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i think the class war element of this is really interesting, crompsin--thanks for saying that.
this seems to cut to the heart of the matter.
for the gun fetishist set---which is a subset of gun onwers, a small, terrified subset---and this distinction is important to maintain---having a weapon is of a piece with a general sense of petit bourgeois precariousness--it's a way of responding to the sense of tenuousness of one's material existence.
opposed as much to the left--mostly a phantom left---as to the state, which is framed as it's material extension, these folk seem to channel their anxiety into a fantasy of return to a lost state of national purity. if you think about it that way, the militia-specific political worldview--a hodgepodge of libertarianism, strict construction in legal terms, and radical nationalism---fits together---and guns operate as a signifier which helps maintain the possibility of bringing this lost purity back into existence.
the sense of alienation from capitalism filtered through a panic at the idea of the left which is embodied in the state...the absence of a sense of viable political alternatives, including organization of opposition itself...the only way to maintain an imaginary trajectory leading to redress or more is holding onto the gun.
and as political reality changes and the far right finds itself drifting back into the margins, the need to maintain this imaginary alternate possibility becomes more and more hysterical.
this is not new--it happens alot, has happened alot, from the militia movement in the states to poujadisme in france in the 50s to fascism in the 20s and 30s.
to be blunt, i don't particularly oppose guns. this is not an issue that occupies me. but i do oppose fascism. that's what i see militia groups as being--american-style fascists.
think about it---if guns are a condition of possibility for violently opposing the state, and if the state is coded as a material expression of the political left--if people from the militia set were to come to power, it is pretty obvious that people like me would be in serious serious trouble.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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