed off at segregation back in the 60’s.


More at: https://godsandradicals.org/2017/02/21/ ... lt-author/
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Jun 14, 2017 7:38 am

Here is exactly what Alex Jones has said about the Sandy Hook massacre

Jones on Sandy Hook: “Staged,” “inside job,” “undoubtedly there’s a cover-up,” “giant hoax,” “the whole thing was fake,” “in my view, manufactured”

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In 2013, Jones called the shooting “staged” and said, “It’s got inside job written all over it.”

In March 2014, Jones said, “I’ve looked at it and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying, and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it.”

In December 2014, Jones said on his radio program, “The whole thing is a giant hoax.”

Jones continued: “The general public doesn’t know the school was actually closed the year before. They don’t know they’ve sealed it all, demolished the building. They don’t know that they had the kids going in circles in and out of the building as a photo-op. Blue screen, green screens, they got caught using.”

Making it clear he didn’t view the occurrence of the shooting as an open question, Jones explicitly said that the Obama administration was behind the shooting, noting, “It took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake.”

Jones made similar comments the following January, saying the shooting was “a synthetic, completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are that they clearly used actors.”

In July 2015, Jones said cast doubt on whether children were actually killed during the shooting, before citing prominent Sandy Hook hoaxer Wolfgang Halbig.

Jones began to spin his past Sandy Hook statements in earnest following the victory of Donald Trump as his past statements came under increased scrutiny because of his association with Trump and his claim that the new president would appear on his show in the near future.

Despite his recent contradictory claims about the shooting, Jones continues to make statements that fuel Sandy Hook conspiracy theories.


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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Fri Jun 23, 2017 6:20 am

Punks for Progress Weekly Report: Alex Jones and Mainstream Media

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In this installment of our weekly discussion, we show how this twisted hodge-podge of hate, fear, misinformed religious fervor, and a wildly fact-lacking interpretation of the already wildly far-fetched world of Infowars and Breitbart conspiracy theories has completely taken root at the very core foundations of America’s fledgling bands of noisy, terrified and angry, so-called, Christian Conservatives. We show how these outlets and the people who follow them are not divorced from the agenda of the current administration; the Trump administration appointment of Jerry Falwell, Jr. to head the new Education Task Force, is just one example we discuss to illustrate this marriage of ignorant, hateful followers, and the well-informed tyrannical Capitalists that exploit them.

We also discuss the history of Alex Jones prior to, leading up to, and during the recent election cycle, as well as the significant impact he has on the Alt-Right, the Trump administration itself, as well as the State Run Media’s collusion with that agenda, as made evident by his recent appearance on Megyn Kelly and his blatant validation, on that program, of the disgusting Sandy Hook Conspiracy he was once forced to decry.


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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:22 am

Alex Jones Justifies Las Vegas Conspiracy Theories: ‘I Talk To The President Sometimes’

Infowars radio host and conspiracy theory architect Alex Jones cited his relationship with President Trump to support his claims that the mass shooting in Las Vegas yesterday was the result of a liberal conspiracy and that the accused shooter was a “patsy and he was set up.”

Today, Jones hosted right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who claimed to possess an internal memo from the Mandalay Bay hotel, where the shooter booked a suite overlooking the country music concert he planned to attack, announcing it would match employee donations to anti-extremism organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, Human Rights Campaign, and Southern Poverty Law Center following the violent white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. That memo, the duo claimed, somehow validated theories that the shooter was connected to militant Islamist and Antifa groups.

Loomer told Jones that she thought the accused shooter, Stephen Paddock, was a “hardcore leftist with Antifa connections who became radicalized through ISIS” and that she believed ISIS’ claim that it was responsible for the mass shooting, despite the FBI’s statement that the attacker had no known ties to foreign groups.

“That’s the only thing we’ve got clear tracks on—the target, the connections, who took credit,” Jones said.

Jones then argued that his ties to Trump and over government figures should be enough to convince skeptics that the sources behind his conspiracy theories are credible.

“I mean, I had a former guy that ran CIA operations on yesterday. I talk to the president sometimes. It’s not like my sources aren’t real,” Jones said. “Hell, Matt Drudge gave me the only interview in the last two years.”

