http://markcrispinmiller.com/2009/03/the-millionaire-patriot-wants-you-armed-and-trained.html“The Millionaire Patriot wants YOU armed and trained”!Posted by mcm
March 24, 2009
The last Depression was quite fertile ground for right-wing paramilitary groups, like Father Coughlin’s Christian Front, William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts, and other quasi-fascist mass formations (driven largely by anti-semitism).
Something like that is now happening again, as we continue sliding into this Depression; and Ignatius Piazza would appear to be a major figure in the current movement.
There’s quite a lot on-line about Piazza, who believes that gun enthusiasts should not pretend to be mere sportsmen, but stand up and assert their rights to arm themselves for (defensive) combat–under the Second Amendment, as Piazza understands it.
He seems less keen on organizing “a well-run militia” than on handing out a lot of Springfield Pistols, and teaching people how to use them against others.
What people, though? And at which “others” would they fire? The text below, with its reference to “the potential for civil unrest in every major city,” suggests clearly that the goal is to get white suburbanites prepared to take aim at the urban poor– in “self-defense.”
We saw this sort of “self-defense” when Hurricane Katrina shattered New Orleans, and cops there opened fire on two families trying to flee the devastation by crossing the Danziger Bridge. Two people were killed, and four others wounded (one had her arm blown off completely). At the time we heard that they were “snipers,” whom the cops had shot in self-defense; but then it turned out that the only people doing any shooting were the cops, who ended up indicted for the slaughter:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/8/31/the_danziger_bridge_killings_how_new(The charges were, of course, eventually dismissed:
http://www.southernstudies.org/2008/08/charges-dismissed-against-officers-in.html)
This is the sort of “self-defense” applauded by Rush Limbaugh and his ditto-heads, and also by the likes of Joseph Farah, an editor at WorldNet Daily, owned byRichard Mellon Scaife (see below). It’s the sort of “self-defense” that has always caused, and always has been used to justify, atrocity, whether the aggressors or the victims might be Jewish, Christian or Islamic, black or white, and so on.
In any case, let’s hope that things get better on the economic front. If they don’t, we’ll either have to find ways to defend ourselves against such mad, projective “self-defense,” or else just leave this country to its gunmen.
MCM