From "Operation Wetback" To Newtown: Tracing The Hick Fascism Of The NRA [View all]

[HiPointDem]

Until relatively recently, those types of mass-murder were freakishly rare in America; they only appeared at the end of the Reagan Era. First...in the workplace, concurrent with the destruction of labor unions and the transfer of wealth and workplace power into few hands. Then, by the late 1990s, the workplace massacres had seeped down into the employees’ children’s schoolyards...it’s also no longer possible for me to ignore the National Rifle Association, and its hick fascism politics that’ve been poisoning our culture ever since the NRA’s infamous "coup" in 1977, when the NRA was taken over by far-right fanatics led by a convicted murderer and onetime US Border Guards chief named Harlon Carter — whose previous claim to fame was when he led a massive crackdown on Mexican immigrant laborers called "Operation Wetback..."

Two decades before Harlon Carter led "Operation Wetback" he was convicted of murdering a 15-year-old Mexican American boy, sentenced to a three-year prison term (Harlon was under-age himself), before being inexplicably acquitted of all charges and allowed to walk free as if it had never happened. It probably didn’t hurt that Harlon Carter’s daddy was himself a ranking Border Guards official... Two decades after murdering a Mexican-American boy and getting off scot-free, here is how the official Mormon newspaper, the Deseret News, described Harlon’s "Operation Wetback" scam, in 1954:



The NRA chief whom Harlon Carter overthrew publicly supported the Saturday Night Special handgun ban, telling the Senate in 1972, "On the Saturday Night Special, we are for it (banning) 100 percent. We would like to get rid of these guns." The NRA nearly imploded in civil war over the leadership’s support for the handgun ban. Harlon’s fanatics saw it as treason...As soon as Reagan could walk again (after his shooting), he pushed the NRA’s agenda...Reagan signed a bill in 1986 rolling back earlier gun regulations passed after JFK’s assassination, such as banning mail-order weapons purchases...The cult strategy worked: Membership soared into the millions, and the NRA’s budget swelled to one of the largest budgets in DC outside of the federal government...

So what’s really going on here? Why the crazy? It’s not exactly a revelation to learn that the NRA is run by hick fascist nutjobs...But what’s the purpose, what are the deeper ideological politics of that sort of gun-cult fanaticism? Looking back at Big Business’ violent reaction against the New Deal and the political culture that it created: a more "collectivist" political culture, as the libertarians derisively call it, where people were more deeply involved with each other and their communities, and with that involvement in their politics and communities came greater trust in their communities. That political culture — where people were more involved in their politics and trusted government more than they trusted business — was a big problem, according to pollsters and PR experts hired by business lobby groups in the postwar era, groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce...

It takes years to cultivate a political mindset that voluntarily neutralizes itself by convincing itself that its contribution to world revolution comes down to purchasing a few guns at K-Mart, then blogging about it. That’s what reactionary plutocrats like the Koch brothers understood about the deeper politics of gun fanaticism, and why their outfits like the Cato Institute have been at the forefront of overturning gun regulations and promoting "Stand Your Ground" vigilantism as a substitute for political engagement: That by poisoning the political climate, it poisons the minds, which circulates back to the external environment, and back into the minds, until you lock the culture into a pattern in which you always get more and they always get fleeced, which makes them more fanatical and you more powerful...

https://nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/newtown


I thought it was interesting that the NRA 'coup' occurred in the late 70s, when the neo-liberal turn was just picking up speed. i wonder who bankrolled it?