A brief history of white paranoia


This cartoon is from Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine (2002) that looked at America’s obsession with guns. Given the recent spate of killings in the US and the rise of heavily-armed militias that seem to be seeking to confront the government, this may be a good time to re-release the film.

Here’s the trailer for the film.

Comments

  1. resident_alien says

    I find Michael Moore to be very manipulative and insufficiently hard on the facts
    (he does twist them to fit his narrative, I find).
    I still recommend “Bowling for Columbine” for a re-release, that scene of Marilyn Manson
    of all people being the soft-spoken, thoughtful voice of reason is pure gold.
    I had dismissed him as a gaudy shock-rocker until then : So.Very.Wrong.
    USians often have no idea how alien and terrifying their gun culture seems to most other developed nations. Even the Swiss, who basically have a military rifle in every home (well-regulated militia indeed!) don’t fetishize guns to that extend.

  2. Sean (I am not an imposter) says

    Ooooh, “white” paranoia. Scary. Is this different from black or Hispanic paranoia? How about Asian paranoia? Are black people with guns paranoid too? How is it you know the mental state of millions of Americans you never met when I don’t know the name of my next-door neighbor?

    How is it “paranoid” to want to protect yourself from criminals, the cops or the government? Looking at the behavior of the US government abroad and its police forces domestically anyone who isn’t paranoid or fearful of his rights is a damned fool. Violent crime is also a massive problem in many places in the US. Why is it okay to support the continued menace of increasingly fascist police thugs but the minute someone talks of self-defense, it is paranoia and vigilantism?

    This anti-white racist bullshit grows tiresome as well, and Michael Moore is notorious for it. Yeah, white people are all racist and paranoid and only own guns because they fear black people. Moore himself admitted he owns a gun and runs around with armed bodyguards one of whom was stopped in NYC with an unlicensed weapon. He also lives in a mansion in a wealthy white neighborhood with locks and bolts on the doors and an expensive security system.

    Stop projecting your racist insecurities on the rest of us Michael, and give up your guns!

  3. DsylexicHippo says

    Sean @ #2 -- what you said is precisely the reason why we cannot exit out of the gun loop. Paranoia or not, it is a fetish. And it applies mostly to white people so I agree with Michael Moore on that. The fact that he is white and has guns reinforces that point so what’s your point exactly? With Blacks and Hispanics, it is mostly criminals with guns -- regular non-white folks are not that obsessed with “protecting” themselves from imaginary threats. Talk about racist insecurities. How ironic!

  4. Donnie says

    This anti-white racist bullshit grows tiresome as well

    I know one thing, I never want to meet, see, or run into you in real life. Anyone that says’ anti-white racist’ in your context is either an idiot, or an fucking idiot. I picture you, in real life, as one of those cartoon whiteys posted above. You probably would shot your shadow for being “black” and call out your shadow for being “anti-white” because it is a black shadow and not a white shadow.

    Yeah, white people are all racist and paranoid and only own guns because they fear black people.

    Nope. White people are not racist -- it’s just you that is the racist.

    How is it you know the mental state of millions of Americans you never met when I don’t know the name of my next-door neighbor?

    Your neighbor is probably smart and does want to see, meet, or be introduce to you because your neighbor is probably, and rightly so, paranoid that you would shot first and ask for a name second.

  5. Sean (I am not an imposter) says

    Only people who imagine blacks to be the source of all violence in our society could possibly call the right to self-defense “racist.” Black people have as much right to defend themselves as anyone else, and gun rights advocates recognize that threats come in many colors, including white, blue and OD green.

    The irony is that “paranoid, white racist gun-nuts” have a lot less of a problem with the idea of the black (and white) underclass being heavily armed for its defense than fake liberals like Michael Moore do. Moore seems to think that only rich whites in sheltered communities should have the right to own guns.

