A couple of days ago, I was browsing the DailyKos website, and I ran into a perfect example of a phenomenon I have been trying to articulate for a long time. Unfortunately, it involves Nazis.
The original post is about a recent ad by Joe the Plumber and quotes Joe saying, “In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917 one-point-five million Armenians, unable to defend themselves were exterminated … In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated.”
Here’s where I go out on a limb and confess my limitations. Because it’s Joe the Plumber, I was suspicious. The righter-than-right wing of the Republican Party has a particular knack for lunatic statements. But, honest to God, I can’t come up with a counter-argument that I’m satisfied with. I was pretty sure there was one – that JtP had left out some crucial details – but that’s not really good enough: “Oh, he’s wrong because I’m sure of it, but I can’t articulate why!” doesn’t pass the smell test.
Part of the problem is that I try to grasp the “almost” points made by people in arguments. Is JtP arguing a direct causal link or is he trying for something more nuanced in the limiting format of a 30-second ad? I usually try to take a step back and look at the more general case of the argument: Is he saying that people who are armed can resist on an individual level, thus tying up so much of a police-state government’s resources that it would be practically impossible to institute “round up the usual suspect” sorts of policies on the entire population?
I don’t know every single nuance of the Armenian or the Jewish holocausts, and the diary was quite short, so I went to the comments, mainly because I was dying to read the simple, elegant refutation of JtP’s thesis. Of 151 comments, only eight actually say anything about the issue raised. Most of the comments run to the following:
“Don’t know what to say but ‘wow.’” (Great. But why do you have nothing to say but wow?)
“As I understand Talmudic law, the ADL’s Abraham Foxman … is now required … to … kick him in the testicles.”
“I dare the people of this asshole’s district to vote for this lump of shit for brains.”
“Totally gross looking hands we have to look at for half the commercial. Same with his head. Looks like he’s got leprosy or some skin disease.”
“He doesn’t know jack shite about the Armenian or WWII or any other holocaust.”
“I couldn’t find the words to say this very thing. This cretin’s ignorance is staggering.”
The first comment to actually discuss the main point raised is number 44:
“Most of the Jews murdered by the Nazis did not even live in Germany. What do German gun control laws have to do with civilians in the Ukraine or Poland being machine gunned by Nazis?” There! There’s a starting point. A discussion can evolve from that. If JtP’s point is so risible, please, for the love of God, shoot it down. But no one does. The comments simply continue to be nothings.
Another comment (around number 80), says that “Nazi gun control was ineffective. Because of the many resistance movements throughout Europe. The nazis banned guns; it didn’t stop the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Nor the Warsaw uprising. Nor Tito’s partisans. Nor the other resistance movements in each and every country the nazis occupied. When people are truly desperate, they will always find a way to fight back.”
Again, something that adds to the discussion. But I kept thinking, “Doesn’t that sort of reinforce JtP’s point rather than negate it? The resistance movements used guns. That’s why they were considered resistant. If the Nazis, at the very beginning, had had to content with tens of thousands of Jews engaging in shootouts, would they ever have gotten out of Germany at all? Would the delay have given the rest of Europe’s Jews more warning or given the Germans a chance to wake up?”
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is the phenomenon I’ve been trying to put my finger on for years now. Someone on the Right makes a statement that many on the Left disagree with. Is there reasoned argument? No. Is there a simple, declarative explanation of the error? No. It’s just an instantaneous display of ad hominem atttacks, snark and whatnot, and the actual point being discussed falls by the wayside.
I still don’t know – precisely – what the error in JtP’s argument is. And I would really be grateful if someone could tell me.
20 Comments.
The main error in Mr. Wurzelbacher’s logic is that it is too simplistic: laws which controlled access to firearms for ‘enemies of the state’ were one of several ways in which the Nazi regime chipped away at the civil rights for the people they eventually ended up genociding. Ditto with Armenians in Turkey. Getting rid of rights to assemble and speak freely and being able to appear in public without being visually identified as a suspicious person? Mr. Wurzelbacher’s logic makes no reference to these dehumanizing steps, at all, even though those steps were also necessarily to create a culture toxic enough to genocide people.
Plus, the Nazis gun control law was in 1938, but that’s just being a stickler for accuracy.
