Redneck Revolt August 19, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Seeing as the site has Americana and revolution in culture how about this from the Guardian, an interesting piece (by the by thanks to BH for pointing to it) on Redneck Revolt.
Redneck Revolt groups work on providing an explicitly anti-racist presence in rural areas, and focus particularly on gun shows. Many members are from places where guns are relatively normalized, and Neely wants Redneck Revolt to serve as a viable alternative for people who might otherwise join the growing right-wing militia movement.
Admirable.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
The SHARPS have been around for decades in the south.
Good to see the Durham statue gone but UNC Chapel Hill confederate statue still remains. Back then (20 yrs ago) there weren’t enough of us brave enough to topple them, although there was an almost constant low level chatter about such an idea.
Cycling a few miles outside of Chapel Hill I once found a private family cemetery with headstones as recent as the early 80s – all with CSA on them – Confederate States of America – the war never ended for many in the south.
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Reminiscent of the Young Patriots
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/08/10/young-patriots-at-the-united-front-against-fascism-conference/
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Couple points. SHARPs existed within a strictly urban environment even in the south, ditto the Young Patriots. Redneck Revolt embrace the rural connection (the de ruralization of America being a whole other topic).
I also think that with the generational shift that makes things that we’re at one innocuous for my dad (like the General Lee) will not be acceptable moving forward.
I often think of a paragraph I read in a book on the Yugoslavian wars in which a young Serbian soldier when asked why he didn’t fight for a multi ethnic post Yugoslavia answered, “no one asked me to”. Groups like Redneck Revolt are actively fighting from/for an explicit left rural position.
This is happening in a time of sagebrush rebellion redux coupled with resurgent explicitly fascist actions. The fight for America’s metaphorical heartland has never been more important so any and all actions are to be welcomed, from the blac bloc to main stream dems and especially Redneck Revolt should be welcomed and encouraged.
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Excuse typos. Doing this from my phone.
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Interesting thing about gun culture and the left in the US: prior to the 1930s, it does not seem to have been an issue. Come the 1930s, the New Deal coalition started enacting policies to stop criminals getting their hands on guns. But the split between gun-loving conservatives and gun-hating liberals seems to have emerged in the 1970s:
https://newrepublic.com/article/111266/franklin-roosevelt-father-gun-control
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I’ve mentioned it before, my father had a rifle in our house, and ammunition, throughout his life. He grew up in rural Meath and it was second nature to have a rifle for small scale hunting rabbits etc. He was extremely careful, the ammunition and parts of the rifle were kept separately. And he instilled in us a respect of it. That’s probably made me a lot more open to the concept of ownership, albeit with strong safety and storage aspects. I’ve read that in the USSR in rural areas hunting rifle ownership was fairly widespread.
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There was an article I read in from the 1980s (was it from the NYT?) that said the glasnost-era SU had numerous citizens owning private firearms.
One of my neighbours in suburban Cork owned a legally held rifle in the 90s, but he later told us he “no longer owns it” (I presume he either gave the firearm to the Gardai, or had it destroyed).
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Things tightened up a lot in the early 2000s. Gun cases, etc, etc became required, so I’d think a fair few owners couldn’t be pushed to hold on to them.
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Gun control was virtually non existent in ireland 100 years ago.Been reading in the Irish News about the RIC deciding to round up rifles belonging to the national volunteers on this week 1917.They were stored virtually openly in Halls and parochial houses and even when siezed there appeared to be no legal sanction whatsoever.
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Gun control is still a massive issue in the USA isn’t it? It seems to be split along political lines with the “liberals” for gun control and conservatives against it. Actually, I have sympathy with the “rght to bear arms” argument, and you would thnk the left would support that argument. How are the workers’ militias to get their guns otherwise?!
In practice the problem seems to be:
– ,many gun owners seem to be careless, accidents are far too common with kids being killed in domestic gun accidents
– there seems little control so that people with with a history of mental health/domestic violence etc get guns and go on to kill
– maybe arguments/confrontations can readily lead to injuring and killing if so many people have guns
– it means the far right get guns as well!
Supporters of gun ownership in the US argue that it is people, not guns, that kill. This is mostly (guns can be faulty) true but then that says a lot about US society as the numer of gun killings are so high, and murders generally. Apparently gun ownership (mostly for hunting?) in Canada is just as high, but gun related murders much lower, even per head of population. I think Sweden also has high gun ownership, again for hunting. So it says something about US society does it not?
There was a UK documentary “The Gun Shop” recently. A black mother and her adult daughter came in to buy hand guns (for the first time). They had been driving out of a mall car park and there was some kind of altercation with another driver (white male – may be significant?). He pulled a gun out of his glove compartment and waved it at them. So they decided to get guns. You could replay that incident where they get there guns out and wave them at him in response, so what would he do? Shoot because he would be afraid they would shoot? None may be good shots, who else would die? All because of some petty dispute in a car park.
In the same programme a young white single mother, a nurse, bought a hand gun because she was terrified of home invasions. Why was not explained, I am sure they are extremely, extremely rare. She has her young sons with her in the shop. The 10 year old was taught to shoot in the shop. At home the mom talked to her son about what to do if someone invaded her home and “took mom out”. To me it seemed unreal, but maybe our North American contributors could comment.
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As a redneck who was raised around guns in a hunting home I want to answer slot of these questions but it’ll take me a day or two. Not that anyone is losing sleep over this but bear with me.
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