⬆︎ National Rifle Association ad
⬆︎ Trump assault ad: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, talking directly to the American people
If I were a right-wing propagandist, my big concern right now would be heading off catastrophic damage to the Republican Party if (though I would say when) Trump voters see their man impeached, destroyed, and sent to prison. Many people will want to believe that it was all just a liberal conspiracy. You can be sure that the propaganda will be there to help them believe that, and, if possible, to try to use Trump’s downfall to reinvigorate rather than weaken the right-wing project and the Republican Party.
I’m afraid we’re already seeing the first pieces of this propaganda. The Trump video is crude, but the NRA video is sophisticated in its crudeness and has already been viewed millions of times. The message is clear enough: Liberals are a threat, and guns and fists are appropriate.
This is not fringe stuff, either. The NRA has about 5 million members. Trump is president of the United States, and James Mattis is his secretary of defense.
Note the anger and insult in the Mattis meme, and note how he reinforces the falsehood that the intent is to take people’s guns away, though gun control is only about keeping guns out of the hands of the wrong people, and limiting military-style wholesale-killing weapons that have nothing to do with self-defense.
More terrifying than the propaganda itself is the knowledge that this is the kind of stuff that gets results with millions of Americans.
And you know what? I’m just about sick of hearing right-wingers profane the word “freedom.”
⬆︎ An authoritarian Facebook meme
One Comment
In my state, we recently had an incident where a monument was destroyed…by a man who claimed “Jesus is Lord” and yelled “Freedom!!!” as he did it. It was soon found out that he’d done this same act before at another such monument in a neighboring state, but prior to figuring out he wasn’t a social justice warrior liberal or Islamist fanatic, it was suggested by the state official who funded the monument that this was an act of terrorism when in reality it was an individual who likely felt a stronger connection to Christianity than the legislator who deliberately collided church and state using his public office and tax dollars to fund his effort.
Several people in my workplace didn’t bother to read any articles on the person who committed the criminal act, which it was, regardless of how I feel about it. In this case, had the monument not been there, he wouldn’t have run it down. Still, I heard people saying things like, “He won’t be able to repent for this,” and “His soul is irredeemable,” as if running down the monument was a worse infraction than putting it up in the first place.
The Right has a strong grip on its followers from guns to God that none of them bother to find out the truth as all news now is fake news to them, even local news that only reports obituaries and weddings. Even if the headline merely states a fact like, “Man Runs Down Monument,” they’ve already assumed their ideology into the narrative, so there’s no need to read it. My grandfather initially gave money to the NRA but stopped after they wouldn’t stop sending mailers. Everything they sent that he left on his coffee table had a derivative title like “Obama’s Plan to Kill The 2nd Amendment.” The NRA is sophisticated and deliberately confuses the narrative by sometimes throwing in how without them, in the 1960s, blacks wouldn’t have been given the right to own or carry guns. We all know in today’s world, that’s patently untrue.
The murder of Philando Castile in Minnesota is a prime example of the pure hypocrisy and racism of law enforcement and right-wing politics, the two pillars the NRA uses to insinuate itself into gun culture. Castile was legally concealing his pistol as he had a concealed carry license as do I. When asked in my CCL class what to do if carrying when pulled over, the instructor said to inform the officer and show him the CCL. Castile was doing just that as he was murdered in front of his family by a cop. By the way, I have a CCL, but I’ve never carried and after this video, if I were to carry, and if I were to get pulled over, I wouldn’t tell the cop. But, I’m not going to bother with arming myself just to go to the grocery store or work.
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