Finally, the paranoid and/or dog-whistle argument that Mr. Wurzelbacher is making is that anyone who is pushing for gun control might just be trying to kill people later. Why not just come out and say it: Mr. Wurzelbacher is worried that the U.S. government will one day decide to genocide U.S. citizens. And he thinks that U.S. citizens will be able to hold back howitzers with … handguns?
I agree with you more people need to argue on point in comments everywhere instead of their meaningless knee-jerk groaning and such.
That being said I think the real issue with the Joe the plumber ad is that while evil dictators do pass laws about gun control, so do at least relatively decent societies. There just isn’t a direct correlation here.
Most of (modern) Europe, and many other places like (modern) Japan have gun control laws, and yet they are not out and about committing genocide as we speak.
Fascist states also crack down on petty crime, that doesn’t mean when a decent state decides to crack down on petty crime they are about to turn fascist and commit genocide. One can go through many such examples of actions and laws that Fascist and decent states may share, though may do for different reasons.
Hitler, Sultan Mehmed V, and hey even Stalin all had mustaches, so maybe if we just shaved people’s upper lip we could prevent genocide right? Its call a spurious correlation.
You can make the argument then when the US government decides to make a full force crack down on the populous (probably coming sooner then any of us would like to admit) that it would be useful to have guns then. However, I would argue that the weapons you are already limited to having, and have been for almost a century now, in the face of what the US army will be sporting to put you down (and the stuff that the pentagon is actively researching with your tax dollars to help suppress unruly populations) will make your armament, whatever they might be, as pea shooters. Enjoy using your pea shooter against a drone plane while it trades you bullets for napalm. There will be some small pleasure – the silver lining in the clouds if you will – in seeing the rise of violence in the coming dark age as all the violent rightest gun-nuts will move first with their weapons and get barbequed.
Oh, sorry, one last thing: the 1938 German Weapons Act actually made guns easier to own in Germany for the people whose rights it didn’t stomp on: it lengthened firearm permit times and it lowered the legal age for firearm ownership.
Exercising complete control over a group is a question of money: does the money you can extract exceed the cost of control?
In the 20th century, the British managed rebellious colonials by bombing them with poison gas, a cheap and effective way to completely eradicate a village that was costing the Empire more than it produced. The rebellious colonials had absolutely no weapons that could inflict any damage on the planes dropping the poison gas bombs. Had Britain not lost WWII and been forced to decolonise by the US and the USSR, the British Empire would still exist, and the colonials in the Raj still wouldn’t have a vote.
Had the Jews not complied with the Nazis when the Nazis demanded they hand over their guns, had they instead hoarded and hidden weapons, the Holocaust MIGHT have been too expensive. But that’s not at all clear. Had the German Jews been armed, there would have been no argument that the government did not have the right to kill them by whatever means necessary to quell the armed rebellion.
For the US, the overwhelming majority of citizens support the government and believe the US government has created a shining city on a hill, the best of all possible nations, a nation where the President works tirelessly to rid the world of evil, identifying the evil terrorists who would attack the US and sending the US military with all the various US armaments to kill them and keep Americans safe. And, under Obama, not a single innocent civilian has been killed by US forces: every man, woman, and child killed by US forces is a terrorist and a criminal combatant under US law by virtue of being killed by US forces.
If the US government decided to eradicate the tiny majority of malcontents who refuse to accept the shining city on a hill view of the US, and started by demanding that all those troublemaking seditionists hand over all their guns, those who refused would be eradicated quickly, while those who complied could be eradicated at the government’s leisure.
As in Nazi Germany, the vast majority who support the government are unlikely to be deprived of their arsenals, so they will be able to help the government keep the troublemakers under control.
For all the other nonsense he might have said, this time he’s right, you know it, but just can’t concede the douche’s point. Simple as that, hubris is the same from the ancient Greeks down to modern day NYC.
Well, the error that immediately springs to mind is “Correlation does not prove causation.” And he hasn’t even proved correlation yet- for all we know, he pulled those figures from the same place most Republicans get them- out of his ass.
I love this post, Ted. I never thought about the gun issue, but I have long been troubled by many of my fellow lefties adherence to illogical things like “organic food”, “mysticism”, “all natural”, “homeopathy”, “reiki”, etc… I have just come to the conclusion that most people don’t use reason and logic most of the time. And – that sucks for people like you and me.
