This election gets scarier by the day. It seems only a matter of time before someone gets shot. And if there are going to be shots fired, more than a few supporters of Donald Trump want to make sure they’re the ones doing the shooting.
On Twitter, and elsewhere online, Trump supporters are talking openly about bringing guns to political rallies and polling places. Some are actually taking steps to form some kind of Trump militia.
The living sack of human garbage that is Matt Forney recently Tweeted these suggestions for fellow Trump lovers:
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/708811928664195072
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/708516727190065153
Unfortunately, Forney isn’t the only Trump supporter talking about guns.
https://twitter.com/RobinFoxNews/status/708974116653543425
https://twitter.com/LibrtyGuerrilla/status/709103137030668288
https://twitter.com/AmbikaPadmaloch/status/709142040232071168
@FoxNews Do us Trump supporters, have to start carrying our Guns For Protection at Rally's, WE WILL…..
— Radical Republican. (@todstertodd) March 12, 2016
@FoxNews I would encourage Trump supporters, To be armed when attending Rallies. This is for Your own protection. The Left Wants WAR.
— Radical Republican. (@todstertodd) March 12, 2016
You Liberals do not want to take it the streets, we will wipe the sreets up with your Blood.
— Radical Republican. (@todstertodd) March 12, 2016
Meanwhile, discredited right-wing hack “journalist” Chuck C. Johnson posted the alarming picture below on Facebook, promising to “use the Second [amendment]” against — that is, to shoot — anyone he think is threatening Trump’s right to free speech , even though he personally supports Ted Cruz.
Johnson took the post down, but not before it was screenshotted by Charles Johnson, a non-discredited journalist who unfortunately, and rather confusingly, shares the same first and last name as the dude with the red hair and beard pictured above.
Other Trump supporters think that their candidate needs to have a somewhat more organized army of Second Amendment fetishists to protect him from the “bad people” he talks about so much.
Like, say, a militia.
https://twitter.com/FoxLegChair/status/708520806716837888
Hire them? I’m fairly certain most “militia” members would be happy to do it for free. Earlier this month, in fact, the FBI arrested the co-chair of Veterans for Trump in New Hampshire on an assortment of charges related to his alleged participation in the armed standoff at Bundy Ranch in Nevada in 2014.
But hiring or otherwise working with Bundy’s militia may not be necessary, as Trump may soon have an unofficial militia of his own.
Yesterday, RT.com reports, a new Twitter account announced the formation of something called “The Lion’s Guard,” describing itself as
[a]n informal civilian organization dedicated to protecting the safety and security of innocent, peaceful Trump supporters from violent Far-Left agitators.
While the group would remain unarmed, the organizer pledged, it would be “willing to forcefully protect people if need be.”
Whoever was behind the Twitter account took it down within hours, citing threats.
But in that brief stretch of time, RT.com reports, the account was able to pick up 500 followers and a good deal of support from other Trump fans on Twitter, including many on the far right who presumably already own the requisite brown shirts and swastika armbands.
https://twitter.com/Third_Position/status/708760325353385984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/DonnyLateNight/status/708741461773295617
https://twitter.com/TrumpLiberals/status/708738364405649408
https://twitter.com/GeorgiaAlpha/status/708738477769289732
@wearelionsguard You are doing what needs to be done. God bless. Can I donate?
— Jordan (@realJordanIV) March 12, 2016
@Third_Position @wearelionsguard Where do I sign on
— Concierge Monthly (@ConciergeMthly) March 12, 2016
https://twitter.com/Jenixian/status/708760475354288128
https://twitter.com/lyz_estrada/status/708753037561438208
Meanwhile, over on clickhate tabloid The Daily Stormer (partially archived here), the regulars are if anything even more enthusiastic about The Lion’s Guard than their counterparts on Twitter — though some of them seem to have forgotten the bit about the group being unarmed.
On 4chan’s Trump-loving, fascist-friendly /pol/ board (archived here), some are talking about trying to resurrect The Lion’s Guard on their own.