    Another irony is that the earliest gun control laws were established to keep guns out of the hands of blacks and Indians. It is no accident that the strictest gun control laws in the US tend to be in cities with a high population of blacks. They are there to keep blacks from owning guns.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/opinion/sunday/do-black-people-have-equal-gun-rights.html

    It is also a fiction that black people are against owning guns. “According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of blacks now see gun ownership as a good thing, something more likely to protect than harm.”

    http://www.npr.org/2015/04/02/396869889/more-african-americans-support-carrying-legal-guns-for-self-defense

    The idea that most blacks who own guns are criminals is nonsense and a big part of the reason we have stop and frisk laws.

    The idea that people can’t be trusted with their own self-defense is why we can’t exit from the police-state/militarism loop.

  6. smrnda says

    “Looking at the behavior of the US government abroad and its police forces domestically anyone who isn’t paranoid or fearful of his rights is a damned fool. Violent crime is also a massive problem in many places in the US. Why is it okay to support the continued menace of increasingly fascist police thugs but the minute someone talks of self-defense, it is paranoia and vigilantism?”

    First, abuses of police power aren’t going to be solved by self-defense, since self-defense against the police has been criminalized. It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I would like to see some serious changes in the police.

    Second -- , you may wish to check some stats that violent crime isn’t at some kind of all time high. However, the rhetoric that crime is out of control is what fuels the militarization of our police, and this comes from the same people who have convinced people that they need to be armed at all times. It’s also fueled racist beliefs about minorities . Our prison populations has increased, though violent crime has not. Many high crime areas are high crime because of the war on drugs. People hear ‘crime has increased’ and ‘expanding prison population’ and ‘cops bust drug ring on south side’ and decide the police need more military hardware and they need more guns.

    Personally, I think demilitarizing the police and disarming ourselves is the same thing.

    I also don’t think ‘self-defense’ really works. Police are bad, but vigilantism isn’t any better.

  7. Sean (I am not an imposter) says

    First, abuses of police power aren’t going to be solved by self-defense,

    They are going to be solved by recognizing that the police are part of the problem not the solution and getting rid of them. That can happen when communities organize in their own self-defense. Studies have shown that crime drops dramtically in communities where citizens become active in their own policing. The nice thing is you don’t end up with 30,000 arrests a year for unpaid fines in a city with 22,000 people (see Ferguson).

    Second – , you may wish to check some stats that violent crime isn’t at some kind of all time high.

    I never said it was I said it was a massive problem, which it is. You act as if crime is something people read about in the papers, rather than a lived expereince. You cannot pretend that crime isn’t a major problem on the one hand and insist we still need the cops on the other. If crime is so low we don’t need self-defense, than we don’t need cops, either.

    Personally, I think demilitarizing the police and disarming ourselves is the same thing.

    Nothing empowers the police state more than removing the ability of citizens to resist it. The Second Amednment was added to the Consitutuion to give the citizens the ability to resist a corrupt and tyrannical government. We don’t just need weapons to defend ourselves against criminals and the cops, but against the state as well.

    I also don’t think ‘self-defense’ really works. Police are bad, but vigilantism isn’t any better.

    Self-defense isn’t vigilantism. When cops can choke a guy to death on national tv and still get away with it they are even less accountable than vigilantes.

    Studies have shown that firearms are used to prevent more than 2 million crimes every year. Self-defense works. I survived three murder attempts by the time I was 13 because self-defense works. You have to ignore the whole of human history and evolutionary biology to make such a bizarre claim as “self-desfense doesn’t work.”

    What doesn’t work is waiting there passiviely hoping a cop will come along and save you. Good luck with that. When I was 11 I got assaulted by a street gang that believed I had ratted them out to the cops. After being severely beaten while my brother was kept from intervening, the cops caught up with us on the way home and drove us to our house. During the ride, one of the cops turned around to be my brother and said “why don’t you do something about it?” like my 13-year-old brother was supposed to go back and take on a street gang by himself.

    This street gang used to hang out on the steps of a Catholic church and rob, harsss and beat Catholic school kids who passed by in broad daylight, and the cops did nothing about it even after my attack.

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