I have a couple of shot guns in our house. They would be no defense against the Power of State. Depending upon the State they would just increase the level of violence people who resist. We have the example here in the US of Native Americans who resisted the encroachment and theft of their land by the Federal and Local Government.
The Organs of State Security will strike back with what ever level of force is required to preserve Status Quo.
There was the now almost forgotten CHICAGO MEMORIAL DAY MASSACRE of 1937. Jump ahead to the Chicago Police and the Democratic Convention of 1968.
We have the example of the Bull Connor’s during the Civil Rights era. We also see the example of the Black Uprisings or Riots as they were called in American Cities during the 1960’s. Years later we have Waco.
A few hand guns, rifles and shot guns are no effective defense against the Power of State.
Well, first thing to say is that clearly your comments section is much better than the average comments section, everyone is actually discussion the issue. Couple of thing – first, Whimsical is right, the simple way to point out what an idiot JtP is is to remind everyone that correlation is not causation. That still ignores the underlying issue, which I take as “is gun control one way the state uses to enforce it’s monopoly on power?” and I think clearly the answer is yes, any good Marxist would tell you the same. That said, the issue, as Flogger quite correctly points out, is one of firepower. Just how much good is a handgun going to do me as a Jew in Berlin in 1939? The best example in this country in recent times would be the Black Panthers, who not only saw guns as a way to protect themselves from the cops and the state in general, but were actually organized about it. They still got murdered by the state. Still, I can’t see how you could possibly have any sort of real revolution without some force, somehow, I mean look at the outcomes of all the “peaceful revolutions” which have happened in the last 20+ years.
The points are insane, yes.
Turkey imposed no gun control – that’s just ahistorical. What they mean, probably, is that when they were actually doing anti-Christian pogroms on the Armenians, they did go in and disarm them immediately beforehand. Not by law, by military force – and all of this was with World War I in the backdrop, and the Young Turks regarding Armenians as being a Fifth Column since Armenia was allied with their enemy, Russia.
As for Nazi Germany,. far from expanding on the Weimar Republic’s VERY strict gun laws – which were put in place by the Versailles Treaty and altered partly due to killings between factions like the Nazis and the communists – Hitler and his regime in their 1938 law EASED them – exempting rifles and shotguns and so on. In practice (“must be trustworthy”) selectively, yes, but that just speaks to universality – i.e. you shouldn’t have ethnic minorities having different rights. It does not speak to gun control laws. The Weimar Repubilc had treaty-mandated disarmament, and it turned it into a milder -than-mandated modern gun control regime of laws. And again, people were dying every day in armed clashes, in the cities.
But you Ted, are missing the meta-point here. This argument itself is an old Bircher trope. It’s been hauled out since the 1950s – it doesn’t cite facts, specifics, whatsoever – what laws, when. And it never has. It’s part of the old Bircher dogma – the same one that produced 70 or so communists in Eisenhower’s administration. It’s also the dogma that starts the Turner diaries . Since it’s been going on for 60+ years now, people are tired of refuting it. The burden of proof should be on the propagandist, not on us. Gun nuts are notorious liars, c.f. John Lott. They never make a sound or minimal case – they’re seemingly incapable of it. Our gun laws are like a weaker version of Weimar’s, not like the nonexistent gun control in Turkey and the poltically-and-ethnically selective law in Germany.
Also, there’s a very good, short answer to not-joe the not-plumber’s claim: Iraq had more personal weapons per household, yet Saddam Hussein easily ran a very rigid police state.
Marion, et al.,
Alex_the_Tired here. First, I just want to correct a misperception a few of you have: Ted didn’t write the original post on this, I did. I’m not saying that for credit or blame, I just don’t want Ted to be sitting at his computer saying to himself, “What are these people talking about? I didn’t post that.”
Second, I really want to thank everyone. Several of you made particularly clear statements shooting down JtP’s original post. Marion, specifically, hacked the legs right out from under JtP with four main points:
1. Clarification of what occurred in Turkey and Germany during the times mentioned.
2. Classifying the argument as a rehash of an older, much-discredited argument (Birch).
3. (And this is the one I’m smacking myself the hardest for) Pointing out that the ad in question offered no citations, no references, no nothing.