“I have the hostage rescue team telling me the hotel room was full of Antifa and Islamic literature and they’re pissed because their bosses won’t give it out,” Jones said.


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex ... sometimes/
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Sat Oct 07, 2017 9:06 am

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/ ... es/218163/

Alex Jones' week of irresponsible Las Vegas shooting conspiracy theories

Jones has recklessly accused a multitude of people and groups of being involved in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history

Blog ››› October 6, 2017 12:42 PM EDT ››› TIMOTHY JOHNSON

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Hours after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, America’s most famous conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, took to the airwaves to name the culprit as a “leftist” who was “angry about Trump” before connecting the shooting to the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution -- and Jones was just getting started.

No credible reporting had said anything of the sort. But the falsehoods from Jones kept flowing as he spun increasingly convoluted and wide-ranging conspiracy theories out of his initial claims. In the three days following the shooting, Jones would make wild claims about the gunman, Stephen Paddock, including alternately claiming that Paddock was a left-wing extremist and that the mass killer was actually innocent, the victim of a setup. And he was reckless in ascribing blame, claiming the shooting was ordered by various groups including the Democratic Party.

To give his irresponsible -- and often contradictory -- conspiracy theories a sheen of credibility for his audience, Jones often cited anonymous, supposedly highly-placed sources in law enforcement, the military, and the government.



https://youtu.be/dGtg4kNLhCE

For years, Jones has concocted conspiracy theories following tragedy. Other shootings he has claimed were false flags or hoaxes include the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the Aurora, CO, movie theater mass shooting, the Columbine High School attack, and the Pulse nightclub shooting. The narrative is always politically expedient for Jones: When Democrats are in power, the government often stages the attacks, and when they are not, outside leftist forces are usually responsible.

There are real-world consequences to Jones’ conspiracy theories. The man who opened fire in December inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant that Jones’ website Infowars had claimed was involved in a child trafficking ring appears to have watched Infowars material in the days leading up to the shooting, according to court documents.

Families of Sandy Hook victims have said that Jones has spurred harassment against them, with angry callers telling parents their children didn’t actually die. Jones’ Las Vegas comments are primed to cause a similar phenomenon. Significantly, Jones is pushing conspiracy theories surrounding people with no involvement in the shooting, including the gunman’s brother and the owner of the Mandalay Bay Resort, the site from which the gunman carried out his attack.

Also significant is the fact that Jones apparently has the ability to get his information on the desk of President Donald Trump. The two men have a warm relationship, with Trump appearing on Jones’ show in December 2015 to praise Jones’ “amazing” reputation. Since then, Jones has claimed to be in regular communication with Trump and his inner circle. In one recent example of Jones’ influence, racist former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio credited Jones with bringing his case to Trump’s attention, ultimately leading Trump to issue Arpaio a pardon.

Below are Jones’ myriad conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas attack, made on The Alex Jones Show between October 2, the day following the shooting, and October 4:

THE GUNMAN

Jones has offered numerous contradictory claims about the gunman’s background, including that Paddock was a left-wing extremist who attended anti-Trump rallies, a patsy, “an Islamist,” and a spy who “got set up and double crossed.” Jones also claimed that there were multiple gunmen and in one scenario suggested that Paddock was “a patsy taken up there and killed,” allowing the real perpetrators to escape:

While credulously repeating ISIS’ claim of responsibility for the attack, Jones said that Paddock “was basically a leftist” who “was so angry about Trump and everything that was happening that he went out and carried out this attack.”

Jones weaved Paddock’s reported interest in gambling into his conspiracy theories, stating at one point that “this guy was an Islamicist (sic) or an Islamicist (sic) patsy being handled and set up to pay off gambling debts that were being paid out of the Middle East for him to carry out this attack or to at least be set up in the attack.”

Just before showing a graphic image purportedly of Paddock’s corpse, Jones said, “He could clearly be a patsy taken up there and killed; the folks that actually did it escaped.”

He also promoted the evidence-free theory that there were multiple gunmen. According to “Army and Navy SEAL contacts” whom Jones says he talked to, “it’s very clear at some points you’ve got multiple shooters going on.”

