[WSMDiscuss] The US in movement…. : This chilling NRA ad calls on its members to save America by fighting liberals (Zack Beauchamp)

[JS CACIM]

Thursday, June 29, 2017

The US in movement….

[And now, and on another side of the world – from India and from my other recent posts -, again about the ‘other side’….. : The knives are out (as well as the rifles).

[The winds are clearly blowing, the storm rising.  Can we feel it ?  Or is this how the world has always been ?

            Thanks, Jim, for bringing this to my attention.

            JS


This chilling NRA ad calls on its members to save America by fighting liberals

Updated by Zack Beauchamp <https://www.vox.com/authors/zack-beauchamp>@zackbeauchamp <http://www.twitter.com/zackbeauchamp>zack at vox.com <mailto:zack at vox.com> Jun 29, 2017, 10:00am EDT
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/29/15892508/nra-ad-dana-loesch-yikes <https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/29/15892508/nra-ad-dana-loesch-yikes>
Watch this recently released ad from the National Rifle Association <https://www.facebook.com/NRA/videos/1605896562755373/>, starring right-wing pundit Dana Loesch. It comes this close to calling for a civil war against liberals:

Join the National Rifle Association <https://www.facebook.com/NRA/videos/1605896562755373/>
Join NRA Here: http://bit.ly/2q5pp0L

Posted by National Rifle Association of America <https://www.facebook.com/NRA/> on Monday, June 12, 2017
Here’s a full transcription of Loesch’s rant, in case you prefer text. Bear in mind that these words are overlaid over ominous images of protest and street violence:

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse “the resistance.”

All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. 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.

I’m the National Rifle Association of America. And I’m freedom’s safest place.

It’s not hard to figure out what the narrative is here. A liberal insurgency is destroying American society. The “only way” to protect yourself from this surge in left-wing violence (a made-up threat, to be clear) is to donate to the NRA — an organization that exists solely to help people buy guns.

The ad isn’t an outright exhortation to violence. NRA ads never are. But the NRA has a very long history of using apocalyptic, paranoid rhetoric about the collapse of American society in order to sell people on the notion that they need to act now to preserve their gun rights.

In a 2013 op-ed <https://thinkprogress.org/the-nine-most-insane-quotes-from-the-nras-new-apocalyptic-op-ed-38f5608d777b>, for example, NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre argued that a lawless America was inevitable if the liberals succeeded in their nefarious plan to take your guns.

“After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all,” he wrote (New York was actually pretty calm after being hit by the hurricane in 2012 <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/11/looting_after_hurricane_sandy_disaster_myths_and_disaster_utopias_explained.html>).

The problem with this rhetoric isn’t, again, that it’s telling people to use violence against others. It’s that it functions as a kind of anti-politics <http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/rethinking-the-right-to-bear-arms/> — casting the NRA’s political opponents as devious enemies who can’t be opposed through normal politics. Republicans control all three branches of government and a large majority of statehouses nationwide. There is literally zero chance that any kind of major gun control passes in America in the foreseeable future.

The threat, instead, is from a kind of liberal-cultural fifth column: People who are acting outside of legitimate political channels to upend American freedoms, through protest and violence. It’s a paranoid vision of American life that encourages the NRA’s fans to see liberals not as political opponents, but as monsters.

Loesch’s ad has currently been viewed more than 2.4 million times on Facebook.


______________________________

Jai Sen

jai.sen at cacim.net <mailto:jai.sen at cacim.net>
www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net/> / http://www.openword.net.in

Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900) 

Recent publications :

Jai Sen, ed, 2016  – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ? (forthcoming in 2017 from New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press), ADVANCE PREFINAL ONLINE MOVEMENT EDITION @ www.cacim.net <http://www.cacim.net/>
Jai Sen, ed, 2013 – The Movements of Movements : Struggles for Other Worlds, Part I. Prefinal version of Volume 4 Part I in the Challenging Empires series. New Delhi : OpenWord.  Prefinal version 1.0 available @ http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/ <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/>
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS  :

Jai Sen, ed, 2017a – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?.  Volume 4 in the Challenging Empires series (New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press).  Available for pre-order at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/>
&

Jai Sen, ed, 2017b – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance.  Volume 5 in the Challenging Empires series (New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press)

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