4. Pointing out that Iraq had more guns and was still oppressed.
The points raised in these 10 comments show a marvelous little guide for how to critically evaluate arguments. I am really, really grateful to everyone for responding (please, keep talking about this as much as you want!) with such uniformly well-constructed and simple (meaning “simple” as in “My God, anyone can understand that. How did I miss it?” not “simple” as in “Well, duh. Gosh are you dullards.”) arguments.
Kudos to everyone.
Marion’s comments are on point, but take a bit too long to read, in this age of sound bites. The correct response to ‘Joe the Plumber’s’ comment (which, as another poster noted, is merely a warmed-over 1950s Bircher argument) can be summed up in two words: False Equivalency.
The argument rests on the idea that guns in civilian hands = to guns in military hands. As Artiofab observed, this is absurd. Militaries have more guns, bigger guns, more training with those guns, more experience in using those guns. I’m opposed to gun control, and I own guns, but the above argument is an emotional and ridiculous statement, and does nothing to convince people who are opposed to gun ownership of anything except yhe idea that militant gun owners can’t reason.
Bruce,
I see what you’re saying, but the problem with the two-word rebuttal is that it’s too easy to rebut, as well, the adult version of the child’s “nuh-uh!” “Un-huh!” “No it isn’t!” “Oh, yes it is!” Like it or not, we’re stuck with having to use our words in larger-than-two groups. 😉
alex_the_tired: I’m sorry, but I’m going to resort to “two words” – you rock.
You guys continue to miss the point. Yes, it is possible , through great effort, luck, and skill to win a revolution without guns. However, it is obvious that through the use of guns you can increase pressure on the Government to change.
More important to the Gun debate for me though is this: If you are arguing that the majority of American Citizens cannot be trusted with Guns, the whole concept of Democracy is dead. You are saying the citizens of this country are too violent and unpredictable to own guns, but should be making decisions for the county through voting? Right. It’s closely related to the prison population, estimates say that within my life time there will be more people that have been to prison than those that have not…. Again, perhaps the laws aren’t benefiting the people if the majority of the people are considered law breakers. The Symbolism of taking a populations guns is huge, you are saying the Government cannot trust there people.
@patron
The citizens of this country are too violent to be trusted with weapons designed for ending lives, but should make decisions for the country through collaborative, nonviolent means? Yes, I think so.
Another point: gun “control” does not mean gun confiscation.
Personally, I think guns should be controlled much like cars are. Cars have an identification number, are registered, and demonstration of competency is required to get a license to use one.
I have no problem with the registration for guns, and proof of competency. As for the argument that voters make non-violent decisions? That is just silly, we as Americans voted for Bush and Obama, both war mongering murderers…. Why is it okay for us the wield and use the ability to kill random people in other nations but not in our own?
Good arguments here on the part of posters like artiofab, someone, michaelwme, Marion Delgado, et al. Yes, Mao Zedong was indeed correct when he pointed out that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun ; he was speaking from bitter experience of the counter-revolutionary coup of 1925, when after striking workers had delivered the city of Shanghai to the forces of the Northern Expeditionary Army commanded by Jiang Jieshi (Cantonese prounciation : Chiang Kai Shek), the latter made a deal with the capitalists and turned his guns on the workers. But this doesn’t mean that everybody having a handgun or a rifle or even an assault rifle in the house can lead to an effective armed resistance to government tyranny ; in the United States, at least, these weapons seem to serve mainly for people to kill each other and often themselves. What would represent a danger to the state is an organised and well-supplied armed force, such as those the US government backs with training, information, and not least, arms when it decides that some country or another is in need of «regime change» ; for this very reason, armed militias of which the government is not in control – either overtly, as in the case of the National Guard, or covertly, through infiltration, as in the case of certain organisations that like to play at wartime scenarios in the woods – are immediately smacked down by means of superior government firepower. Not all of that well over one million million USD that the US government annually devotes to military- related expenditures is used to kill people abroad ; a substantial proportion is set aside for keeping an eye on those who might cause trouble at home. But talk about preserving one’s freedom via a home arsenal does make a welcome diversion from the vital question of in whose interests the government is being run….
Henri
PS : Ted, you asked a question and have received many serious responses on this thread. After having read them, what’s your take now on Mr Wurselbacher’s claims ?…
Democracy is dead, and American citizens cannot be trusted to govern themselves responsibly. Guns are just a side issue.