While playing video footage and stills supposedly from a past demonstration against Trump in Reno, NV, Jones fixated on a man in the crowd and said, “I’m sorry, that last video looks like [Paddock]. I’m sorry. Bone structure, the way he smiles, he looks like an idiot,” and, “If that isn’t him, that’s his brother.” Later while playing the same footage, Jones said, “You know it’s going to be antifa because it looks just like him getting in the cop's face on the video. And I mean, if it isn’t him, it’s his twin brother.” Jones made the claims even though one his own reporters previously said that the man shown in the video is “almost certainly” not the gunman.

Jones said that “the consensus around the office” is “that this guy’s a patsy and he was set up.”

Referencing Paddock’s past employment with Lockheed Martin, Jones said that Paddock “worked for clandestine-type groups” and could be a “spook.”

Riffing on his “patsy” theory, Jones said, “We also have all the telltale signs of a patsy: working for Lockheed Martin, connected to the Skunk Works, traveling all over the world, millions and millions of dollars that he couldn’t show for from shadowy investments, a wife or girlfriend married to two other men connected to Islamic groups, connected to antifa groups.”

Jones claimed that Paddock “was hooked into intelligence agencies” and “got set up and double crossed.”

THE MOTIVE

While authorities have not determined Paddock’s motive, Jones has made a laundry list of claims of who supposedly directed or was connected to the attack. People and groups he named include ISIS, supporters of the Bolshevik Revolution, “deep state Democrats,” former Vice President Al Gore, former high-level CIA officials, “the shadow government,” antifa, globalists, the Democratic Party, the owners of the Mandalay Bay Resort, and supporters of restrictions on guns:

While most news outlets were skeptical of ISIS’ claim of responsibility, Jones promoted the terror group’s claim as fact, saying that Paddock “had converted to Islam.” He also stated, “Well now we see what appears to be the first Islamist attack on a conservative group or a conservative venue.”

Moments after first making the ISIS claim -- which he would repeat throughout the week -- Jones linked the shooting to the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Jones claimed that the attack “has the hallmarks of being scripted by deep state Democrats and their Islamic allies using mental patient cut-outs.”

Ascribing a racist motive, Jones stated that the attack was part of a plot by the “left” to “mainly go out and kill white people.”

Jones connected the attack to former Vice President Al Gore and two former CIA officials, claiming, “Who was allied with ISIS and Al Qaeda during the entire last six years of the Arab Spring? Well, Al Gore called for an Arab Spring here in America. Al Gore, Phil Mudd, and many others also said -- like the former deputy director of the CIA Phil Mudd said, or like the former head of the CIA Mr. [John] Brennan said -- there will be terror attacks in America and they’re coming and Trump is going to be overthrown in the next two months.”

Claiming that all of his CIA sources believe “this is basically leaning towards a left-wing false flag attack,” Jones suggested it could have been “staged by the shadow government,” and added, “You think, well, logically if it’s hitting a group of patriots, then that would look bad on Obama and Hillary and the globalists, but that’s not how this works.”

Jones claimed that sources from the FBI’s hostage rescue team told him that “they found antifa information in the room and photos of the woman in the Middle East.”

Citing violence in Ukraine, Jones said the shooting fit within the “globalist” tactic of using mass shootings to overthrow governments.

Jones said that “the deep state Democratic Party wing is 100 percent behind this thing and they are just a murdering pack of scum.”

Referencing the large variety of weapons found in Paddock’s room, Jones suggested that the shooting was staged to ban those weapons, saying, “They’ve got every manufactured type you can imagine of semi-auto and of different conversions to be able to ban all of those. You can see the whole cut-out.”

