[keso]

Tea Party Propaganda.

Can we spot the misrepresentation?

[Rei Murasame]

Tea Party Propaganda.

Can we spot the misrepresentation?

I've spotted one here immediately.

George III, Adolf Hitler, and Barack Hussein Obama never spoke against gun ownership, and none of them carried out mass disarmament of regular citizens. People often express surprise, since Americans have created a whole mythology about Hitler gun-confiscations, which actually did not happen.

A common belief among defenders of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is that the National Socialist government of Germany under Adolf Hitler did not permit the private ownership of firearms. Totalitarian governments, they have been taught in their high school civics classes, do not trust their citizens and do not dare permit them to keep firearms. Thus, one often hears the statement, "You know, the first thing the Nazis did when they came to power was outlaw firearms," or, "The first thing Hitler did in Germany was round up all the guns."

[...]

It is not just that the National Socialist firearms legislation was the opposite of what it has been claimed to have been by persons who want to tar modern gun-grabbers with the "Nazi" brush: the whole spirit of Hitler's government was starkly different from its portrayal by America's mass media.

[...]

Gun registration and licensing (for long guns as well as for handguns) were legislated by a [liberal] government in Germany in 1928, five years before the National Socialists gained power. Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Five years later his government got around to rewriting the gun law enacted a decade earlier by his predecessors, substantially ameliorating it in the process (for example, long guns were exempted from the requirement for a purchase permit; the legal age for gun ownership was lowered from 20 to 18 years; the period of validity of a permit to carry weapons was extended from one to three years; and provisions restricting the amount of ammunition or the number of firearms an individual could own were dropped). Hitler's government may be criticized for leaving certain restrictions and licensing requirements in the law, but the National Socialists had no intention of preventing law-abiding Germans from keeping or bearing arms. Again, the firearms law enacted by Hitler's government enhanced the rights of Germans to keep and bear arms; no new restrictions were added, and many pre-existing restrictions were relaxed or eliminated.

At the end of the Second World War, American GIs in the occupying force were astounded to discover how many German civilians owned private firearms. Tens of thousands of pistols looted from German homes by GIs were brought back to the United States after the war. In 1945 General Eisenhower ordered all privately owned firearms in the American occupation zone of Germany confiscated, and Germans were required to hand in their shotguns and rifles as well as any handguns which had not already been stolen. In the Soviet occupation zone German civilians were summarily shot if they were found in possession of even a single cartridge.

Interesting, looks like the Allies were the gungrabbers. Of course, this is not surprising to anyone who actually was on Axis' side, but those who were on the Allied side and had Allied parents, they've been completely washed in propaganda and are unaware of this.

So, what was the framework used by Nazi Europe in summary? This:

• Handguns may be purchased only on submission of a Weapons Acquisition Permit (Woffenerwerbschein), which must be used within one year from the date of issue. Muzzle-loading handguns are exempted from the permit requirement.
  
  
• Holders of a permit to carry weapons (Waffenschein) or of a hunting license do not need a Weapons Acquisition Permit in order to acquire a handgun.
  
  
• A hunting license authorizes its bearer to carry hunting weapons and handguns.
  
  
• Firearms and ammunition, as well as swords and knives, may not be sold to minors under the age of 18 years.
  
  
• Whoever carries a firearm outside of his dwelling, his place of employment, his place of business, or his fenced property must have on his person a Weapons Permit (Waffenschein). A permit is not required, however, for carrying a firearm for use at a police-approved shooting range.
  
  
• A permit to acquire a handgun or to learn firearms may only be issued to persons whose trustworthiness is not in question and who can show a need for a permit. In particular, a permit may not be issued to:
  
  
  • 1. persons under the age of 18 years;
    
  • 2. legally incompetent or mentally retarded persons;
    
  • 3. Gypsies or vagabonds;
    
  • 4. persons under mandatory police supervision [i.e., on parole] or otherwise temporarily without civil rights;
    
  • 5. persons convicted of treason or high treason or known to be engaged in activities hostile to the state;
    
  • 6. persons who for assault, trespass, a breach of the peace, resistance to authority, a criminal offence or misdemeanor, or a hunting or fishing violation were legally sentenced to a term of imprisonment of more than two weeks, if three years have not passed since the term of imprisonment.
  