Whether or not The Lion’s Guard is resurrected, by its founder or by sympathetic Trump fans on 4chan or somewhere else, it’s clear that the idea of a “Trump militia” has an appeal to many of the orange-faced demagogue’s fans — and not just Daily Stormer readers posting pictures of a well-armed Pepe.
Writer Sarah Kendzior, who spent many hours with Trump supporters while waiting in line to see The Donald on his recent visit to St. Louis, noted in a piece for the Guardian that
Several Trump fans vowed that the next time, they would come armed. Some warned that if Trump was not chosen by Republicans, a militia would rise up to take him to power.
On Twitter, other Trump fans are making similarly chilling “predictions” and threats.
https://twitter.com/BLang71/status/709123350233280512
https://twitter.com/DXint/status/709151004030341121
https://twitter.com/_America_First/status/708819001959276545
Normally, I would dismiss this sort of talk as empty blathering. But this time this talk is attached to a dangerous demagogue who’s managed to rile up a very noisy minority of disaffected white people, millions strong, many of them already heavily armed.
If even a fraction of those people “march on DC” or anywhere else, the results could be bloody. I really hope that things aren’t heading where they seem to be heading, because that’s a very dark place indeed.
@Redsilkphoenix
Basically it lives out his narcissistic fantasies, he’s bought into his own hype decades ago the longer and longer he was made a mockery of in the business world. It tells so much when his own companies went so much richer when he’s NOT in charge by court mandate.
Yeah I don’t buy that idea that he’ll totally roll over and lie down when he isn’t the POTUS. After all this, anyone who expects him to just roll over, how delusional can a person be? Let’s see, what would happen to all those angry people when he isn’t the new president? I honestly wonder if there would be riots and shootings on the streets from this level of rising and violent rhetoric. Who knows, I honestly feel like if this stuff does keep going up, I would like to believe collectively the entire US government and its people will have enough of his bile.
@Seraph4377 March 14, 2016 at 10:31 am
Appeal to tradition doesn’t make the superdelegates any less questionable. Why do these primaries at all, if the part big wigs can just override them??
That kinda thinking lets the Democrats get away with being a carbon copy of the Republicans.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs March 14, 2016 at 10:35 am
Disagreeing with you ain’t a bannable offense, so this immature name-calling is the only thing you can do about it right now.
@Butt
No, but being tedious certainly is, and you were boring me shitless before I even came out of lurkerdom. The same paper-thin false neutrality, golden-mean fallaciousness and desperate “Trolling! Satire!” deflection every. Bloody. Post, and I can’t even give you points for sticking to the schtick for so long, because it’s indistinguishable from the dozens of drive-by one-post wonders we get every thread.
As they say in your world: Git gud or git b&, scrub.
Because they can’t. Learn what you’re talking about.
You actually said that in a thread about how the Republican frontrunner has become a Nazi in all but name.
Thanks for making it so obvious that you’re not to be taken seriously.
You’re a bit behind the times there, bro. Republicans too ashamed and/or dishonest to admit that they’re Republicans don’t use “Independent” anymore; they use “Libertarian” or “Free speech advocate/absolutist.”
@Dalillama
Err… apparently not easy enough. Lousy Social Democrats! Seriously, can we all learn our lesson and unite behind the radical leader this time? But of course not, because the Democratic establishment shares more interests with the Republican establishment than with the left. People with money and power are never sufficiently worried about Fascists until it’s too late.
@Redsilkphoenix @Ooglyboggles
To the extent Trump actually has beliefs, they’re probably pretty close to Clinton’s, although he seems like more of a protectionist, and possibly less of a hawk. But yeah, “people are paying attention to me! I am great!” trumps (ahem) all that. And being a jerk to minorities is an easy to get attention from his fellow angry, insecure idiots.
@Khan
Yes, of course you’re “independent”. It’s just a coincidence that you bitch about those damn protesters bothering poor old Dump, and then you proceed to post a dubious video that has been posted on a channel that has this description:
Truly a reliable source of info if I ever saw one. But please, continue to fight the “good” fight.
