Class Struggle is Identity Politics

Politically Identifying with other people based on being the same Economic Class as them is also an Identity Politic.

Just as most Leftists agree that being Apolitical is defacto support for the status quo, rejecting "Woke" identity politics is defacto support for the White Supremacy, Patriarchy and Cisheteronormativity, and rejecting Class Politics is defacto support for the continued domination of the Bourgeoisie.

So when it comes to the little Civil War the Terminally Online Left is currently having, I have sympathies with both sides and frustrations with both sides, but they aren't equal.  And there are really more then two sides but for now I'm focusing on the "Woke Anarchists" like Thought Slime and Sophie vs "Anti-Imperialist" MLs like Caleb Maupin and PACD.

Both sides deny that they are what the other side accuses them of being, but the validity of the accusations are not equal to each other.  Maupin and PACD are Class Reductionists, doesn't matter that they pay certain lip service to other issues in ways that an old school Class Reductionists of the 1930s wouldn't have, and I also massively disagree with their "Anti-Imperialist" understanding of international Geo-Politics.  My position on the war between Russia and Ukraine is that both sides are bad and no sane Leftists should take a side on it.  But I don't think everything they are accused of is fair either, being a Class Reductionist is not the same as being actively Racist.  And you can't call someone a Class Reductionist and a Fascist or Nazi at the same time, because Fascism and Nazism were built on Class Collaboration.

Thought Slime and Sophie are not Class Collaborationists, I suspect they may agree with the title of this blog post and it's first full paragraph.  But they aren't as well read as they pretend to be.  I don't even agree with proper Anarchism anymore yet still there are better Anarchists then them on YouTube like Zoe Baker, Libertarian Socialist Rants and veritas et caritas.

PACD and Maupin like to say that most Working Class Conservatives are not horrible racist people, they are just misguided and we need to include them in our class solidarity.  And I agree with that sentiment, if that was indeed all they were doing in their flirtations with the Right I would be fine with it.  But they then turn around and engage in this massive demonizing of fellow Leftists who disagree with them, this whole "synthetic left", "Color Revolution" nonsense, and that's what makes their playing nice with Conservatives look like totally hypocritical BS.

But I also agree with them that we need to stop viewing the political spectrum as a simple Binary, or even just overlapping Binaries.  True Socialism and Communism is not simply to the Left of the Democrats and the Green Party.  It's really closer to being like a Venn Diagram, if your understanding of Socialism refuses to acknowledge that we sometimes agree with Conservatives over Liberals, most importantly on the matter of Gun Rights, then it is legitimate to accuse your Socialism of really just being edgy Liberalism.

Why are Mass Shootings (and Gun Violence in general) more common in America?

This is the retort I've been getting to my point in my previous post, about comparing Banning Guns to Alcohol or Drug prohibition.

There are many reasons why America would have more then many other countries.  Even Michael Moore in his very Pro Gun Control documentary Bowling for Columbine does not conclude having legal access to Guns is the reason, he blames it on the Fear Mongering in our news media.

It has repeatedly been proven that high crime rates in general are a result of high poverty rates.  Something Liberals are frequently pointing out.  That's why minority communities have higher crime rates, because systemic racism keeps them poorer.

America is also the 3rd largest country in the world by Population.  The only two larger are not Western or even particularly westernized countries, so not so easy to compare.

The claim that America has by such a large margin more gun violence then any other country is dependent on a pretty specific definition of what a Mass Shooting is.  For one things gun based slaughter committed by Governments are not counted.

So on twitter I've been seeing a lot of citing of Australia and their strict Gun Laws issued after a mass shooting in 1996.  Saying boldly that there have been NO mass shooting in Australia since, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

Wikipedia's list of Massacres in Australia.

Frankly I think not counting these two 2014 incidents as "mass shootings" is offensive and disingenuous to their victims.  They are certainly included in what American Gun Control activists are claiming strict Gun Laws will prevent, American equivalents to these are aboslutly pointed to by them as part of our problem.

Meanwhile massacres not involving guns have happened plenty.  I know Gun Control advocates love to be dismissive of that point.  As if being killed by something other then a Gun is inherently less tragic.   The problem is they have an outright superstitious view of Guns, that every Gun is like the One Ring and you can't hold one without feeling an urge to use it.  Maybe it says more about them that they feel that way, I've held a Gun a few times and felt nothing special about it, I took it seriously, but felt no sense of godlike power from it.