  
• The manufacture, sale, carrying, possession, and import of the following are prohibited:
  
  
  • 1. "trick" firearms, designed so as to conceal their function (e.g., cane guns and belt-buckle pistols);
    
  • 2. any firearm equipped with a silencer and any rifle equipped with a spotlight;
    
  • 3. cartridges with .22 calibre, hollow-point bullets.

That was all it was.

[ThereBeDragons]

There are people slaving away in shitholes without running water and basic sanitation who can afford tobacco because cigarettes are cheap and infrastructure is expensive. What the sign really should say is "if you can survive without welfare you don't need it."

[Cromwell]

-snip-

Indeed, and they might not like to hear this:

"It is most urgent and essential that there be a universal arming of the people." - V.I. Lenin

"The arming of the whole proletariat with rifles, guns, and ammunition should be carried out at once." K. Marx

[keso]

George III, Adolf Hitler, and Barack Hussein Obama never spoke against gun ownership, and none of them carried out mass disarmament of regular citizens. People often express surprise, since Americans have created a whole mythology about Hitler gun-confiscations, which actually did not happen.

And it's amazing that this bullshit gets perpetuated.

Let's not forget Saddam Hussein

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2003/03/gar ... p-in-iraq/

I have twice seen the same film clip on CBS news: an Iraqi citizen buying what looks like a machine gun (Kalashnikov), and another citizen trying out a semi-automatic pistol’s slide action. Both times, the voice-over warned of Iraqis preparing to defend themselves.

Nobody mentions the obvious: unless the film clip was staged, Saddam Hussein lets Iraqis buy guns and ammo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/world ... d=all&_r=0

Gun glut in Iraq
By Jeffrey Gettleman
Published: Monday, April 3, 2006

Sign In to E-Mail
Print

BAGHDAD — With chipped, painted fingernails, Nahrawan al-Janabi picked up a cartridge and slid it into the chamber.

"Like this," she said, loading her new Glock pistol with a loud, satisfying click. "You see, like this."

Akram Abdulzahra now keeps his revolver handy at his job in an Internet café.

Haidar Hussein, a Baghdad bookseller, just bought a fully automatic assault rifle and has been teaching his wife how to shoot.

Iraq has long been awash with guns. But after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in late February, sectarian tensions exploded, and more Iraqis than ever have been buying, carrying and stockpiling weapons, adding an unnerving level of firepower to Baghdad's streets.

The average price for a Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle, which is legal here, has jumped to $290 from $112 in the past month, according to several gun dealers. The cost of bullets has climbed to 33 cents each from 24 cents.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... ponse.html

Three weeks ago, Chatterbox wondered aloud how Iraq could be a police state given that, according to Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times, "Most Iraqi households own at least one gun." Chatterbox had been given to understand, by the National Rifle Association, that widespread gun ownership was a Jeffersonian bulwark against unfree government. Why did it fail in Iraq? Chatterbox invited readers to explain. Here are the answers he got:

No ammo. Several readers, including Michael Dolan, author of The American Porch, noticed that Chatterbox didn't specifically mention that ammunition was also widely available. He should have. It is (see MacFarquhar has it wrong, below).

Lack of will. That's the conclusion of William Lolli, contributing editor to GunNewsDaily.com, whose Web posting inspired many gun advocates to write in with theories of their own. "A gun in your hand does not make you free," writes Lolli. "The hand must have the will and the desire to be free." Lolli argues that "thirty years of secret police midnight raids, torture chambers, rape, public beheadings and all manner of systematic terror" have sapped the will of Iraqis. Lolli's response is one of many "necessary but not sufficient" arguments Chatterbox has received. This one begs the question, which is not how a demoralized armed populace could fail to overthrow a brutal regime, but rather, how a non-demoralized armed populace could have allowed that brutal regime to emerge in the first place.

They've got guns, but the Iraqi regime has better guns. One unidentified reader notes that he saw only shotguns in the photograph illustrating MacFarquhar's article. The Washington Post's Anthony Shadid has explained why, notes reader Jared Pitts: "Gun stores can sell only hunting rifles and pistols. But AK-47s, the weapon of choice, are provided to millions of members of the ruling Baath Party and allied militias such as the one known as Saddam's Fedayeen."

Freedom of Speech

Freedom to Lie

[fuser]

Conservative propaganda.

Since when did Gandhi became a pro gun advocate? Anyhow people in USSR had better chance and much better ratio of Gun ownership than in India.

[Dagoth Ur]

America too where gun ownership hasn't ever reached even 30%. I don't know why so many Americans, who don't own guns and never have, seem to think all the rest of us have guns.

