State of Emergency: VA Governor and Leftist Media Portray Peaceful Self-Defense Advocates As Racist Threats
P. Gardner Goldsmith , @gardgoldsmith
The lead-up to Virginia’s annual rally for the right to keep and bear arms – to be held, as always, on MLK Day (Jan 20) as part of the traditional state “Lobby Day” — reveals explosive, utterly essential differences between those who breathe the noxious swamp vapors of leftist political propaganda and those who seek the atmosphere of truth.
We knew many in the pop media and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam would not relent in their unfair and malicious characterizations of Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) gun rights supporters and their peaceful friends. We knew that slurs about “racism,” “white supremacy,” “militarism,” “far-rightism,” and many more not only would be employed like ordnance fired at the Colonials at Lexington Bridge and Concord Green, but that the left would increase their invective, continue the mantra and amplify it. They have to, because they need to continue to push the unfair, unfounded, broad-brush fiction that thousands of Virginians and their friends from all over the nation who plan to attend the rally are the “aggressors” and “threat” to the peaceful people of the left who are pushing “reasonable gun control measures.”
This is evil.
It’s happening, and the pop media seems to expect that its audience is so bereft of any fundamental awareness of natural rights, the U.S. Constitution, events leading up to this rally, or the public pronouncements of those organizing it, that they’ll lap up the propaganda.
Among the major culprits assisting left-wing Man-Of-A-Thousand-Faces Governor Ralph Northam in his mission to infringe on rights, threaten peaceful rally planners and depict those folks as aggressors have been… CNN and NBC.
As Curtis Houck reported for NewsBusters: while CNN’s Brooke Baldwin “covered” Ralph Northam’s announcement of a “State Of Emergency” from January 17-21 on the grounds of the VA Capitol in Richmond, she embarked on a long pantomime supporting his unsupported claims of “intelligence” and “credible, serious threats” that the rally organizers were organizing for a violent invasion of the Capitol.
Her first step was to assiduously avoid the real reason for the rally: that being peaceful support of the right to keep and bear arms and opposition to unconstitutional government attacks on it proposed and, in some cases, passed, in the VA Legislature.
Instead, she proceeded to lend a patina of aggression and racism to the rally, saying:
Breaking news. This massive gun rally coming to the Virginia State Capitol has ignited a temporary State of emergency. Democratic Governor Ralph Northam just announced a temporary ban on firearms on the grounds of the state capitol. Jason Carroll is our National Correspondent. (To Jason) and so, this is all about MLK Day…
Which is incorrect on virtually every front. Working backwards, the rally is not “about MLK Day.” It merely falls on MLK Day because that’s the day the government has selected to shut down while allowing citizens to “lobby” legislators who travel to the building to hear them. That’s why, Brooke, it’s called “LOBBY DAY.”
That should be enough for any respectable news editor to reprimand her for misreporting. But, of course, it promotes the myth that gun rights activists must be racist white supremacists. It reinforces precisely the unfair and incorrect image the left MUST promote in order to turn attention away from Northam, the man who is really advocating aggression when it comes to “gun control” statutes.
But it’s just part of the problem for this highly-paid propaganda parrot. Baldwin also engages in what appears to be an intentional misplacement of cause and effect.
The “massive gun rally” did not “ignite” a “state of emergency.” Governor Northam ignited the “state of emergency,” unethically and unconstitutionally announced a threat of armed force against civilians carrying firearms, and announced a suppression of their freedom to assemble by closing off large sections of Richmond around the Capitol Building.
The facility and ease with which Baldwin employed the innocuous-sounding “temporary” as a qualifier before “ban” is merely an indication of the way she — and, perhaps, others at CNN – might think they can assuage people and make Northam’s unscrupulous, tyrannical, immoral and blatantly unconstitutional act seem like nothing special, just an everyday, “sensible” move that’ll be over real soon.
Meanwhile, Northam’s malicious mischaracterization of the peacefully-minded rally organizers from the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) and their friends from around America is repeated, perpetuated, and amplified.
In fact, CNN’s Jason Carroll made sure to emphasize that Northam claimed (without providing evidence):
This is based on what he called ‘credible, serious threats’, coming from ‘hate groups’ from outside the state, coming from militia groups (ye GODS!)…
Then Carroll helped Northam by repeating Northam’s attempt to connect the upcoming Lobby Day rally for self-defense to the Charlottesville, VA, conflict between some Antifa members and some right-wing agitators at the August 12, 2017, protest over removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee – a conflict that saw a rightist strike and kill a leftist with his car.
It does not diminish the death, nor does it absolve the killer, to note that for months prior to this incident, leftist and rightists had clashed, and that for the first few weeks of the violence, beginning with a leftist attack on peaceful attendees of a Milo Yiannopoulos that injured four, leftists initiated the attacks. But this fact is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the ongoing attempt to portray conservatives or libertarians as aggressive, racist, misogynistic, and threatening. Cultural Marxism requires a constant “David versus Goliath” portrayal of the leftist group (any group that can promote the growth of the state) as the saintly “little guy” and those who might stand for natural individual rights as the evil “giant” engaging in threats.
Hence Carroll’s repeat of Northam’s key use of the descriptor “coming from outside state,” a rhetorical device used to appeal to nativists, portray the rally members (most of whom are Virginians) as “invaders,” and make it seem as if Northam is simply trying to protect “his” people from some outside source that has ginned-up antagonistic militants to threaten the oh-so-peaceful legislators of Virginia.
This is what Jon Shuppe did for NBC, as well.
Although Shuppe did a better job actually covering the specifics of Northam’s inflammatory press conference, he not only did not ask fundamental questions about Northam’s lack of real citations and his lack of any backup from an FBI agent who might explain the supposed “out-of-state” threats, he depicted the state Democrat victories in November as the catalyst for the anxiety and opposition of the rally organizers, when, in fact, for months the incoming Democrats have pre-filed more than 70 bills that attack the fundamental right to keep and bear arms.
No. Instead, Shuppe offered this mental-floss:
But in (sic) November’s elections, in which Democrats took control of both chambers of the statehouse after campaigning on gun control, has changed the dynamic of this year’s event.
Perhaps he was in so busy helping the Governor, he couldn’t phrase that properly or get more facts into his piece.
And Shuppe even slanted the “article” to make it seem as if the opposition to this tsunami of anti-rights bills has been some kind of synthetic creation, or a ploy, created by “gun rights groups” rather than a spontaneous, massive, populist groundswell from Virginians, many of whom have already attended county meetings to request the areas claim themselves “Second Amendment Sanctuaries”:
Gun rights groups have used the developments to stir opposition.
Really? Is it more of the “David v. Goliath” rhetoric, Mr. Shuppe?
How about reporting this based on simple facts?
Fact. Possession of an item is not an aggressive act.
Fact. Possession does not connote intent.
Fact. Even if one were to believe it did, firearms are used more often to stop aggressive crime than to engage in aggressive crime.
Fact. The only way to enforce any and all gun “control” laws is through the eventual employment of armed agents of the state. This is a threat of gun violence against peacefully-minded people.
Which is precisely what Governor Northam engaged in by calling for his unconstitutional “temporary” ban on guns.
The final facts are these: So far, the only person actually shown by any official or reporter to have engaged in “credible” threats of violence is Governor Ralph Northam. This is indisputable.
No amount of pop media coverage will hide this reality, nor the fact that Northam’s warning about “hate groups” seems rather ironic coming from a guy who got in trouble for appearing in a racist yearbook photo.
And, finally, no amount of media fakery or political propaganda can hide one final truth. It is the truth that every human being has, at all times, an inherent right to keep and bear arms.
Period.
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