The term âpogromâ refers âto the deliberate persecution of an ethnic or religious group either approved or condoned by the local authorities.â It has traditionally applied to the government supported or sponsored violence against Jews under the Russian Empire in the late 19th- through early 20th-centuries C.E. that spread throughout the Russian âPale of Settlement,â which included the area of governmental confinement of Jews in Eastern Europe.
Pogroms can include blatant and sustained acts of violence, for example, like that depicted at Tzeitel and Perchikâs wedding reception in the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, and murders and sacking of Jewish stores and homes during the infamous Kristallnacht (âNight of Broken Glassâ) between 9â10 November 1938 in Germany.
The gun violence in individual and mass murders and injuries throughout the U.S. falls under the category of pogroms. The country suffers an estimated 11,000 gun-related murders annually and another 22,000 accidental and suicidal deaths. While not necessarily government sponsored, these acts of domestic terrorism, these pogroms, are certainly government condoned.
Each politician who accepts money (bribes) from the firearms lobbyists, most notably from the National Rifle Association, conspires in the spate of pogroms plaguing the nation. In rare occasions, some state and local legislatures have pass modest laws in their attempts to reduce gun violence, and the U.S. Congress, with the backing of the NRA, passed meager background checks legislation.
In the depths of these ever-increasing tragedies, however, the majority of legislators conspire with the gun lobbies who fire up their constituencies to a fever pitch to vote against any meaningful and comprehensive solutions to these pogroms.
Government-sponsored pogroms also include more subtle means to justify persecution of entire groups of people including the strategy of the propaganda of fear and agitation to sway public opinion. An historical example is the notorious Protocols (Minutes) of a Meeting of the Learned Elders of Zion.
The Protocols was a fabricated antisemitic narrative dating from 1903 that was widely distributed by Russian Czarist forces to turn public opinion against a so-called âJewish Marxist Revolutionâ for the purpose of convincing the populace that Jews were plotting to impose a conspiratorial international Jewish government.
It is composed of the alleged minutes of a late 19th-century meeting where Jewish leaders planned to subvert the minds, morals, and cultures of non-Jews by controlling politicians, the press, and world economies for world domination. The Protocols was translated into many languages and circulated throughout the world.
In fact, the raging antisemite, Henry Ford, the U.S. automotive pioneer, argued that Jews controlled world leaders, international finance, and the media. He had the Protocols translated into English in 1927, and published in his newspaper, The Dearborn (Michigan) Independent, thereby introducing it to a large U.S. audience.
Beginning in 1920, Ford chronicled what he considered the âJewish menaceâ in his paper. Every week for the next 91 issues, Ford exposed some sort of Jewish evil. The most popular and virulent of his articles he chose to reprint into four volumes titled The International Jew: The Worldâs Foremost Problem.
Adolph Hitler bestowed on Henry Ford the highest award given to a non-German, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938. Following WWII at the Nuremberg Trials, Baldur von Shirach, leader of Hitler Youth, stated that Hitler had become âJew-wiseâ by reading Henry Fordâs writings about the Jews.
Wayne LaPierre Jr., Executive VP of the National Rifle Association, as well as NRA spokesperson, Dana Loesch, spoke their brand of the propaganda of fear and agitation at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, Loesch indicted the media:
âMany in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it. Now Iâm not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you.â
Next, when it was LaPierreâs turn to rant at CPAC, he brought out every tired clichĂŠd buzzword in the ultra-conservativesâ perennially-referenced playbook to attack and demean individuals and institutions holding anything other than the NRAâs extremist positions on the Second Amendment.
Subsumed within his overarching nationalist theme of a âsocialist enemy,â which he claimed âoppose[s] our fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights,â he embedded an anti-intellectual subtext by going after higher education.
Taking words that could have come directly from the mouth of Senator Joseph McCarthy (and the pages of the Protocols), LaPierre argued that the Communist Manifesto and all the works of Karl Marx were among the most assigned curricular materials, and he described socialism as âa political disease,â to loud and boisterous cheers.
Warning the ballroom audience packed to overflowing: âYou should be anxious and you should be frightened. If these so-called European socialists take over the House and the Senate and, God forbid, they win the White House again, our American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever, and the first to go will be the Second Amendment to the US constitution.â
He accused âintellectual elites,â who think they are âsmarter and better,â and oppose âfree-market capitalismâ and ârestrict freedoms,â in their âutopian dreamâ in pushing their âterrifyingâ and âfreedom killingâ style of âEuropean-style Socialism.â
To entice the minions in ways outside of fear and agitation, literally thousands of businesses throughout the country offer NRA members special exclusive discounts ranging from around 5% to as high as 40%. The scope of businesses run from car dealerships, building supplies, firearms sales, and restaurants, to legal services, banks, home and office surveillance systems, and âAnti-aging Solutions,â and a seemingly unlimited more.
Recently, however, as challenges to the power of the NRA have increased through the youth organized #NeverAgain movement, some private companies have decided to suspend sponsorship of these discounts. Such companies include First National Bank of Omaha, and Enterprise Holdings, with its car rental subsidiaries Enterprise, Alamo, and National.
Gun violence plaguing the U.S. must not be dismissed as merely the actions of separated individual actors: the mentally ill, the disgruntled, the disposed, the marginalized, the ideological, the âbad guys.â
No, these actors play their roles in consort within a tightly-scripted narrative authored by the greedy, those scoring large profits and enormous degrees of power. Those of us who fail to stand up and interrupt the scene stand complicit in this fatal drama.
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