Max Blumenthal:Armed Revolt in the Obama Era? Right-Wing Gun Nuts Share Their Paranoid Worldview

[laststeamtrain]

Armed Revolt in the Obama Era? Right-Wing Gun Nuts Share Their Paranoid Worldview
By Max Blumenthal, The Daily Beast
Posted on May 1, 2009, Printed on May 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/139018/

On April 18 and 19, I attended gun shows in Antioch, Calif., and Reno, Nev., to probe the culture of gun enthusiasts at the onset of the Barack Obama era.

I came away from these events with a portrait of a heavily armed, tightly organized movement incited by right-wing radio to a fever-pitched resentment of Obama and his allies in Congress.

Even as the economy suffers, gun dealers and their Washington lobbyists are leveraging renewed anti-government sentiment into unprecedented sales figures and fattened membership rolls.

"We've been swamped today," an NRA representative from Antioch boasted. "We've practically ran out of our materials that we give away at sign-up."


Fueled by the screeds of radio hosts Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and the lesser-known, but increasingly influential, online conspiracist Alex Jones, many gun-show attendees I spoke to were convinced Obama planned to usher in a Marxist dictatorship.

They warned that the president's power grab would only begin with mass gun seizures. "If Obama takes away our guns," a young, .45-caliber-pistol-toting man from Reno told me, "it's just a step into trying to take away everything else."

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http://www.alternet.org/story/139018/armed_revolt_in_the_obama_era_right-wing_gun_nuts_share_their_paranoid_worldview/

[ixion]

1. disingenuous hypocrites

where they hell have they been for the past two decades? Oh, yeah, that's right. They've been supporting the RW assault on civil liberties under the guise of the WoD and WoT.

:eyes:

[Doctor_J]

2. The paranoia does not exist just in the ranks of the Repukes

The NRA/Hate Radio/Fox "News" propaganda has affected Dems too.