Jones alleged on multiple occasions that the employees of Mandalay Bay Resort knew of Paddock’s plan. His theory posits that hotel staff must have known about the arsenal of weapons in Paddock’s hotel room because housekeeping staff do a “security sweep,” including rummaging through all of people’s belongings. Jones also seized on a letter MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren sent several weeks ago that offered to match donations employees made to several nonprofit organizations, claiming Murren “is saying give to the big Islamic group here in the U.S., CAIR, give to the Chinese government-connected group, give to the Southern Poverty Law Center, you name it, ADL, you name it. So this is a big leftist hotel, big leftist group. So -- I mean there’s no way to get 42 guns up in there and they don’t know.” Citing the same letter, Jones said, “You look at where this ends up happening -- in a hard-core Democratic Party company stronghold involved giving massive amounts of money to the very suspect groups who had their hands in [the Oklahoma City Bombing] and other events.” He also said, “We should look at the insurance of Mandalay Bay, just like 9/11.”

Referencing his oft-repeated claim that the left is attempting to start a civil war in the United States, Jones said, “This is a Democratic Party production -- I will say it. They did it. They’ve been calling for a civil war, they’ve been calling to kill conservatives, they want our guns, they’re completely obvious, and they’re just -- it’s incredible.”

Jones repeated the claim of one of his employees that described the attack as “an arms deal gone bad with jihadis,” adding that “they set him up and that they then did the shooting and that that’s what happened.”

THE GUNMAN’S BROTHER

Beginning on October 4, Jones began promoting conspiracy theories about media interviews given by Paddock’s brother Eric. While playing footage from interviews Jones said, “This guy is the worst actor,” and that he “is central casting, the squirrelist person I’ve ever seen.” Although not apparent on the video, Jones claimed that Paddock was wearing an “earpiece” and “they’re talking in it, you can see it’s happening, … and he’s just parroting talking points,” before saying, “This is a total cover-up.”
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Sat Oct 21, 2017 9:05 pm

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/gop- ... -infowars/


GOP Congressional Candidate Michael Snyder Is ‘Proud To Stand With Alex Jones And InfoWars’

By Kyle Mantyla | October 11, 2017 11:18 am

Michael Snyder, a radical Religious Right prepper pundit who is among the Republican candidates running for Congress in Idaho, is a kindred spirit of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and a regular guest on his program. Last week, Snyder and Jones discussed their conspiracy theory that the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas was an Antifa attack on Donald Trump supporters while providing absolutely no evidence to support any of their claims.

Snyder’s promotion of this conspiracy theory was noticed by the Idaho Statesman, prompting Snyder to return to the InfoWars network on Monday, where he complained to host David Knight that he is being smeared as a conspiracy theorist simply for asking questions and vowed never to distance himself from Jones or InfoWars.

“Something doesn’t add up,” he said. “Can we not ask the questions? We’ve got all these pieces of evidence and yet the Idaho Statesman is saying I’m not allowed to do that. As a political candidate running for office, Michael, don’t you know you’re not supposed to question reality, you’re not supposed to question the official narrative.”

“They’re attacking me just like they’re attacking Donald Trump,” Snyder continued. “They’re trying to label me as a conspiracy theorist … There is going to be a huge effort in this campaign to tie me to you guys, to tie me to David Knight, to Alex Jones, to InfoWars. The establishment here, they’re scared to death that someone like me, with close ties to you guys, could end up being a member of Congress from our state. They’re freaking out and so they want to make a huge deal of it, but you know what I’m going to tell them when they bring that up and try to attack me on that? I’m going to say I’m proud to stand with David Knight, I’m proud to stand with Alex Jones and InfoWars, these guys are fighting for America, I’m fighting for America and so I’m just going to be proud of it.”



https://youtu.be/fj8htUXXCCU
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby stickdog99 » Sun Oct 22, 2017 4:43 pm

I'm now convinced that the FBI and LVPD are telling us the whole story about Paddock's snapping and shooting hundreds of complete strangers for no reason whatsoever because otherwise Alex Jones wins.
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Oct 23, 2017 8:19 pm

Stop trashing threads with your off-topic whining, stickdog, unless you've got a motive to share with us proving FBI involvement in planning and carrying out the Las Vegas shooting it seems only you of all people are privileged to know.

If you researched my son's murder, you would have seen his killer's mother was very wealthy. So you can consider Paddock the second rich male to commit such a mass murder. Had he been able to access a Seattle venue, he was prepared to and could have killed and wounded as many as it's alleged Paddock has.
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Tue Oct 24, 2017 10:12 pm

Alex Jones Claims Infowars Never Knowingly Reports False Information

Infowars’ track record of reporting includes claims that Beyoncé wants to eat children’s brains, that computers use “the race narrative” and “the Islamists” to attack humans, that Lady Gaga is the “goddess of Satan,” and that Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and raped children. Jones’ lawyer, however, says it’s all an act.


