{"id":91636,"date":"2024-09-27T04:00:22","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T08:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=91636"},"modified":"2024-09-26T15:26:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T19:26:35","slug":"ronald-reagan-never-said-this-but-karl-marx-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/09\/27\/ronald-reagan-never-said-this-but-karl-marx-did\/","title":{"rendered":"Ronald Reagan never said this … but Karl Marx did"},"content":{"rendered":"

At The Take<\/em>, Jon Miltimore<\/a> discusses a fake Ronald Reagan quote-on-a-poster being sold through Amazon and reveals that the quote actually originates with Karl Marx:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For just $9.99, people can go on Amazon and buy wall art of Ronald Reagan apparently defending the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n

“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered,” the text reads next to a picture of Reagan; “any attempts to disarm the people must be stopped, by force if necessary”.<\/p>\n

There are a few problems with the quote, but the biggest one is that Reagan never said it.<\/p>\n

As numerous fact checkers have noted \u2014 including Reuters<\/a>, Snopes<\/a>, Factcheck.org<\/a>, and Politifact<\/a> \u2014 the author of the quote is none other than Karl Marx, the German philosopher and author of The Communist Manifesto<\/em> who used language nearly verbatim to this in an 1850 address in London.<\/p>\n

“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary,” Marx said in his “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Marxists Not Embracing Marx’s Messaging?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In fairness to the many internet users duped by the fake Reagan meme, the quote sounds a bit like something Reagan could have said (though it’s highly unlikely the Gipper, a skilled and careful orator, would have ever said “by force if necessary”).<\/p>\n

Reagan, after all, generally \u2014 though not universally<\/a> \u2014 supported gun rights and was skeptical of efforts to restrict firearms.<\/p>\n

“You won’t get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens,” Reagan famously noted<\/a> in a 1983 speech.<\/p>\n

Some might be surprised that Marx and Reagan had similar views on gun control. Marx was of course the father of communism, whereas Reagan was famously anti-communist. Moreover, Marx’s modern disciples are staunch supporters of gun control<\/a>, whether they identify as socialists or progressives.<\/p>\n

“Guns in the United States pose a real threat to public health and safety and disproportionately impact communities of color,” Nivedita Majumdar, an associate professor of English at John Jay College, wrote in the Marxist magazine Jacobin<\/em>. “Their preponderance only serves corporate interests, a corrupt political establishment, and an alienated capitalist culture.”<\/p>\n

This distaste for guns goes beyond socialist magazines. As The Atlantic<\/em> reported<\/a> during the 2020 presidential election cycle, progressive politicians are increasingly embracing more stringent federal gun control laws.<\/p>\n

“No longer are primary candidates merely calling for tighter background checks and a ban on assault weapons,” journalist Russell Berman wrote; “in 2019, contenders like Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas were calling for national licensing requirements and gun-buyback programs”.<\/p>\n

The point here is not to disparage politicians like O’Rourke and Booker as “Marxists”, a label they’d almost certainly object to. The point is that progressive politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) might channel Marx<\/a> in their class rhetoric, but they are not<\/a> embracing his messaging when it comes to the proletariat’s access to firearms.<\/p>\n

As it happens, this is a common theme with Marxists throughout history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At The Take, Jon Miltimore discusses a fake Ronald Reagan quote-on-a-poster being sold through Amazon and reveals that the quote actually originates with Karl Marx: For just $9.99, people can go on Amazon and buy wall art of Ronald Reagan apparently defending the Second Amendment. “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered,” the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,41,13,663],"tags":[833,715,49,1076,1020,217,1010],"class_list":["post-91636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-quotations","category-usa","category-weapons","tag-amazon","tag-constitution","tag-guns","tag-karlmarx","tag-progressives","tag-rights","tag-ronaldreagan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-nQ0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91638,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91636\/revisions\/91638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}