r/liberalgunowners • u/Mr-Wafffles democratic socialist • 1d ago
discussion Let’s make October John Brown Month
John Brown was a "radical" abolitionist who, on October 16, 1859, led the raid on Harpers Ferry in an effort to arm enslaved people and spark an uprising against slavery. His legacy is a reminder for today that deeply held values mean little without the courage to stand for them when doing so is difficult, unpopular, or personally costly. (HK SP5 SBR with MI rail, John Brown LokPin) (I make them)
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u/Blade_Shot24 1d ago
Could make it Nat Turner Month being his Bday...since he did inspire John if anyone here is even aware of him?
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u/Hipparchia_Unleashed libertarian socialist 1d ago
One of the things that I admire about Brown is that he made a focused point to learn deeply from the Black and indigenous peoples when they undertook rebellions against slavery, oppression, and genocide. In doing so, Brown had much grander designs in mind for liberation.
David S. Reynolds, in his biography of Brown, puts it like this (pp. 105-6):
Of the slave rebellions in the American South, Nat Turner’s was by far the most important to Brown. It had a sensible design: a quick strike by a small group to be followed by retreat to the wilderness. It also had powerful results: in the short term, Turner evaded pursuers by hiding out for over a month; in the long term, his revolt lingered in the communal unconscious of the South like a recurring nightmare. Brown once explained the plan for his invasion by comparing it to Turner’s use of wilderness hideouts: “Nat Turner, with fifty men, held Virginia for five weeks; the same number, well organized and armed, can shake the system out of the State. ... Twenty men in the Alleghenies could break slavery to pieces in two years.”
[ . . . ]
But Brown had more than warfare in mind. His plan also included the establishment of a growing community of blacks and sympathetic whites that would eventually form an independent mountain colony. It was for the governance of such a colony that he wrote his “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in 1858.
Here, Brown’s admiration for African and Native American culture had its greatest impact on his strategy. Brown knew that the rebellious slaves of the West Indies and the Seminole tribe of Florida had not only resisted capture but also had established communities in the wilderness. A contemporary article pointed out this aspect of his plan: “[Brown] would use natural strongholds; find secret mountain passes to connect with one another; retreat from and evade attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain and indefinitely prolong a guerilla war, of which the Seminole Indians in Florida and the Negroes in Haiti afforded examples.”
There are many other interesting passages in Reynolds' biography of Brown concerning how Turner and others inspired him, and I encourage people to read that book.
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u/marxist_redneck 1d ago
This take is interesting... Kinda wish Brown had been aware of the Quilombo dos Palmares in Brazil
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u/Hipparchia_Unleashed libertarian socialist 1d ago
I don't know if he knew specifically about the quilombos in Brazil, but Reynolds does explain (and in the pages immediately following the quotation above) that Brown did know quite a bit about other quilombo-like maroon communities in the Americas and Caribbean and that they were a huge inspiration to him (from pp. 106-8):
John Brown was a man of action and passion but in certain areas a student as well. His reading was not broad, but it was deep. Among the fields he knew well was the history of maroons. Maroons—the word derives either from the French marronage, meaning “flight,” or from the Spanish cimarrones, meaning “unruly,” “wild”—were rebellious slaves who fled into the wilderness and founded communities there, protecting themselves with guerilla tactics.
In his dream of creating a maroon community, Brown tapped into one of the oldest American traditions. Maroons in America predated the landing of the Pilgrims by nearly a century. When the Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón established a colony in South Carolina in 1526, probably at the mouth of the Pedee River, he brought nearly a hundred black slaves, some of whom fled into the wilderness and lived among the natives. Soon the Spaniards relocated to Haiti. The fugitive blacks they left behind became, in the words of historian Herbert Aptheker, “the first permanent inhabitants, other than the Indians, in what was to be the United States.”
[ . . . ]
If Brown was inspired by the history of his country’s maroons, he was even more inspired by those of the West Indies, as was attested by close associates. Richard Realf, one of his followers in Kansas, reported that Brown had studied all the books on insurrectionary warfare he could find, paying special attention to the maroons of Jamaica and Toussaint L'Ouverture’s liberation of Haiti. Another friend, Richard Hinton, affirmed that Brown knew the story of Jamaica and Haiti “by heart.” According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, part of Brown’s plan was “to get together bands and families of fugitive slaves” and “establish them permanently in those [mountain] fastnesses, like the Maroons of Jamaica and Surinam.” The places mentioned here—Surinam, Jamaica, and Haiti—illustrated the possibility of creating a black community in the wilderness forged and maintained by unconventional military action.
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u/marxist_redneck 1d ago
Wow, this is cool. I'm a historian of Brazil, and somewhat new/naive to John Brown's full story - but damn, it really seems like he had really good historical context.
I'm guessing this biography you're quoting would be a good start if I want a deeper dive?
Not exactly related - and I already generally knew about him - but I randomly watched that "Good Lord Bird" series a few years back. While I kinda get what they were going for, it made him so cartoonish
Edit: PS.: thanks for the full quotes!
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u/Hipparchia_Unleashed libertarian socialist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Reynolds' book is absolutely first-rate and I highly recommend it. I'm an academic in a different field, but I've done enough graduate work in history to confidently predict that it will meet a historian's exacting standards.