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex ... formation/
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:48 am

Far Right Losing Mind Over False November 4 "Civil War" Story


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‘ANTIFA’ WAGING CIVIL WAR ON NOVEMBER 4, ACCORDING TO RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY
The idea of “Antifa” (short for anti-fascism) has become a fixture in America’s popular imagination in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election, albeit in a way that tends to have very little basis in reality. The group—which has no formal organizational structure, and is best defined as a tactic associated with protesting against the threat of fascism—has been falsely blamed for everything from the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas to covert collaborations with the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). Now, “antifa” is apparently plotting a civil war in the United States that will begin on November 4, according to a pervasive right wing conspiracy theory.

This story, which can be found across social media, sometimes attached to the hashtag “#CivilWar2017,” is not only utterly fake, it’s also potentially dangerous, according to half a dozen left wing activists who spoke to Newsweek, expressing concerns that it could inspire senseless violence from people who believe it to be true.

The spark of this conspiracy, as one might guess, emerged from Alex Jones’s InfoWars website. Paul Joseph Watson, a British YouTube performer who frequently functions as Jones’s sidekick, posted a misleading story with the headline, “CIVIL WAR: Alt-left Plans Anti-trump Riots in Major Cities on November 4.” The August 22 report, if it can credibly be called one, clocks in at less than 400 words, and features no first-hand reporting outside of a link to a page on the website of a far-left activist group, The Revolutionary Communist Party. Regardless, it performed well for InfoWars, generating more than 9,000 shares on Facebook and more than 2,000 comments on the InfoWars website.


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http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2 ... false.html
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:21 am

RUMORS OF CIVIL WAR: HOW ANTI-COMMUNIST CONSPIRACIES IMAGINE AN ANTIFA CIVIL WAR ON NOVEMBER 4

The Patriot movement has long fixated on the idea of a coming civil war and a Communist takeover. Earlier this year, Far Right media warned about a “Summer of Rage.” One conspiracy website headline claimed: “Summer of rage set to boil over as militant leftists plan to OVERTHROW Trump. Chaos planned in 50 largest cities!” In this case, the focus was on nation-wide, peaceful “Impeachment Marches” that were held on July 2. But the November 4 conspiracy has spread much wider than this previous one.

The November 4 conspiracy video went viral when a video was posted on the “Vets Before Illegals” Facebook page on September 20 which has received 3 million views. In it, a man dressed like U.S. Marshal claims that:

On their website they [antifa] are calling for an open civil war that they will start here in the United States in November. They are fundraising for weapons, training, ammunition, supplies. They’re not hiding this. They are openly fundraising so that they can get the stuff together to attack—and this is verbatim what they’re going to do—they will start off by attacking police officers, first responders, anybody that’s in uniform.

And after they have disrupted that enough in the nation, and us first responders are literally going everywhere, trying to resolve things—they will then go after the citizens, and the people, and the government, and all of that.

So if you’re white, you’re a Trump supporter—you’re a Nazi then to them—and it will be open game on you. I don’t know why we’re allowing this, but it is time that, honestly, if our leaders and our leadership isn’t going to step up and finish this, we have to—each and every one of us has to, and that is our right, and that is what we must do.


Not just are the “verbatim” quotes entirely fabricated, but the video ends with a call to vigilante action by the Far Right.

These claims were later picked up by media with larger reach, like Infowars­, who have promoted the conspiracy in multiple articles and broadcasts. But it is just one of dozens of Far Right websites and videos— including the John Birch Society’s New American and Richard Spencer’s AltRight.com—which promote and elaborate on the details of the story.

Some claim that a night of mayhem, based on the movie The Purge, will occur. For example, YouTube vlogger “Sage Wanderer,” stresses that home invasions will be a major component of November 4, because antifa will supposedly attempt to steal guns for the upcoming revolution. Another vlogger muses about the possibility that George Soros will hire “trained professional killers” to fight alongside antifa. On an Infowars broadcast, Doug Hagmann claims “evangelical churches” will be attacked, while Jones claims that “it’s usually tranny men saying they are going to kill everybody.”

