Ohio National Guard Practices Destroying America, Slaughtering Patriots, Implementing Obamacare

Time for another rightwing freakout over Obama's private army coming to take your guns and freedom and maybe marry your daughter off to a Muslim whilst they're at it. Turns out that in January 2013, the Ohio National Guard's 52nd Civil Support Team did a counterterrorism training exercise that simulated this completely impossible scenario:

The make-believe scenario is timely. Two school employees who are disgruntled over the government's interpretation of the Second Amendment, plot to use chemical, biological and radiological agents against members of the local community.

The very idea that the National Guard might play out such an unthinkable scenario, which has   no   precedents   in   real   life, has a lot of rightwing gun-fondlers worried. Doesn't the Ohio National Guard know that only Muslims, environmentalists, and gun-grabbers like the disloyal Kenyan Usurper in OUR White House ever engage in terror?

 The butthurt is pretty intense, because of course when the National Guard makes up a fictional training scenario in which fictional bad guys are described as "anti-government" and advocates of "Gun Rights and Second Amendment rights," then the only logical conclusion is that Obama is planning to take everyone's guns and training the Guard to shoot patriots. Never mind that the 52nd Civil Support Team wasn't practicing shooting down civilians at all -- Civil Support Teams are non-combat groups that focus on helping civilian agencies respond to nuclear/chemical/biological weapons. But it sounds so much scarier to say that the National Guard is training to do war on all conservatives.

MediaTrackers, the blog that broke the story, also mentions -- without much emphasis -- that the fictional right-wing terrorists were affiliated with William Pierce, the very real neo-Nazi leader who wrote The Turner Diaries. The blog notes that when a similar drill in late 2013 was based on an attack by imaginary radical environmentalists, the Guard apologized to environmental groups that were offended. BUT, says MediaTrackers,

No apology to Ohioans who support limited government and the Second Amendment appears to be forthcoming.

See, we might go so far as to think that the Ohio National Guard is wondering why the average gun owner would read a description of fictitious violent neo-Nazi terrorists and say, "Hey, they're targeting ME!"

Of course, William Pierce was quite careful to tailor The Turner Diaries to exploit gun fondlers' paranoia. The novel starts out as a gun-lover's dystopia, in an America where all firearms have been confiscated, crime is out of control, and a few brave lovers of the Constitution have hidden their own guns. While it's racist as all fuck right from the get-go -- in the first chapter, the gun ban is named the "Cohen Act" and hero Earl Turner has his home raided by big mean black guys on who are muscular but not very smart -- the early going is mostly gun paranoia porn, with patriots versus the System and guns being seized based on government registration lists. The overt race war theme only gets rolling after it's been well established that without guns, there's no more freedom. And the novel is still marketed with the tag line, "What will you do when they come to take away your guns?"

In any case, the news of the Ohio National Guard exercise has been all over the wingosphere , with blog after blog saying not that the fictional bad guys were neo-nazis, but that the Guard was "training to fight 2nd Amendment supporters." We did find at least one pro-gun blog, BearingArms.com, that described the Media Trackers piece as "dishonest" and noted that the main goal of the exercise was to deal with a multi-threat crisis, while the motives of the fictional "terrorists" were

"incidental 'color', and hardly anything to get worked up about, especially considering the fact they used a left-wing group as their culprits in the prior year’s drill."

Of course, blogger Bob Owens' readers, having read the freakout blogs, were quick to correct him, warning that "You train soldiers for the actions you plan to take. They are training soldiers to kill 2nd amendment supporters" and so on. Kudos to Owens for patiently pointing out that the exercise actually involved "diagnosing a chemical/biological attack site and sealing the scene for decontamination" and for saying "Media Trackers was very dishonest in their article." Of course, now some of his commenters are convinced he's been paid off by George Soros or Obama or something (same thing).

In any case, as everyone on the right knows, there are no violent rightwing groups; all terrorism is done by Muslims and by their friends the liberals, because William Ayers, the Animal Liberation Front, Earth First, and those anarchists who tried but failed to recruit members of Occupy Cleveland to help them bomb a bridge . In the Wingnuttosphere, that translates to "the violent anarchist extremists of Occupy Cleveland." Kind of cool that you can become a terrorist by telling actual terrorists to go away because you'd rather chant in a drum circle.

Fortunately, the Responsible Gun Owner Community is not overreacting at all, as a quick look at the wingnut pamphleteers proves. The nice folks at Free Republic are advising each other to go buy more guns and ammo, and getting ready to blow away National Guard members who come for their guns -- as well, of course, to defend their "homes and property from the EBT zombies when the machines flash ‘error.’” It's almost as if they can't wait for the chance to try out their really cool sniper rifles -- we were especially entertained by the guys bragging about the distances from which they could blow out a Guardsman's brains.

You really have to wonder why anyone would get the impression that there are violent people on the right who pose a possible threat. If only law enforcement and the military would stop thinking such unkind things about them, they would certainly have no reason to stockpile arms in preparation for an armed uprising against the government.

[ MediaTrackers / WSAZ / Bearing Arms / Free Republic 

 Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He supports the well-regulated malicious.