A new NRA ad is stirring up some pretty strong “us” vs. “them” rhetoric and earning harsh backlash on social media.
In the one-minute clip, the National Rifle Association never actually says who “they” are, but its message is, nonetheless, pretty clear: They’re talking about the left, the resistance.
Conservative personality and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch paints a picture of a violent left resistance movement — a far cry from the “snowflake” label the left has been given.
“They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler.”
Loesch goes on to say “they” use media, celebrities and awards shows to repeat their narrative “all to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia and smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding.”
According to Loesch, it’s gotten so bad the “only option left is for police to do their jobs and stop the madness.”
“And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage,” she says. “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.”
Loesch ends the video with the NRA endorsement, “I’m the National Rifle Association of America and I’m freedom’s safest place.”
The ad actually debuted back in April at the NRA’s Leadership Forum and was posted to the NRA’s Facebook account on June 12, but it began stirring up a response on social media Wednesday night after journalist and author Jeff Shartlet tweeted out a link to the video.
This new NRA ad is barely a whisper shy of a call for full civil war. https://t.co/N33s2KyvVz
— Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) June 28, 2017
Social media reacts to NRA ad
The NRA ad has been viewed more than 2.7 million times with many of the 4,000 comments denouncing the “us” and “them” rhetoric Loesch purports in the video.
As outrage over the video poured in Loesch took to Periscope doubling down on her message.
“The language of the left is violence and it has been because they think it’s an acceptable form of protest,” she said. “I thought these people were supposed to be open-minded and creative and funny, and I’ve never seen people who are the dullest crayons in the box in my life, and these people who try to overreact — hyper-reaction — and feign outrage about condemnation of violence that they themselves don’t have the balls to condemn,” she said.