One popular Facebook post has upped the ante on the conspiracy, saying:

looks like the new black panthers organization has confirmed they will be part of nov 4th riots and chaos, BLM has just received almost 25 million for weapons and other tools to supply groups that plan to attack “white people” on nov 4th. It is expected there will be over 5 million people in 6 states. The FBI has seen a 1200% up tick in registered democrats buying weapons and mass ammunition. The group called ANTIFA has now reached just over 800,000 members, mostly kids with ages from 16-28 throughout the country. FB will be used as the most cost effective way to transmit locations to attack. Ms-13 has pledged all of there members will join the BLM along with many other gangs.


More at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/1 ... vember-4/#
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Re: The Joker in the Patriot Movement

Postby American Dream » Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:03 am

Death Travels West, Watch Him Go

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The templates remain, weirdly unchanged after twenty-five years. Decades after Hunter S. Thompson and his biker pals first stared down an enraged burgher’s .357 Magnum, the quasi-libertarian firearms culture continues to speak in terms of a perverse class defiance that has now come to dominate even our coolest lowbrow and pseudo-lowbrow entertainments: From mall-rat hero Eminem to porno rockers Nashville Pussy, and from white trash almanac Hustlerto white trash hipster Jim Goad, we can all, vicariously and up to our credit limits, put our hands on the Glock. Moreover, liberals’ anti-gun hysteria serves only to stoke the NRA’s increasingly isolationist bent. Here, as in other precincts of the culture wars, denunciation just makes the persecution fantasies of the extreme right more credible. This is why the NRA benefits so immensely from anti-gun statements in the mainstream media: Using its direct-mail connections, it is able to portray the organization, and every last God-fearing gun owner along with it, as rope-a-doped by the big combo of effeminate cultural elites and spineless politicians. Ultimately, every pious exposé of the gun culture’s old-boy seaminess, in venues like the New York Times, merely rains fresh checks upon the NRA’s bought-and-paid-for men like Tom DeLay, who nimbly attributed Columbine to the absence of the Ten Commandments only months after taking sage cover beneath his desk while his security guard took the hollowpoint of Capitol shooter Russell Weston. This is why “Today’s NRA,” despite the insensate pronouncements of Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, continues to hold such valuable cultural real estate, the ombudsman by default for all American firearms owners.

More important than the cultural camouflage of gun rights are the precarious economics of the gun industry. NRA members may prefer to elide the darker possibilities of their “curious indulgence” in the bland language of hobbies and collecting rather than the red tones of mercenaries, armorers, and obsessives, but they are no more or less a market demographic than the underworld of crotchety libertarians, right-wing paranoids, conspiracists, separatists, and drug war foot soldiers whose consumerism ultimately underpins the “legitimate” firearms market. And heading off any simple, disinterested economic analysis of the firearms boondoggle is the NRA’s greatest semantic bullseye. Turn away from the organization’s endless Red-Scare bombast for a moment in order to follow the money, however, and a curious narrative begins to emerge.

