Welcome to the Party, NRA!

The greatest Christmas movie in American history is Die Hard. In one of the most memorable scenes, John McClane watches with frustration as Officer Al Powell is misled into thinking there is no problem at an office building, where there has actually been a deadly hostage-taking. Before the complacent officer can drive away, our hero throws a corpse from a window onto the policeman’s car, then opens fire with an automatic weapon. As Officer Powell drives away screaming into his radio for backup, John McClane, his objective of attracting police attention achieved, cries triumphantly, “Welcome to the party, pal!”

White advocates may feel the same way about the current situation facing the National Rifle Association. Since the election of President Donald Trump, journalists, tech companies, and financial institutions have deplatformed white advocates on the pretext that they are “fighting hate.” There is a campaign to try to strip nonprofit status from dissident organizations such as New Century Foundation and VDARE Foundation. Internet companies are stopping racially aware whites from sharing their message through restrictive policies that are motivated by ideology. Reporters are leading pressure campaigns against advertisers in what is thinly disguised as “journalism.”

Gays Against Guns organized a rally and march in response to the Las Vegas massacre. (Credit Image: © Erik Mcgregor/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire)

President Trump, and conservatives generally, have rewarded corporate America with a tax cut but remain largely silent about efforts to muzzle the people who were an important part of the GOP’s winning 2016 coalition. Indeed, conservative movement functionaries may be quietly grateful their Identitarian rivals are being deplatformed. The history of the conservative movement is largely one of “purges,” particularly of those who come too close to expressing awareness of racial realities. The conservative movement must remain “respectable,” after all.

The Alt-Right has long been identified by Beltway conservatives as the most important target to be silenced. Much of their initial opposition to Donald Trump was driven by their belief he would energize what Ben Domenech called “hollow, Euro-style identity politics” in National Review’s “Against Trump” symposium. One of the other contributors to that compilation was Dana Loesch, who is now a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association. Mrs. Loesch may have recently muted her opposition to now-President Trump, but still denounces “identity politics.” In August 2017, she proclaimed on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, that the “Alt-Right is antithetical to conservatism.” This was perhaps motivated by the incredible accusation by a writer in the Huffington Post the month before that The Blaze itself was an “alt-right outlet,” with Mrs. Loesch responsible for pushing a “civil war.”

Whatever her denunciations of “identity politics,” Mrs. Loesch is now the target of a coordinated media offensive as she has becoming the most prominent voice in defense of gun rights following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. She’s also being specifically targeted by David Hogg, the Parkland shooting survivor who has been appointed an unchallengeable spokesman for gun control by the mainstream media. Mrs. Loesch is also on the receiving end of wild ad hominem attacks which should be familiar to white advocates. For example, Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, said she “loves watching Americans die.” One is reminded of white advocates accused of being driven purely by “hate” of other people “for no other reason than the color of their skin.”

The campaign is especially remarkable because of how some schoolmates of the victims are clearly being treated as more equal than others. Kyle Kashuv, a student at Parkland who survived the shooting, has called for Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel to resign.  The father of one of the students who was actually killed in the attack also referred to the deputy who did not enter the school during the shooting as a “coward.” However, David Hogg condemned Republicans who made similar criticisms. Amazingly, he didn’t even criticize Sheriff Israel or the deputies whose job it was to protect the students, instead suggesting responsibility should be pinned on Republican Governor Rick Scott. Again, white advocates may be reminded of how the media forces a narrative, such as demanding a national conversation about police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri, or Baltimore, Maryland, even when the specific facts contradict the claims of most journalists. The NRA is even accused of being a “terrorist group” by some leftists, notably the excitable black columnist Michael Harriot. These wild accusations should also be familiar.

July 14, 2017 – Hundreds protested at the National Rifle Association in Fairfax, Virginia. (Credit Image: © Michael Nigro/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire)

More importantly, the most effective tactic the gun control campaign is utilizing against the National Rifle Association should be very familiar to white advocates. An initial effort to ban so-called “assault weapons” in Florida through legislative action failed immediately. But gun control advocates are meeting more success in pressuring corporations to cut ties with the National Rifle Association and end discounts once offered to the organization’s millions of members. This economic blackmail attempt is aided by mainstream media cheerleading and signal boosting. Those companies which do not immediately buckle to the pressure are targeted with a boycott, or, more precisely, with mainstream media outlets promoting a boycott.

There is also a deliberate effort to deplatform the National Riffle Association by pressuring Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Roku, AT&T and other companies to stop carrying NRATV. The New York Times is even discussing ways banks could make it harder for gun companies to conduct their business. If that gentle suggestion fails, Think Progress has provided a helpful list of the banks which, in their words, are “bankrolling mass shootings.”

Since conservatives did very little to defend groups such as the New Century Foundation and the VDARE Foundation from being deplatformed online, it’s not surprising progressives are using the same tactics of pressuring corporations fearful of guilt by association. The NRA may even be forced to move its convention, if an effort underway in Dallas gains momentum, similar to how American Renaissance was forced to seek public accommodations in order to host its annual conference.

Additionally, while the likes of Mrs. Loesch would never admit it, the battle over gun rights is also an exercise in identity politics, at least to the Left. The Atlantic published several letters from readers (none of whom support the Second Amendment) linking gun ownership to “white male privilege” or “white insecurity.” “America doesn’t have a gun control problem, we have a white-people problem,” declares Damon Young in The Root. It’s more accurate to say those who wish to abolish the Second Amendment have a white people problem. In 2015, Dara Lind at Vox noted that gun owners in America are mostly white men, and whites are less likely than blacks or Hispanics to say they would be “uncomfortable” with a gun in the household. In other words, as America becomes a majority non-white country, the Second Amendment will likely be whittled away because the new races occupying American territory have a far weaker cultural tradition of self-government and responsible gun ownership.

On this level, the debate over the Second Amendment has always been a racial issue. It, like every other issue, will ultimately be determined by racial demographics. Gun rights advocates have had no more problem ignoring this than has the conservative movement in general. But now gun rights activists are getting a taste of the treatment white advocates receive, with their support for the Second Amendment now being held akin to a moral failing.

The NRA will not be able to make a separate peace with the media and the Left. However much Mrs. Loesch may believe (or claims to believe) otherwise, her position is no different than that of white advocates in the long run. As many white advocates have always maintained, the mainstream media and the hard Left may begin with censorship, threats, and economic blackmail against us — but it won’t stop with us. The sooner the NRA realizes that and acts accordingly, the better chance they have of surviving.