Redneck Revolt

Redneck Revolt was founded in 2009, In the early 2000s, John Brown Gun Club members operated anti-racist stalls at gun shows in Kansas. The John Brown Gun Club sought to "demystify" firearms and to distinguish their commitment to community self-defense from clandestine groups that advocated guerrilla warfare. Its first major mobilization was a protest against the 2005 national conference of the Minuteman Project. Following a hiatus, the group was re-formed as a national organization in summer 2016, using both the Redneck Revolt and John Brown Gun Club names, A member has said that the group tries "to acknowledge the ways we've made mistakes and bought into white supremacy and capitalism, but also give ourselves an environment in which it's OK to celebrate redneck culture". the Deacons for Defense and Justice and the Rainbow Coalition, an alliance formed in Chicago in the 1960s between the Black Panther Party, Young Lords and the Young Patriots. The group sees itself as part of a tradition of white working-class "rebellion against tyranny and oppression". == Views ==

}} Redneck Revolt was an anti-capitalist, anti-racist that used direct action tactics. In September 2017, a member said: "It's not about seizing the gun culture or becoming obsessed about guns. It's only recognizing it's useful to know how to field strip and clean a rifle as much as it is to know how to fix wiring in your house and use a circular saw". The increased visibility of Redneck Revolt in 2017 sparked debate among activists over the effects of armed protest and the possibility that the use of guns may lead to heightened violence. In May 2017, a member said that Redneck Revolt had reached out to groups such as the 3 Percenters, a predominantly right-wing group, with whom they have some common ground. The practice of openly carrying firearms and a shared interest in guns has led to dialogs with right-wing militias. Van Sant wrote in March 2018 that "[t]hrough patient dialogue and popular education, several Redneck Revolt chapters have been able to challenge the white nationalist ideologies of these right-wing libertarian militias and flip them away from anti-immigrant and pro-capitalist positions". The group argued that the white working-class have more in common with working-class people of color than with the wealthy. Dave Strano, a former founding member, argued: The history of the white working class has been a history of being an exploited people. However, we've been an exploited people that further exploits other exploited people. While we've been living in tenements and slums for centuries, we've also been used by the rich to attack our neighbors, coworkers, and friends of different colors, religions and nationalities. == Activities ==

Redneck Revolt was a national network. but in December 2017, the group had around 45 such local chapters across more than 30 U.S. states. The group's membership grew during the 2016 presidential election food and clothing programs Silver Valley Redneck Revolt, a local chapter, organized a counter-demonstration against a Ku Klux Klan rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, in May 2017. In a Facebook post, the group said: "We need to let the Klan know that if they leave their enclaves there will be a broad response from the community. ... This event is to publicly denounce the Klan, their beliefs, and show that we will not back down". A local chapter of Redneck Revolt was part of a counter-protest against a June 2017 rally in support of Trump in Portland, Oregon. Also in June, members were part of a protest against the Christian conservative organization Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which coincided with a speech by Mike Pence to celebrate the group's fortieth anniversary. On June 23, armed members of Redneck Revolt attended a protest in Kalkaska, Michigan, in response to anti-Muslim comments made by Jeff Sieting, the village president. Members carried a banner in support of Muslims and said they were there to protect the protesters from counter-protesters supporting Sieting. In August 2017, members participated in protests against Trump's speech in Phoenix, Arizona. In February 2018, Dwayne E. Dixon, a member of Redneck Revolt and a teaching assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was found not guilty of misdemeanour gun charges for his role in a protest against a Ku Klux Klan event in Durham, North Carolina, the previous August. In September 2017, Redneck Revolt supported the Juggalo March on Washington, a protest by juggalos against their designation as a gang. Redneck Revolt's statement said the march aligned with their "belief in the right to community self-determination and self-defense". In October 2017, a branch of Redneck Revolt in Suffolk County, New York, was involved in organizing a candlelight vigil for people suffering from opioid addiction and families affected by the opioid epidemic. Unite the Right rally At the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11–12, 2017, several Redneck Revolt chapters provided armed security and medical assistance for counter-protesters. Days later, members provided security at a "Hate Is Not Welcome in Lane County" march in Eugene, Oregon, in response to the events in Charlottesville. In October 2017, Redneck Revolt was one of a number of groups named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed on behalf of the city of Charlottesville and several Charlottesville-based businesses and neighborhood associations which sought to prohibit militia and paramilitary activity in Virginia. The groups and individuals named as defendants which also included the white supremacist Jason Kessler were accused of unlawful paramilitary activity, falsely assuming the role of law enforcement officers and being a public nuisance. They argued: "There is a marked difference between the armed white supremacist groups who invaded Charlottesville with the intent to do harm and the armed anti-racist groups who came to Charlottesville to assist in supporting and protecting our most marginalized communities". The consent decree prohibits members from returning to Charlottesville "as part of a unit of two or more persons acting in concert while armed with a firearm, weapon, shield or any item whose purpose is to inflict bodily harm, at any demonstration, rally, protest or march". Redneck Revolt issued a statement saying that it had chosen to end the lawsuit and to "focus our energies on the many important fights ahead". == Significance ==

In September 2017, the historian Noel Ignatiev expressed concern regarding Redneck Revolt's commitment to "defense of our communities". Ignatiev argued that "in this society those who share our material conditions, our neighbors, our family members, our friends, the people working alongside us, usually reflect which race they (and we) are assigned to" and contended that "[t]he goal is not to defend the white community but to abolish it, and along with it all communities defined by racial preference or oppression". He also criticised the group for failing to challenge "institutions that reproduce white supremacy—neither the criminal justice system, nor the schools, nor employment discrimination, nor real estate lending and renting policies" and concluded that "white people organized as whites are dangerous to the working class and to humanity, and white people with guns organized as whites are doubly so—and this is true regardless of the intentions of the organizers". Gabriel Kuhn responded to Ignatiev in a 2018 article. Kuhn argued that "organizations with the aim to primarily mobilize and organize among the white working class ... are mandatory if we don't want to simply abandon this part of the population and hand it to the right on a silver platter". In March 2018, the geographer Levi van Sant argued: [T]he Redneck Revolt model of Libertarian Socialism reveals important things, and should be an important part of the U.S. Left. Of particular importance was their Gramscian effort to read for the 'good sense in the common sense' of right-wing populism through radical and grassroots engagement. Van Sant has also identified three lessons that Redneck Revolt offers to the American left, namely that working-class white people "are not inherently conservative"; that the group's success was drawn from their critique of modern American liberalism, including on firearms issues; and that they do not employ the rhetoric of white privilege, diversity or inclusion, but instead "position themselves as part of working class and white rural communities" and "act in solidarity with oppressed peoples". Van Sant concluded that "[t]he case of Redneck Revolt suggests there are promising alternatives to Trumpism emanating from the U.S. countryside too often ignored by the U.S. left". In 2019 the sociologist Teal Rothschild wrote that "Redneck Revolt brings venerable activist traditions to bear on very contemporary issues, including 21st century identity politics." Rothschild argued that while Redneck Revolt members see both anti-racism and bearing arms as part of a strategy of aiding marginalized people, media representations tend to depict them "as an oxymoron—as if gun carrying and anti-racism are not two positions, but two opposing poles." Rothschild noted that "contemporary social movement studies have begun to center groups that span multiple identities and causes, and movements like Redneck Revolt suggest exactly why that matters. ... [Redneck Revolt] reminds us of the capacity for a single organization to hold a multiplicity of meanings, aims, and practices." == See also ==