The only comprehensive discussion of the American concealed weapon carry movement that has appeared in print, Professor Patrick traces the emergence and diffusion of this powerful and successful citizens' movement. Patrick shows how a new American gun culture consisting largely of political amateurs emerged from the older, traditional and largely apolitical "hobby" gun culture, and has in turn mobilized, created its own media systems (anti-media) and, by means of what he calls horizontal interpretive communities, overcome deeply entrenched, top-down professional opposition from elites. This new gun culture has successfully countered well-organized vertical propaganda campaigns delivered by the mass media to establish a new political information system in which Second Amendment rights have been unambiguously recognized as a fundamental individual right. This new informational sociology has empowered citizens in the most important informational battle of modern times -namely the right to interpret the meaning of reality for themselves, instead of having it interpreted for them by the elite propagandists who do so in self-interested ways at the expense of freedom. Thus the movement to defend the Second Amendment has reenergized the social action schematic underlying the First as well. Rise of the Anti-Media is an indispensable contribution toward an understanding of how new forms of social media are contributing to the empowering of grassroots citizens' social action movements.
"It's a simple, compelling and winning argument that Brian Anse Patrick makes in Rise of the Anti-Media...Patrick shows the true power within the grasp of ordinary Americans when they're driven by the pursuit of freedom..." - America's 1st Freedom
"Brian Anse Patrick's new book deftly explores the emerging cadre of 'concealed carry license' gun owners, an active, non-traditional group including women and minorities, who are shaping politics, often through alternative media." - Peggy Tartaro, Executive Editor, Women & Guns
"This book is a magnificent achievement." - Don B. Kates, Research Fellow at The Independent Institute and author of Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control
Brian Anse Patrick is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Toledo. In addition to holding a Ph.D. in Communication Research from the University of Michigan, he is also the author of The Ten Commandments of Propaganda (Arktos, 2013), The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage (Arktos, 2013) and Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (and Guns) (Arktos, 2014). Prof. Patrick is nationally recognized as an expert on American gun culture and on the history and technique of propaganda.