[Potemkin]

Freedom of Speech

Freedom to Lie

The problem is that these people actually seem to believe their own lies and propaganda. I've always wondered what planet American conservatives are living on, because it clearly isn't Planet Earth.

[KlassWar]

George III, Adolf Hitler, and Barack Hussein Obama never spoke against gun ownership, and none of them carried out mass disarmament of regular citizens. People often express surprise, since Americans have created a whole mythology about Hitler gun-confiscations, which actually did not happen.

And many socialist countries only disarm suspected reactionaries: Many rely to a greater or lesser extent on workers' militias and mass organizations for the defense of the Revolution: Socialist countries tend to disarm class enemies and suspected counterrevolutionaries, not necessarily (or typically) the working masses. There's little to gain and much to lose in disarming the ideologically reliable.

In fact a socialist country disarming the working masses is a massive red flag that something's going on, typically the leadership preparing to betray the revolution on a grand scale á la Gorbachev or Deng.

[Quantum]

The problem is that these people actually seem to believe their own lies and propaganda. I've always wondered what planet American conservatives are living on, because it clearly isn't Planet Earth.

They seem to think that MLK was a conservative, even though their political ancestors called him a commie. They're either lying or too scared to voice their real opinions about MLK.

[youtube]Hgwtd4X_qFM[/youtube]

If they want leftists about carry guns, then that's their loss but in reality, they believe in gun control for black and leftist political groups and St. Ronnie, as governor of California, prevented the Black Panthers from openly carrying guns in the state.

[keso]

Since when did Gandhi became a pro gun advocate? Anyhow people in USSR had better chance and much better ratio of Gun ownership than in India.

Heres what I found at a quick search.

http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/wh ... bout-guns/

Even history’s greatest proponents of nonviolence are not immune from such treatment. This includes Mohandas Gandhi himself, whose words appear on countless pro-gun websites as follows: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”

Pro-gun activists frequently use those words to suggest that Gandhi supported individual gun ownership both as a means of defending oneself and as a tool to violently resist government tyranny. But are these assertions true?

In that passage, Gandhi references India’s Arms Act of 1878, which gave Europeans in India the right to carry firearms but prevented Indians from doing so, unless they were granted a license by the British colonial government. The full text of what he wrote is: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.”

These words come from a World War I recruitment pamphlet that Gandhi published in 1918, urging Indians to fight with their British colonial oppressors in the war, not against them. According to K.P. Nayar, chief diplomatic editor for The Telegraph in Calcutta, Gandhi saw “an opportunity for a political struggle against the colonial rulers and for the repeal of the unjust Arms Act,” not “for more Indians to have access to guns.” Peter Brock, a noted historian of nonviolence, wrote in his article “Gandhi’s Nonviolence and His War Service” that Gandhi “believed at that time (although he became more skeptical of this later on) that India could win equal partnership for itself within the British Empire if as large a number as possible of its able-bodied men volunteered to help the Empire, in one way or another, in times of need.” The British, that is, would regret passing the Arms Act because they’d discover Indians to be such valuable fellow soldiers.

At this time, Gandhi was still a British loyalist. He hoped to encourage the British to repeal the Arms Act and grant India Home Rule within the British Empire. In his autobiography, Gandhi quotes a letter he wrote to the viceroy of India during the war, in which he declared, “I would make India offer all her able-bodied sons as a sacrifice to the Empire at its critical moment, and I know that India, by this very act, would become the most favoured partner in the Empire … I write this because I love the English nation, and I wish to evoke in every Indian the loyalty of Englishmen.”

Gandhi wanted Indians to fight in World War I to prove themselves trustworthy with arms and fit for citizenship. He was advocating for appeasement of India’s colonial rulers, not independence from them. Later, Gandhi’s thinking on this subject would change dramatically, but when he did initiate a campaign for full independence from the British Empire, he advocated only nonviolent means of resistance.

Pro-gun activists frequently try to claim with that one, out-of-context sentence that Gandhi supported violence to defend oneself and others. This is a vast oversimplification of Gandhi’s views.

