Weapons, Authority, and Class Warfare
Recently there has been an upsurge of gun violence in the
The dichotomy of this debate is interesting because, on the surface, it might appear that the right-wing was actually opposing absolute state power. However, the right’s championing of guns has little to do with giving people power against governments or the rich; after massive propaganda campaigns, the right doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.
So what is the true aim of the pro-gun lobby? Jon Steward puts it in his America: The Book: ‘providing black people with enough weapons to wipe each other out.’ I would argue that this explanation has quite a bit more to do with reality than the stated goal of these groups, although perhaps black can be expanded to include all of the lower class.
The gun-toting right realizes that it has largely been successful, through massive propaganda administered by the entertainment industry and others, in convincing the lower classes of America that there enemies are not the rich who have de facto rule over the country, but other members of the working class, for whatever arbitrary reason. Who should you pick as your enemy? Why not someone from another race, or an immigrant, asks the news media? Corporately controlled hip hop asks you, as if there weren’t enough ways to divide the working class, why don’t you form arbitrary gangs, and then slaughter members of other gangs?
This is what mainstream hip hop is so good at, providing
Of course, I have great respects for those in hip hop whose message is different from the disempowering one delivered by white-owned corporate hip hop labels; my favorites include Tupac, Public Enemy, Saul Williams, dead prez, the Last Emperor, Outkast, the Roots, and many others whose voices are drowned out by songs full of brand names and bitches and hoes and senseless black-on-black violence. Their art has been hijacked; just as all other genres of music were hijacked by Clear Channel and the corporate entertainment industry.
So, to summarize, the right wing is gun-happy because they know they won’t ever be the targets of the violence and that, thanks to their insidious propaganda, the working class will fight the bourgeois’ class war for them. And once people in the working class start to kill each other, the bourgeois can amplify these events through its propaganda machine, thus inspiring more fear and hatred in the working class and ensuring that the cycle of violence will continue. Aside from this, forcing guns down everyone’s throat helps create the erotic fascination with violence, mass-slaughter, and weaponry that needs to be present in the general population so that no one will object to the annihilation of 100,000 Iraqis or a $412 billion dollar Pentagon budget. And of course, the weapons manufactures, some of the most profitable businesses in
What about the liberals and Tipper Gore? The aims of the ‘liberals’ who advocate gun control on civilians is simply to give the state a greater capacity to control its civilians by giving it a monopoly on violence. This has always been the goal of law and order liberals, to ensure that no one questions authority or the right of government to oppress its citizens or to murder millions overseas.
As Ward Churchill points out, talk of gun control only arose once the Black Panthers started policing a racist police force in
So, what is the best way to ensure that political liberties are protected and the same time fight to end the plague of senseless violence? The working class could, instead of fighting the bourgeois’ class war for them, actually attempt unite and rebel against authority. I doubt the thugs in the NRA would be so pro-gun if they actually saw their beloved weapons pointed at the establishment instead of just at regular people.
This is a steep order though, and in the meantime, it seems logical, if we want to protect liberty and at the same time protect lives, to put some limits on weapons, especially the state’s. No, don’t repeal the second amendment, but maybe ban Assault rifles, for the military and the police, not just the civilians. As Michael Moore points out in his uncharacteristically nuanced film Bowling for Columbine, the violence at America’s core has less to do with guns than it does with a murderous culture, and so it seems obvious that to really make the world more safe, we need to address some issues at the heart of American culture and ideology. In the meantime, some restrictions can perhaps prevent some innocent blood from being shed in senseless violence.
Comment(s) »
» Leave a comment
- Your E-mail address is never displayed. If you enter it, it will only be visible to the blog author
- Since there already are comments to this post, your eventual comment might trigger a notification e-mail to the persons that commented before you.
- The line and paragraph breaks automatically
I marvel at how you and others think.
It is my opinion that deep down inside you don't believe that Black people have the ability to align ourselves so that we may live in peace. We are more akin to pit bulls. A 3rd party puts us in a pit together, throws in a red towel akin to a raging bull and we are bound by our insticts to tear each other's flesh until one of us is dead and the other seriously maimed.
I would love to gain an understanding of how you can claim that the "right" is in any way responsible for the content of Hip Hop and the subsequent impact that listening to these words repeatedly has on an individual.
You and others display so much inability to ask the person who is the target of your concern to be the PRIMARY force for change in their own lives that you simply can't bring yourselves to see your major blind spot.
The fact is that there will always be an individual seeking to see the gun, the drug, naked image to you as your DEMAND and thus the price that you are willing to pay suggests a profit opportunity to them.
Now that you know the scheme of these outsiders and are able to articulate the game to these victims what do you expect from them to not fall prey to these schemes that seek to harm them?
What do you say of the folks who are performing and making big dollars only to spend their money NOT in forming labor intensive enterprises that would employ the masses but instead on building up their stock of material goods that attract a new pack of fans into handing over their hard earned money?
