[dark_crystal]

Small local controversy here in Houston following the debate-- Beto rented a craft brewery for a rally and that brewery was in the suburb of Katy, where there are a lot of Republicans.

The brewery posted a statement on their facebook page which said "the brewery can be rented by anyone."

I went to the post and the comments were MESSED UP, many of them along the lines of this one:

"the issue with Beto in particular is he's advocating a policy, which if implemented, would result in massive massive violence. If No Label is going to enforce this [rental] policy blindly, then i presume they won't turn away the klan or black lives matter or antifa... as long as they're not violent inside the brewery"

Coupla things: i see here the seeds of a rhetoric which would label anyone who wants any kind of ban as a terrorist (by claiming that Beto is advocating for "massive massive violence") and also holds up Black Lives Matter as basically the POC equivalent of the Klan.

There were several comments that used that comparison, each time joining the Klan to Black Lives Matter-- an organization which was born in response to white supremacist violence is now cast as the equivalent to the original embodiment of white supremacist violence, and can thus be used to excuse the Klan's continued existence.

If this is a preview of the rhetoric that is going to be deployed around anyone who supports a ban on assault weapons, it is very insidious.

Basically what it looks like to me is the real domestic terrorists trying to broaden the definition of terrorism so that it splashes over onto those trying to fight domestic terrorism.

In the same way that Obama was "the real racist," gun control activists will be labeled as "the real terrorists."

Beto is not advocating violence, he is advocating a policy to which the right has declared they will respond with violence. By continuing to advocate for a ban in light of this threat, Beto therefore becomes responsible for the illegal violence the right has promised-- it is out of their hands!

In the same way, the right claims racism was "fixed" until Obama supposedly brought it back with his "divisiveness". If it was really fixed, electing a POC would have been a non-event. Since it was most emphatically NOT a non-event, and instead caused the white folks to lose their minds, the white people made their reaction Obama's fault.

The white folks' message is "we are violent, and if you do not let the threat of that violence silence you, you are inviting that violence and therefore our violence is your fault"