In truth, Gandhi did not oppose the use of violence in certain circumstances, preferring it to cowardice and submission. Even though Gandhi’s spiritual philosophy of ahimsa rejects violence, it permits the use of violent force if a person is not courageous and disciplined enough to use nonviolence. Gandhi regarded weakness as the lowest human flaw, and would rather see a person use violent force in self-defense than be passive. His attitude stemmed in part from the British view at the time that Indians were a “weak” people. This also explains why Gandhi encouraged Indians to serve alongside the British in war. He believed such military service would give Indians, as Brock explains, “‘an opportunity to prove their mettle’ and disprove the allegations frequently made by Europeans that they were mostly cowards.”

Even while allowing for violent force in place of cowardliness, Gandhi remained a staunch advocate of nonviolence his entire life. And to Gandhi, nonviolent resistance was anything but passive. The form of nonviolent resistance that Gandhi himself consistently practiced, satyagraha — loosely translated as “insistence on truth” — rejects violence in any and all forms. Indeed, in the same document that pro-gun advocates cite to claim that Gandhi was a supporter of armed self-defense, he stated, “I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier.”

[Drlee]

Propaganda doesn't work on smart people. These ads are aimed at deeply stupid people. People who are used to being told what to say in order to get others to say they are smart.

[Phred]

Propaganda doesn't work on smart people.

True. Only dummies bought into Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine", for example.



Phred

[Drlee]

True. Only dummies bought into Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine", for example.

[Deutschmania]

Indeed, and they might not like to hear this:

"It is most urgent and essential that there be a universal arming of the people." - V.I. Lenin

"The arming of the whole proletariat with rifles, guns, and ammunition should be carried out at once." K. Marx

And here is an even more extensive coverage of the issue, from a pro-gun Marxist-Leninist perspective http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/10/1177753/-A-Marxist-Leninist-response-to-Gun-Control https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/nov/15d.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/20b.htm

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty...The immediate arming of the workers and of all citizens in general, the preparation and organisation of the revolutionary forces for overthrowing the government authorities and institutions—this is the practical basis on which revolutionaries of every variety can and must unite to strike the common blow.

-http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/jan/25.htm But in counter response to the right-wing meme, here's another meme

[The Immortal Goon]

They seem to think that MLK was a conservative, even though their political ancestors called him a commie. They're either lying or too scared to voice their real opinions about MLK.

This is so annoying as MLK is in living fucking memory. Every MLK Day the conservatives come trotting out about how the guy that was on a board for Planned Parenthood, pushed for the federal government go guarantee individual employment, and opposed capitalism, would be out there with the Tea Party and embracing Glenn Beck. They'll also line up Sharpton and Jackson and other people that worked with King as traitors to King's legacy. It's some total 1984 shit.

[Drlee]

Yup.

It would be interesting if they actually saw what King did first hand. Tons of us did. MLK was first and always a Baptist minister. Modern conservatives find this inconvenient. As a well educated Christian he could come to no other conclusion than that our manifestation of capitalism is broken. He said:

There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society...And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the oil?' You begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?' These are words that must be said.

Most stop there. He went on to say:

Now, don't think you have me in a bind today. I'm not talking about communism. What I'm talking about is far beyond communism...I read 'Communist Manifesto' and 'Das Kapital' a long time ago, and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called 'dialectical materialism.' I have to reject that.


What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

[Quantum]

This is so annoying as MLK is in living fucking memory. Every MLK Day the conservatives come trotting out about how the guy that was on a board for Planned Parenthood, pushed for the federal government go guarantee individual employment, and opposed capitalism, would be out there with the Tea Party and embracing Glenn Beck. They'll also line up Sharpton and Jackson and other people that worked with King as traitors to King's legacy. It's some total 1984 shit.

He died whilst attending a strike by sanitation workers. Very conservative of him indeed. How can they spin an anti-war and anti-capitalist activist into a right-wing preacher, given the fact that he made public speeches clarifying his ideology? If he was around today, the media would have called him a commie and race baiter, like they did in the past.

[Drlee]

I notice another ironic tidbit about this poster. Did the Tea Party dumbasses notice that 3 of their 8 so-called advocates of gun ownership were assassinated by privately owned firearms? The three that were supposed to be gotcha's.

[Phred]

I notice another ironic tidbit about this poster. Did the Tea Party dumbasses notice that 3 of their 8 so-called advocates of gun ownership were assassinated by privately owned firearms?

I notice an ironic tidbit. The smart guy calling the Tea Party dumbasses can't count to seven.

The three that were supposed to be gotcha's.

Another ironic tidbit. The same smart guy doesn't know how to use apostrophes.


Phred