Comment by Constructive Feedback— 2005/04/29 @ 08:45 AM — (Reply)
That's just absurd, and I don't know what in this article would have suggested that... Actually, Saul Williams made many of these same points in an essay he wrote, that mainstream rap now promotes pro-establishement behavior...
his article isn't really a commentary on race anyway... I was simply analyzing the way entertainment media functions as propaganda... Like I said, all genres of music act this way...even in the 1960s quite a bit of the music focused on drugs and senseless violence. I just focused on rap in this essay because it is the most popular form of music right now. As I mentioned, I am a great fan of many rap groups...
'. A 3rd party puts us in a pit together, throws in a red towel akin to a raging bull and we are bound by our insticts to tear each other's flesh until one of us is dead and the other seriously maimed.'
I of course find this sort of attitude to be extremely offensive... What I was trying to say in this essay was, again, not about race, but about class. everyone is suspetible to propaganda, though...including me... so i dont really think it's elitist to point out propaganda in entertainment media...
'I would love to gain an understanding of how you can claim that the "right" is in any way responsible for the content of Hip Hop and the subsequent impact that listening to these words repeatedly has on an individual. '
who owns the record companies? rich whites! who owns the radio stations? rich whites! these are massive corporations, owned by the rich. this seems rather obvious. saying record companies will have an aversion to music (of any genre) that clashes with the right's politics is like CNN has an aversion to giving anti-war activists a chance to speak on their airwaves... again, saul williams and others in hip hop have always understood this.
You and others display so much inability to ask the person who is the target of your concern to be the PRIMARY force for change in their own lives that you simply can't bring yourselves to see your major blind spot."
i disagree... i really dont see any elitist sentiments in this piece at all... this is exactly why i argued that people do need to have equal access to weapons, so THEY can change their own situation...like the Black Panthers did...
anyway, thanks for your comment... Again, the purpose of this article was to analyse the gun control debate, and argue that giving citizens equal access to weapons is a good thing...while analyzing the entertainment industry's propaganda...
email me if you want to further debate at dbaake@sbcglobal.net
Comment by david baake— 2005/04/29 @ 11:18 AM — (Reply)
"Recently there has been an upsurge of gun violence in the US, particularly at the school at Red Lake Indian Reservation, that has reopened the debate on gun control and violence in America."
There has? Perhaps anecdotally, but not in any significant statistical fashion. I think you’d be surprised how many true conservative gun owners are perfectly fine with African-American law abiding gun owners. Sure, there are some that are racist – but there are racists in every group. It tends to be the nanny state that tries to tell African-Americans that they aren't prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. Regarding your desire to ban "assault weapons" - statistically, the 1994 assault weapon ban had zero effect on crime. None. Thus, one can infer that a similar ban would again have no effect on crime. Further, to use your example of the Redlakes shooting, many high profile shootings do not involve "assault weapons." Only about two per cent of crimes in the country do. You are attacking the problem from the wrong end.
Comment by John— 2005/04/29 @ 07:14 PM — (Reply)
Comment by David Baake— 2005/04/29 @ 08:06 PM — (Reply)
Yes, but surely you must understand that when you base the first paragraph of your writing on a faulty premise, the whole essay ends up on shakey ground. You are on the track to some valuable points, but your conclusion is faulty in that banning certain weapons (ie: assault weapons) has been a proven failure in the US. Given that you cite Moore's movie, you must remember that there really is no corelation between gun ownership per capita and crime rates as Canada has the same gun ownership rate as the US. Further, gun ownership rates in the US are rising and crime rates are dropping while the reverse is true in places like the UK and Australia where they are now trying to ban knives in addition to guns.
Comment by John— 2005/04/29 @ 10:49 PM — (Reply)
Comment by David Baake— 2005/04/30 @ 08:33 AM — (Reply)
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and I can tell you that there was gang violence here long before anyone heard of NWA. I'm sure you've heard of Al Capone -- I don't know what kind of music he listened to, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't gangsta rap.
Poor kids don't join gangs because they listen to rap. Do you suppose that if they weren't listening to rap, they would be going to Harvard? No, kids join gangs first and foremost because gangs offer them economic opportuntities that would otherwise be unavailable. A gang is a buisness proposition; its purpose is to make money for its members. Second, gangs provide physical security that is otherwise hard to come by in inner-city neighborhoods. Certainly the police do not provide it.
Rich white kids in the suburbs already have economic and physical security; the only reason they get involved in "gangs" is for excitement, and I will grant that rap music may have some effect on their decision to join a "gang" rather that to, say, shave their eyebrows.
Poor black kids, on the other hand, join gangs for fairly solid, practical, INTELLIGENT reasons -- and if the gun lobby and the music industry disappeared overnight, the underlying socioeconomic realities would not change.
Comment by Dave Palmer— 2005/11/12 @ 12:01 PM — (Reply)
i agree, the root problem is sociopolitical. to change this sociopolitical system, we also have to attack its ideological systems... including its entertainment
Comment by David— 2005/11/12 @ 09:39 PM — (Reply)