Why Liberals Should Support the Right to Armed Self-Defense

In the runup to the election, a common prediction among the right wing and conservative blogs was that if Obama lost the election that the negroes/liberals/commies/Obama-supporters would riot. Not like a burn down a few stores riot, but like a serious "totally lose their shit" riot. Nationwide. Many were preparing for such an eventuality.

I didn't really think anything like that would happen. I thought it more likely that the right-wingers would riot if Obama won than the left-wingers if McCain won. There were no anti-Obama riots, I was wrong.

Sort of.

There were no instantaneous riots, but I said "The McCain/Palin campaign is unleashing some very ugly forces in this country that, combined with some dark economic days ahead, are going to be very hard to put back in the bottle." And it appears that it might be the case.

William N. Grigg:

For the second time in less than a year, a lethal mass shooting has been carried out by an obscure and probably deranged individual of vaguely right-wing inclinations.

On February 27, Dannie R. Baker, a 59-year-old self-described minister who followed a distant and eccentric orbit around Florida's Walton County Republican Party, shot five college-age Chilean exchange students, killing two of them. Crystal Lynn, a neighbor in the apartment complex where Baker lived and the shooting took place, recalled an incident in which Baker approached her "and asked me if I was ready for the revolution to begin and if I had any immigrant [sic] in my house to get them out."

The atrocity in Florida comes just days after the conviction of James Adkisson for murdering two people and injuring six more in a killing spree at a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church last July. Like Baker, Adkisson was a middle-aged man of with a murky background on the margins of the Republican-aligned right. Where Baker's "revolutionary" intentions, if any, remain sketchy, Adkisson unflinchingly described his crime as an act of revolutionary suicide terrorism. In a four-page written harangue left as a kind of suicide note-cum-political manifesto, Baker described his premeditated act as the "symbolic killings" of people connected to the liberal Democrats he passionately hated, and predicted that he would die at the hands of police in his effort to "get the ball rolling" on the supposedly worthy project of annihilating liberals wherever they could be found.

Some left-leaning activists and commentators insist that the actions of Adkisson and Baker are inspired by a tendency they call "eliminationism"—a desire to exterminate the "other," however that category is defined. That analysis is difficult to dispute, given the way that conservatism in the Age of Limbaugh has curdled into a kind of tribalism seasoned by adolescent resentment and blended with an implacable appetite for power.

"Lone wolf"-style political violence is more the style of the pseudo-individualist Right, since the Left prefers a more systematic approach. It seems likely that we will see other episodes of lone wolf-style armed terrorism by people like Adkisson and Baker—comets dragged out of conservatism's Oort Cloud, or perhaps given a nudge sun-ward by federal agents of mayhem deployed for that purpose.

Sadly, No:

During Bush’s presidency people like me were called traitors on a fairly regular basis because we didn’t show Bush the proper deference when he’d do some goofy shit like choke on a pretzel. Now we have guys on [FOX News] that are openly talking about armed insurrection against a democratically elected government and it’s considered the most patriotic and pro-American thing a feller could do with hisself.

... I am amazed at the sheer cognitive dissonance involved in simultaneously believing that it’s treasonous to peacefully oppose an unjustified war but that it’s patriotic to lead an armed insurrection against the government because they want to pay you unemployment benefits.

David Neiwert:

One of the more disturbing trends we've been observing is the return of far-right "Patriot" rhetoric about government oppression with the election of President Obama. Fueled in no small part by mainstream right-wing talkers proclaiming we're headed into "socialism"—not to mention a "radical communist" who must be "stopped" or else America will "cease to exist"—the overheated rhetoric has been gradually getting higher in volume, intensity, and frequency with each passing week.

At least for the time being, however, there isn't any evidence of new militias forming, though we may see numbers growing within the coming months within existing units, particularly as Fox News and radio pundits start fueling right-wing anxieties.

However, we are starting to see a trend that's even more disturbing: Military veterans voicing Patriot-movement beliefs, including threats of violent resistance to the Obama administration:

Back to Grigg:

Given the possibility that people perceived as "liberals" will be targeted for future politically inspired violence—in addition to the increase in routine criminal violence that will occur as the depression deepens—a question urges itself upon us: Why aren't liberals reconsidering their opposition to the right to armed self-defense? Why aren't they buying guns, rather than supporting measures intended to take them away from others?

People of that political persuasion might want to re-examine their premises before the "eliminationist" Right regains power and renders the question moot.