@Seraph4377 March 14, 2016 at 3:55 pm
Godwin’s law, thread is dead. Hillary is a DINO, anyway.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs March 14, 2016 at 3:41 pm
And all that for not only rejecting Trump, but also Hillary? You hate Sanders that much or are you too caught up in the Two Party State (just one party away from the Big Red) to see, always voting for the Democratic Party as the lesser of two evils lets them get lazy and complacent? I’m not neutral here, I reject BOTH.
Khan,
Independents vote one way or the other the vast majority of the time. People just like to call themselves independent so they can feel special
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/11/independents-outnumber-democrats-and-republicans-but-theyre-not-very-independent/
I can take a wild guess as to which way you lean.
Aris,
Change isn’t going to happen from the top down. If you want a Democratic party that’s more progressive and populist, flouncing from a presidential election isn’t going to do it. Doing everything you can at a local level to get solid progressives in and attending local party meetings is how it’s done. But that takes a lot more effort than throwing your hands up and saying “they’re all the same” doesn’t it?
I once saw a speaker at a political conference (forgot his name unfortunately ) who said “if you don’t do politics, politics will do you.” 10 years later, it’s increasingly clear that he’s right.
I’m not trying to be self righteous, because I should be doing way more activism than I am. But in my experience, the people who say they think both candidates are the same so they won’t even vote at all tend to have never lifted a finger to change things. I’m sick of it.
I should also note that it is not just the presidency being voted on this November. There are senate races in most states, house races in all states, state legislator races in most states, local races in most places, and in many places, referendums. These races are actually more important and affect our lives more than presidential races do. This is another way that staying home on election day ensures that things won’t change. Apathy is just what the Koch brother and Walton and Sheldon Adelson types are delighted to see. It plays right into their hands when we disengage.
I know Aris is kind of trolly and doesn’t listen to anyone, but I’m posting this rant anyway because it’s something people need to hear. Or see in this case.
In fact, I’ll probably copy this rant to my desktop when I get home because I have a feeling that this is a sentiment I’ll need to express many more times in the coming months.
Oh, and did I get affect right, or is it effect? For some reason I have a terrible mental block about which one of those to use.
@ Aris – look at the title of the post, you moron.
The people who set up the rules tend to be older, and us old people do love our traditions! Meanwhile, most young people can’t be bothered to show up for a mid-term election (like 2010 and 2014), let alone go to a boring rules committee meeting.
That said, the superdelegate rule makes sense as a safety valve. If the frontrunner’s campaign falls apart in the middle of the primary season, to the point where the voters in the early states are regretting their decision, then the superdelegates have the power to repair the situation.
If the Democrats and Republicans were carbon copies of each other the government might have done something in the past 6 years. As it is, it’s been a huge struggle to pass the minimum number of basic continuing resolutions and debt limit extensions to keep the lights on. Complicated stuff like actually passing a real budget or doing immigration reform isn’t in the realm of possibility.
It’s good to see women finally earning their own way and not destroying men with entitlements such as alimony and child support.
Good going, non-males. You’ve done yourselves proud.
Some of us actually are fence sitters. I can actually say that until the GOP went totally far-right extreme, I’d vote for about as many GOP candidates as I would democratic, although more on the local level where they tended to be fiscally conservative than the democrats around here who constantly want us to approve bond issues and sales tax raises without sunset clauses. (One just recently passed and we were told it was to raise money for a new courthouse. Now that an extra penny in sales tax is a reality, they’re telling us that a new courthouse was just a “suggestion” and the money will be used however they see fit.)
Now, I’m more of a democrat and vote as such, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to register as such since I’m in a swing state. If national elections are occurring, the phone will never stop ringing. The mailings alone I receive probably equal several extremely large forests’ worth of paper that I just have to pitch because our recycling doesn’t take that slick, cardboard-like stock they use for their political ads.
Second amendment rights – jebus – do these cockwombles not realise that a Government made up of the likes of the Great Orange One and his Jackbooted Orange Padawan are exactly what the second amendment was put in place to protect against?
(ignoring the fact that in the modern world, unless second amendment “right to bear arms” includes “right to bear tanks, cruise missiles and helicopter gunships”, then it is sort of pointless anyway)
I certainly wish that was true.