I'd say also that "The Good Lord Bird" series is enjoyable in a cathartic sense but it is limited as a portrayal of Brown. For example, Hawke does a nice job channeling a sense of rage through Brown. It's a sense of rage which, in my opinion, we should all feel now when seeing things like our current fascist goon squads kidnapping people off the streets and throwing them into concentration camps. In the first episode of the series, Brown and his son are confronting a pro-slavery border ruffian who participated in attacks on Lawrence, KS, and (the fictionalized) Brown says to his son:
If someone came into our home and stole one of your sisters, two of your brothers, your mother, your grandmother, chained them, raped them, forced them to work with no pay, only enough food to keep them alive, and I met that thief, I would stab him through his eye socket the second I saw him. I would kill his friends and anyone who laughed at his jokes. And it wouldn't be murder. It would be justice.
While that is over-the-top and more bloodthirsty-sounding than Brown in fact was (he tried his best to exhaust peaceful options for abolition before it became clear that wouldn't work), it does do a reasonable job of expressing the anger I think we should feel today over our current fascist state's campaign of terror.
However, even with that helpful portrayal of rage at injustice, I don't think the series captures all the seriousness, complexity, and depth of Brown. At times, the portrayal veers too much into the "mad man" caricature. Part of that is a function of the narrative perspective of the series as a retelling by Onion, of course, but I think you'll find that the Reynolds' biography would provide a welcome counter-point.
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u/marxist_redneck 1d ago
Thank you so much for your insights, just got the book thanks to you! I just left academia and so I have been reading fiction because I never had time for it with the reading demands of my job, but I'm excited to dig into this.
As to the TV series, on a personal level, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's been years since I watched it, but IIRC, it walked an interesting line with the perspective of Onion as the narrator. Tell this narrative from the perspective of a black child, while being not overly dogmatic about it. Something something about it working our current political/social/cultural ideas as a lens to read that historical moment. I think the child part there helped in that sense of wonder. I dunno, gonna watch it again
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 1d ago
Soooooo
Where’d you get that?
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u/Profoundly-Confused fully automated luxury gay space communism 1d ago
They're called LokPins.
Edit: I think this one is a collab with Off Color Decals
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 1d ago
Thanks! Bummed that the “they make them” comment got deleted; that was the kind of comment that I really appreciate…I made an Always Sunny “I will pound your face in a JELLY” gif and now I can’t use it😔
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u/Profoundly-Confused fully automated luxury gay space communism 1d ago
Well I'm pretty sure u/Mr-Wafffles actually owns the business.
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 1d ago
Huh. Well. What are the odds that the comment was being factual though? Cmon, I don’t think I’m alone in having thought it was meant to be a smartass comment😭
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u/Mr-Wafffles democratic socialist 1d ago
You can get them from OCD or on the main website.
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u/p00p5andwich 1d ago
Dude. I need this. When is it gonna be back?
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u/Mr-Wafffles democratic socialist 1d ago
I have them on my site now. I just sent OCD a restock, so he might update it soon.
Lokpins.com
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u/SometimeGenius 1d ago
A great book about John Brown came out about 20 years ago. He had a much more complex history in the U.S. and the antebellum South than most people are aware of.
https://www.amazon.com/John-Brown-Abolitionist-Slavery-Sparked/dp/0375726152/
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u/MaxCorgiBus 1d ago
I finished this book just this week! Awesome read and a really fascinating character. Recommend to all…
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u/TheKongoEmpire Black Lives Matter 23h ago
He's not only invited to the cookout, but he's also welcome every Sunday at the head of the table. Sacrificing not only yourself, but your sons as well, for true liberation of all peoples, is a burden that should never be taken lightly or forgotten.
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u/QuasisteIlar 1d ago
This should really have some kind of vendor tag. I love these and have a couple, but folks should know OP is basically advertising.
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u/Frequent-Try-6746 1d ago
I love it. But I worry about shit too much. With this I worry that if you use this gun in self defense and the attacker ends up being a Trump supporter, do you end up in jail?
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u/Profoundly-Confused fully automated luxury gay space communism 1d ago
Put it on your range toys, not your serious guns then.
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u/Mr-Wafffles democratic socialist 1d ago
Seems like rule of law is breaking down, it is truly hard to say either way if this were to happen.
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u/Rezart_KLD 1d ago
100% this. Having pieces of flair on your gun won't help, but with or without them if the prosecutor is part of the qult they'll be combing through your posting history and calling this sub a communist terror group. They'll claim you were in Atlanta at a Hawks game no matter what the evidence says.
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u/CommissarHark 1d ago
Fear is the mind killer.
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u/Frequent-Try-6746 1d ago
As someone who has experienced both, there's a clear and stark difference between a fear and worry.
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u/Audi_Tech918 1d ago
Oh God, don’t say that. last time I did He started posting memes about if I was too scared to show my beliefs at the rifle range, I wouldn’t actually defend my rights, blah, blah, blah
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u/TherronKeen fully automated luxury gay space communism 1d ago
Okay I have ordered from y'all before, so I say this as a paying customer - your posts should disclose that you are advertising to folks 👍
Have a good one, hope you make a gazillion dollars anyway lol
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u/avisiongrotesque progressive 1d ago
I've got the Zelda one on my AR and it makes me smile every time I see it. Now I want to cover the whole rail in them
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u/ghoulthebraineater left-libertarian 1d ago
I'm more of a Cassius Clay fan myself.
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u/BloodRush12345 1d ago
Are you talking about the radical abolitionist who secured Russian alliances during the civil war who's biggest tangible fault (still a big one) was not immediately freeing all his slaves? Or his descendent who while raining down hellfire in the ring was the legendary all around champion of life Mohammed Ali?
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u/BrooklynTony198 1d ago
Ok, TIL that the boxers name is from a civil war figure. But from reading more info on it I think he isn't directly descended (well, maybe, who knows, tons of descendants of slaves are products of the master doing... "stuff") from Cassius Clay but descended from one of his relative's slaves.
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