Day 162: NRA Peddling Fear, Violence in Trump World
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day happenings of Washington D.C. and not see the more dangerous underbelly of the Donald Trump administration.
For instance, we have the National Rifle Association fully stoking the flames of violence. In theory, the NRA is a non-profit, non-partisan group that defends gun rights. However, in practice, their website is now littered with phrases blaming “the left” and “fighting liberal left bias.”
Now, they’re not even hiding their primary objective: eliciting fear among conservatives.
The video above phrases like “their-ex president” to refer to the nation’s 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. Words in the ad like “assassinate” and “Hitler” and “racism” and “sexism” and “xenophobia” and “homophobia,” while building up a strawman liberal isn’t an accident. Those words were purposely chosen to be inflammatory. They’re intended to be bricks used to build inference upon inference — “when that happens” — to say the “only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.”
That last line has the NRA defenders saying it’s clear that the NRA is promoting peace. Sure thing, guys. Everyone knows that the “clenched fist of truth” is a real phrase that people say all the time. Who doesn’t know that clenched fists have nothing to do with defiance and everything to do with truth?
It’s “our country,” “our freedom,” versus “their media,” “their schools,” “their ex-president.” Goal one: choose a side.
The NRA uses clips of police squads and protesters spliced in the middle of the video. They flash a bloody man in a Trump shirt on screen without any context (while completely eschewing images of violence by the right). Goal two: buy and lock and load.
The hypocrisy and partisanship of the gun lobby has never been more apparent. For instance, the NRA has yet to issue a statement condemning the 2016 killing of Philando Castile. Castile was legally carrying a weapon in his vehicle when he was shot and killed by a police officer who claimed he was scared, despite the fact that the gun was nowhere near him. These are the kind of actions the NRA should be screaming about: police officers shooting lawful gun owners who are legally exercising their second amendment rights. But the NRA didn’t do that here, and it certainly seems like it’s because Castile was a black man and doesn’t fit the NRA stereotype of a lawful gun owner.
If an individual stood on a soapbox and shouted the things in the NRA video, it’s likely they would be arrested for inciting violence, for which there is no first amendment protection. Here, however, the NRA is empowered to act with impunity. They have the GOP in their pocket and they know it. If the gun lobby runs even a single ad in a primary that a Republican candidate for office is anti-Second Amendment, they’re done. The ones already in Congress are largely beholden to the NRA, as virtually all Republicans have taken NRA money.
The irony is that the NRA is desperate to push these ads because they can’t keeping trotting out the old trope, “DEMOCRATS ARE GOING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS! BUY NOW BEFORE THEY DO!” Republicans in power actually drive down gun sales.
But it’s clear that the NRA has pivoted: When you can’t peddle one type of fear, you peddle another.
162 days in, 1300 to go
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