All these Trumpeter trolls here are unable to answer one simple point: The only candidate that has incited or condoned political violence by his supporters is Trump. There is ample footage of him doing this at rallies. None of the other candidates have done this. It is also telling that Trump’s supporters pretend not to know the difference between protesting a rival candidate and committing violence against protesters.
@WWTH:
Thank you for saying what I wanted to say better than I could have said it. I’m very tired of hearing people who aren’t going to vote unless X happens, because it’s a total cop out.
@tricyclist:
I am told – although I don’t know for certain, I am not an American legal historian – that the Second Amendment was originally formulated to allow slaveowners to raise militias to put down slave insurrections.
If this is true, then it makes one realise that “free” means “not slaves”, and “security” means “not letting our slaves take vengeance for how they’ve been treated.” In this light the second amendment is as shameful in the 21st century as it was in the 18th and needs repeal.
Saphira,
Fair enough. I got caught up in my rant and used overly judgmental language with that special thing. You are kind of proving the point though. Most independents these days are leaning way more to one party or the other. My grandmother always considered herself an independent but from at least 2000 to her death in 2008 she almost always voted for the Democrats. I wonder where this trend had its roots? It could be the Clinton impeachment. Or the groundwork could have been laid as far back as the Reagan administration.
Sorry I made the point in a smug and assholish way though.
I’m sure that’s part of it. I’ve also read that it’s a compromise between the founders who wanted a standing military in peacetime and those who didn’t. With armed militias, there were men ready and trained if there was a need, but without having a big, expensive, perhaps overly powerful military to worry about.
Of course, we ended up with a permanent military anyway. If we had just implemented one in the first place, we might not have to worry about these assholes so much because there wouldn’t be a need to have the 2nd amendment.
I’m not a huge early American history buff, so I could be wrong about this.
Off topic, but this made me want to Hulk smash everything.
http://blackyouthproject.com/texas-school-assembly-on-rape-and-domestic-abuse-leaves-students-in-tears/
@EJ
That is not why, no. The American Revolution was primarily based off local militia forces, and during the Constitutional Convention it was anticipated that state militias would both be important to national defense and a check on tyranny by the federal government. Since the US historically tended to have a small peacetime military, the militia was fairly important. On a closely related note, basically every war the US had been in up to and including WWII opened with a desperate rush to expand the regular army.
The militia as meant in the Constitution is not the Bundy militia but is still extant; it’s presently called the National Guard.
@authorialAlchemy
Right Wing Pigeons from Outer Space – The Dead Milkmen
Apparently Trump supporters need to have it spelt out to them that political rallies aren’t private events.
Rushing the stage could be seen as an attempt to shut down a candidate’s ability to address supporters.Still it hardly compares with inciting violence in an already angry crowd, something that could very easily have ended with people dead.
@katz
I support Sanders as the least of the available evils. I will also note that he and Clinton have very similar policy positions in re: guns, making that an amusing postion for you to take. (In defence of my argument about Clinton, both of them also have positions that are pretty similar to Reagan’s on guns). I’d like to see a stronger position on gun control, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, because as I noted to EJ (TOO) in another thread, it’s totally impossible to have a reasonable conversation about gun control in the US right now.
@Victorious Parasol
Why would they do that? There’s no percentage in honest debate for them, because their platform is uniformly horrible.
@WWTH
It could be argued that the biggest strategic failure of the American Left in recent decades has been trusting the Democratic party. It’s broadly the case that, for the last 40-odd years, the far right has spent their energy getting into the Republican party apparatus and pulling the party further right, while the progressive left has spent much of their energy forming nonprofits & community organizations to directly help people, while leaving it to the Democratic party leadership to get things done on a policy level to support and eventually remove the need for said groups. This is admittedly a heavily simplified sketch of the situation, but is accurate in broad strokes.
@EJ(TOO)
This was almost certainly an unspoken component of the reasoning, and also what they were mostly used for in practice. As guy points out, we currently have an organization that adequately serves the explicitly stated need for national defence, and were it up to me the National Guard, Air Guard, and Coast Guard would make up the entirety of U.S. military forces.
@OoglyBoggles
Please stop. You’re not helping.
@Aris Bosch
Please just shut up.