The shooting industry is the real power behind the American gun battle. Although the major surviving firms are either owned overseas (Smith & Wesson, Glock, Beretta, H&K), precariously solvent (famously Colt), or threatened by novel lawsuits, there is nonetheless a great deal of money in the distribution, sale, and resale of firearms. An unjustly overlooked book by journalist Tom Diaz, Making A Killing: The Business of Guns in America (New Press, 1999), seizes on this unorthodox approach in considering our over-armed populace. Diaz sidesteps the ideological foam of the gun debate, examining both the semantics of firearm fetishism and the way market forces (firearm manufacturing is an almost completely unregulated industry) have elevated what he terms the “spiral of lethality” over other concerns. He describes the curious legal patchwork that both exempts firearms exclusively from any consumer safety standards and that reduces to a vanishing point ATF oversight of firearms distribution. Diaz has a keen eye for the free-market absurdities of the industry, which suffers from cyclical downturns and saturated markets, due variously to the decline of hunting and the ironic fact that a well-made gun never “dies.” More importantly, he explores how the increasingly dangerous hardware of recent years has dovetailed with certain rightist cultural tropes. Thus fears of rampant criminality in the sixties fed price wars between makers of snubnose .38 “Saturday night specials,” incidentally flooding the market with the ubiquitous concealable revolvers. Similarly, manufacturers harnessed Reagan-era survivalist paranoia to stoke sales of military-style semi-automatic rifles (so-called “assault weapons”); and after the 1989 Stockton schoolyard massacre gun distributors and the gun press pumped up fears of impending controls to spawn an overspeculated market for “grandfathered” weapons and cosmetically altered guns, including huge numbers of Chinese and Eastern bloc AK-47 clones. More disturbing to Diaz is the emergence of “pocket rockets,” high-capacity shortened pistols that manufacturers have promoted in recent years without heed for the dangers posed by the proliferation of powerful concealable handguns (and of high-tech hollowpoint bullets, nicknamed “flying scalpels” and valued for their “knockdown”). The elusive corporate histories that Diaz digs up are equally chilling. Consider, for example, California’s “Ring of Fire” companies, a family-owned group of small manufacturers that has flooded the market with low-grade pistols retailing for under $150; or Georgia’s Sylvia & Wayne Daniel Enterprises, which marketed crude, easily converted knockoffs of the once obscure MAC-10 to both Miami gangs and the white-sheet market. Such so-called “ugly guns” bob like feces in the market, disdained by nearly all serious shooters for their low quality and inaccuracy, but they are the weapons of choice for spree killers like Gian Luigi Ferri and Harris & Klebold. That’s how capitalism works, and Diaz makes a case for understanding the gun industry, with its constant upgrading of bodily harm, as the prototype for the reflexive savagery of the market.

Even more unsettling, though, are the ways in which law enforcement feeds the gun industry’s escalation of lethality. In the nineties, as Diaz recounts, police departments nationwide began to fear a perceived “gun gap” between their own long-standard .38 revolvers and the armaments available to the “bad guys.” And thanks in part to the fetishization of semiautomatics in Scarface and Miami Vice, there was some validity to this fear: Recall the 1986 Miami shootout in which two felons, armed with Magnum revolvers, a shotgun, and a .223 semiautomatic rifle, killed two FBI agents and wounded five even after being themselves wounded by 9 mm rounds. This had wide repercussions: Ignoring factors like agent unpreparedness, the FBI publicly denounced the 9 mm as insufficient for earnest firefights, and embarked on a sidearm review which, as Diaz documents, ushered into the civilian marketplace numerous new weapons in formerly obscure calibers. Law enforcement’s rush to over-powered ammunition had the unintended consequences one might expect from such a mixing of lethality and bureaucracy. Diaz digs up enough obscure stories—like the nest-feathering that Glock provided certain New York officials in order to promote two unnecessary upgrades—to suggest that law enforcement agencies foster gun technology proliferation even if their rhetoric officially opposes it.

A more insidious effect, perhaps rooted in the fact that many officers are required to range-qualify only twice a year, is the increasing incidence of what police call “spray and pray,” in which an officer squeezes off several rounds or the whole clip in response to real or perceived threats. It’s strange how quickly multiple-wound police shootings have assumed the cultural weight that ’banger drive-bys had in the eighties: poled TV lights and grim cops, enraged neighbors tragic in their shabby night-dress, a crystallized moment from a Richard Price novel.