And it's not like Australia was having an epidemic of these comparable to America's before.  Australia has a population of less then 25 million compared to America having over 300 Million.  They are inevitably going to have less of everything.

I feel confident an analysis of Canada or European nations would turn out the same.

Japan is another nation with strict Gun Laws the Gun Control advocates point to.

Problem is there are a lot of differences between Japan's Laws and America's Laws.  And most of them are NOT ones a Liberal would want to point to as good.  Japan is overall a very Conservative nation, in some ways the only "industrialized" nation to the right even of America.  Their Gun Ban is about the only thing Liberals would point to as a plus.  I'm kinda the opposite of Japan here, Gun Control is the only political issue on which I'm still a "conservative".

Just look at How Japan Uses Low Crime Rates to justify it's Cruel Prison System.  I've also seen Alt-Right blogs claim Japan has never been a victim of "Islamic Terrorism" because they don't have many Muslims and are actively seeking to keep it that way.  While not mentioning how Japan was the victim of a famous act of Buddhist Terrorism back in 1995, the Subway Sairn Gass Attack.

I hate to say this as an Otaku, but Japan is not a free country.  But I shouldn't hate to say that, so much of the Anime I watch is about Japan not being a Free country, Isekai is so popular right now because everyone living there wants out.  Just watch TheAnimeMan's WTF Japan videos on YouTube.

So my point is, even if you could convince me Gun Control would mean less violence.  That's not worth it.  I support Gun Rights for the same reason I oppose the Patriot Act and Trump's Muslim Ban.  I am intensely opposed to giving up Freedom out of Fear, when we do that, the Terrorists win.

Well, another Mass Shooting happened.

I wanted to just spend October watching and talking about Horror Anime.  But now the world has to go through this Gun Control song and dance again.

First of all the people who are supposedly on my side of the Gun issue are going to engage in a moronic hypocrisy of saying to not politicize it to those making their stupid Pro-Gun argument, but at the same time will aboslutly look for ways to make it serve a Right Wing agenda.

Just make the Pro-Gun Right argument, and refute theirs, every-time you try to act like we shouldn't talk about it at all you make yourself look scared and our argument look weak, when it isn't.  It really makes me suspect that all these Republicans and the NRA secretly want Guns to be banned.

But I think it's also fair to remind the Left that there are plenty of times we don't want the country just doing what the most instant fear driven knee jerk reaction to a tragedy is.  Like when it's a Terrorist attack committed by professing Muslims.

Now Gun Control is just about the only remaining issue where I still hold what is currently considered the Conservative position.  So people who know how much I've changed over the last decade, from being a Ron Paul Libertarian to a Libertarian Communist, may feel like suggesting I will inevitably change on this issue too.

Well no, I won't.

Because you see on Guns I follow the same logic I currently follow on Abortion, and Drugs, and Prostitution, and Gambling.

BANNING THINGS DOESN'T WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It never has, and it never will.

It frustrates me how many on The Left get this argument when it comes to all those things, but can't consistently apply it to Guns.

But it's equally moronic and hypocritical that Conservatives will get this argument when it comes to Guns, but not apply it to all those other things.

The nice thing about not being a Constitutionalist anymore is that I no longer base my Pro-Gun Rights argument on the Second Amendment, just a I don't base my belief in Free Speech on the First.  So I don't have to listen to any stupid arguments about defining what a Militia is.

If I wanted to quote people who lived a long time ago.  I might start with how even Karl Marx said the state should never take people's Guns away.  The modern Left hasn't put as much work into explaining that away as they have the Gandhi quote you might have heard before.  So no my position on Guns is not inherently Right-Wing, and plenty of others agree.

But more directly relevant to America is the fact that The Black Panthers were originally a Pro-Gun rights group, protesting laws passed to restrict the Gun Rights of African Americans.  The first Gun Law ever passed in American was one banning freed slaves from owning Guns after the Civil War.

Look, I don't like Guns, I wish they'd never been invented.  But we can't give fire back to Prometheus.  They are here are they aren't going to go away by wishing them away.