Article: The NRA is So Against White Hate It Keeps Ted Nugent on its Board

Chicago

Musician Ted Nugent has directed verbal violence against women, foreigners, immigrants, African-Americans and many elected officials. He was banned from performing at Fort Knox in Kentucky in 2012 and ousted from Greg Abbott's campaign for Texas governor for anti-Obama vitriol like calling the President a "subhuman mongrel" and "a piece of sh-t" who should "suck on my machine gun." Nice.

After the death of Trayvon Martin Nugent said the teen "got justice" and that Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, should file a lawsuit to hold Martin's parents "liable for the emotional pain and suffering Mr. Zimmerman has been put through for the past 18 months."

Yet the NRA retains him as a board member and has not even disavowed his rhetoric.

Ted Nugent has been an NRA board member for 20 years
(Image by public domain) Details DMCA

As police search for the white gunman who killed six women and three men including the church's pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney yesterday at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, it is apparent that there is a huge overlap between gun rights advocates and white supremacist gun rights advocates.

It has barely been a year since KKK leader Frazier Glenn Miller was accused of killing three outside two Jewish Community Centers in Kansas the day before Passover. Among Miller's racist writings was his contention that the white race is "drowning literally in seas of colored mongrels." David Duke, one of the nation's best known Ku Klux Klan leaders is a big fan of the NRA, lauding Wayne LaPierre's "new rallying cry to spotlight the importance of every American's right to keep and bear arms," on his website and quoting a LaPierre speech.

Three years ago, white supremacist Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people and wounded four at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page was a musician who played in white power bands including End Apathy and Definite Hate.

Here in Chicago in 1999, white supremacist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith went on a racist shooting rampage killing any non-Aryan he could find. He shot and killed Northwestern University Men's Basketball Coach Ricky Byrdsong, an African-American, and Won-Joon Yoon, a Korean computer science doctoral student. He also wounded nine Orthodox Jews and an African-American minister. The hate spree spawned an annual community event called the Ricky Byrdsong Memorial Race Against Hate, which occurs in a few days.

With so many racist murderers embracing gun rights, the NRA has neither disavowed its hate group followers or its racist board member.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, an umbrella group which includes 47 other organizations, has asked the NRA to remove Nugent from its board. "The NRA likes to bill itself as the 'oldest civil rights organization in the United States," said its petition. "If they want to wear that mantle it's time for them to walk the walk and end their relationship with Ted Nugent immediately."

Why does the NRA retain its racist-in-chief? Because Nugent is a master at the "oppressed white race" rhetoric that fuels the gun rights movement by telling its member they are victims. Like most bullies, gun rights advocates and especially white supremacist gun rights advocates think they are "persecuted." Or to use Nugent's own words "I'm like a black Jew in Nuremberg 1938 and the brownshirts can't stand me"; "I'm Rosa Parks with a Gibson."

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).