Originally published at: AOC doesn't let gun CEO play stupid about white supremacy tattoos in ads (video) | Boing Boing
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“Guns for nazis, made by nazis, and sold by nazis!”
Jesus shitballs, they’re not even pretending any more.
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Originally published at: AOC confronts a CEO over the white-supremacist iconography in his firearm companies advertisements | Boing Boing
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That is the problem with Viking iconography, it is used by more than just White Supremacists.
Even the Anti-Defamation League cautions “Nonracist pagans may also use this symbol, so one should carefully examine it in context rather than assume that a particular use of the symbol is racist.” Same with things like Thor’s Hammer, and I’d include other groups who use such imagery with out any association with white supremacy.
Still - best to not even risk any confusion in one’s advertising, and I have seen other things by Daniel Defense that were problematic.
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Once a symbol has been poisoned by hatred, there is no ‘reclaiming’ it:
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That is the problem with Viking iconography, it is used by more than just White Supremacists.
So, in the absence of further evidence, don’t assume that somebody with a Valknot is a white supremacist.
But images in marketing materials are very deliberate. Every detail is there for a reason. If a symbol currently popular with white supremacist groups is prominently displayed as a tattoo on different models in different advertisements, I think it’s reasonable to assume that they are designed to engage white supremacists.
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Leaving aside the racism for a moment, I had never heard of this company before (not that I would have, I’m not a gun nut), but they’re relatively young and small, compared to the big corporate players like Smith & Wesson. But just pulling a number from their Wikipedia entry really illustrates the gun problem in this country. In 2020, Daniel produced 53,000 firearms, which gave them a whopping 1% of the market share in the US. That means all the other manufacturers produced around 5,000,000 firearms in 2020, give or take. I’m not accounting for differences in costs of different firearms, so let’s be super generous and say 1,000,000 firearms were produced for the US market in 2020. Some of those don’t go to the general public, so let’s just say 500,000 firearms are added every year to the total of private firearm ownership in the US. Guns aren’t consumable. Well made ones I presume can last a lifetime or longer. Even shitty ones are good for a few years, I’d think. This illustrates the problem. If there are any common sense, reasonable restrictions put in place on private firearm ownership in the US, it means a significant loss of sales and profits for this industry, and they will fight tooth and nail and AR-15 to oppose that. I’ve heard there are something like 400 million firearms in private ownership in the US. There are 330 million people. I cannot fathom how this country can sustain this level of production of guns. Something has to give eventually. Someone please tell me I’ve completely mischaracterized the math here. This is depressing.
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And the context here is a company tailoring its advertising to a right-wing American audience, not a bunch of Viking cosplayers.
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As a pagan, I find your description of another group of pagans as “a bunch of Viking cosplayers” somewhat objectionable.
Please be better
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There are over a billion Hindus in the world that might dispute that statement. Context does matter.
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First response: “Is that our ad?”
When told it is and it can be confirmed he pretends he’s unfamiliar with it.
A CEO who’s dumb or plays dumb should not be in charge of a firearms manufacturer.
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Nope. Maybe we can use them as a bulwark against rising sea levels? Certainly, it’s that or we’ll be drowning in guns.
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Yes, it does. For instance in this context use of the swastika by Hindus in India, a symbol they did not reclaim from the Nazis, is completely irrelevant.
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LIBERALS ARE COMING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS
YOU NEED TO BUY MORE
YOU, PERSONALLY, NEED TO HOARD ENOUGH ASSAULT WEAPONS TO ARM AN ENTIRE MILITIA BY YOURSELF
AND THEN TWO MILITIAS
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I have mixed feelings on this topic. I can’t deny that a lot of white supremacist scum have adopted the symbols of Nordic culture, but I wear a Mjolnir pendant, and I have the Valknot and Vegvisir on various t-shirts I wear regularly. My grandfather was from Iceland, so they are part of my heritage, but he spent WW2 putting down Nazis, and would be disgusted by the sight of fascist wearing the symbols of his homeland, as am I. The swastika is irredeemably tainted, and it’s sad to see other meaningful symbols trod in the muck too.
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Not that you ever should arm a militia, of course. Those people should each buy their own guns. You simply should have enough that if there were ever a conflict, anyone who broke into your home could arm their own militia.
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Basically, they want you to be able to arm the libs, too, just to make the coming civil war sporting. /s
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I hope that it is not too late to restore these symbols to the cultures that birthed them. It really is a shame when symbols with real significance are coopted like this.
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Willful ignorance of a marketing campaign he likely approved at multiple points in its development, let alone how a prominent symbol is used by hate groups, is not an attractive quality in a CEO.
The corruption of the second amendment by weaponized (pun intended) and propagandized conservatives to massively overarm our population by selling us fear will not easily be undone. It’s going to take a lifetime to fix, and that assumes we get started now. Conservatives are simply too deep down a well of hate to listen. When children are literally being massacred for their “right” and they only shrug and buy more guns, we are a society that has become absolutely vile.
Well regulated. I’d like to add “heavily taxed, too.” Make the companies selling this violent poison to the world squeal.
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As others have pointed out context matters. If you’re specifically marketing to pagans, fine use dodgy pagan symbols.
If you’re selling guns, I don’t think pagans are your major marketing focus. And if they are your ads had better be damn specific.
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