One must finally pin all these darker trends in law enforcement—the upgraded lethality, the reliance on cut corners—up on our contemporary equivalent of Prohibition. What few victories we have achieved in our scorched-earth War on Drugs—and what constitutes a victory in a nation where booze and pills are God-given rights, where “winners” do use cocaine and where the chemical apprenticeship of college is every middle class youth’s long-sought reward?—are dwarfed by the loss of public safety and the erosion of privacy. It is impossible to separate this war from the gun morass. Manufacturers on every tier benefit, from the “Ring of Fire” .25s that are sized to teenage hands, to companies like Colt that have fitted law enforcement agencies with devices better suited to Omaha Beach in 1944. Meanwhile police tacticians increasingly elevate doctrines of force over all else: Dozens of our bleak postindustrial towns now field fully armored assault teams, carrying the ubiquitous $1,200 Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun; a generation of young cops has come up with no compunction against using “no knock” warrants whenever possible; a class of administrators has learned how to use asset forfeiture to acquire land and funds that frequently vanish within insular departments; and also, visible only on the margins, the millions we have profitably incarcerated. We witness all this, passively, and then must also watch as an übermenschen “tactical” team dithers for hours outside Columbine High, unsure of how to proceed, while inside a martyred teacher dies on a classroom floor. Comfortable with kicking in civilian doors, our cops throw themselves back on procedure when confronted with one-plus sociopaths armed with semiautomatics.

It is true that the recent spectacle of the burly federal agent aiming an MP5 past the famous little shaver’s head while his pumped-up peers rampaged through the house, shoving and slamming, bodies fat with the arsenal of democracy, did cause some alarm. But the Elián Gonzalez debacle was the wrap-up to a public drama so scripted that Tommy Lee Jones should’ve been in there somewhere. During most “dynamic entries,” of course, neither the set-chewing Mr. Jones nor the balm of television lights attend the forcible discoveries of grow-rooms or the precious, financially stabilizing powder. That the public sees nothing wrong with such “extreme” law enforcement—witness the already wearily accepted police tactic of using pepper or tear gas to torment protesters—ensures that the new playbook will become the norm, and that civil life will degrade into something approaching the TV-ready spectacle. Many shall become acquainted with the battering ram’s crash, with the tiny apartments filled with immigrants or blacks or working folk, with the glinting MP5s, fine German tools of perfect precision.

Even so, in this age of downsized civil liberties, one feels a perverse empathy for the foot soldiers, the urban cops, and for those who patrol an increasingly tattered, volatile exurbia. Unwilling to face the politicized darkness of their work, the enforcers face instead a combination of weapon-clogged environments, a spreading population of the “controlled”—the poor, immigrants, those with addictions or criminal records—and immediate public approbation, whether earned or otherwise, in the event of a “bad day.” If some cops are racists or sadists, experience suggests a stout majority are not. But law enforcement by definition is dictated from above, and to get a glimpse of the future one need only examine the “resurgent” New York, where it’s an open NYPD secret that the statistical demands of Giuliani and Safir, as much as macho tac-squad culture, were behind the deaths of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond. Firepower is routinely chosen over less lethal options, from baton takedowns to beanbag guns, and if Dorismond’s shooting occurred during the proverbial struggle, it was still instigated by the weird “pressure point” tactics of “Operation Condor,” which evidently presumes that any African American male under seventy sells marijuana in his spare time. One can only imagine an NYPD initiative in which hardened cops dressed as Rastafarians hit up Phish fans, rave kids, and Wall Street interns for Ecstasy and LSD, and nothing is what it seems.

Which facet of our contemporary gun violence is most intolerable? Is it the racist edge-city rages of Smith and Baumhammers? The cracked-up, nerded-out boy who opts for early revenge at his underfunded hell of a high school in Kentucky or Arkansas or Washington—states where guns are common as grain? The Michigan first-grader who gleaned from his ragged home the coding that compelled him to shoot a classmate in the head? The Baltimore or D.C. ’banger who pulls the trigger of his cheap 9 mm for reasons that can barely be understood within their tragic seconds? Or the “tragic miscalculation” of plain-clothes officers who empty their high-capacity clips to put down a black man reaching for a wallet? Whichever, it’s hard to deny that the national love of guns is wreathed in a bloodthirstiness that somehow negates the caution of millions of responsible gun owners; is choked with a quickening rage that, from the penny-ante fascism of spree killers to the “acceptable” casualties of the Drug War, is fast approaching conflagration. How long will the nation remain lost to this violent dream of itself? We may be haunted by the bland suburban familiarity of those grainy stills from Columbine, but the NRA and its industry backers will continue to ensure that the blood of the poor, unkempt, and tawdry will continue to flow in the street among the distinctive 9 mm shell casings. It is the grease in the gears of the gun machine.


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