BY Herschel Smith
8 years, 10 months ago
The New Yorker:
“ISIS was telling everyone, ‘We’re all brothers,’ ” Abu Malik said. “They let people smoke and drink. At the checkpoints, they distributed presents to the kids. They ate with people, drank tea with people. They were very nice—they didn’t bother anyone. Then, a week or so after they arrived, they started confiscating weapons. They told us it didn’t matter if we’d been with the Awakening or the Army or the police—if we gave up our weapons, we’d be forgiven. Ten days later, they started taking people. Everything changed. They took my cousin. My brothers dug holes in the fields and hid. I was at my house when they came for me. It was afternoon. I saw two Hyundai Santa Fes pull up outside, and I ran out the back and jumped over the wall. That was the last time I saw my family.”
Totalitarians of all stripes have one thing in common. The ordinary folk cannot have weapons. Weapons are a threat to the hierarchy of rule, a symbol of power and independence, an enabler of equality.
Whether European and American totalitarians or ISIS, guns have to go. Fascists are all the same everywhere, always, throughout history.
