The NRA wants to scare you. In the viral ad “Violence of Lies” (first released on April 7, 2017), spokeswoman Dana Loesch warns viewers of a looming danger. The ad alternates between her commentary, delivered in front of a somber blue background and footage of social unrest. The footage is black and white, evoking the authenticity and authority of historical documentaries. The ad spews violent language: “assassinate,” “smash,” “burn,” “bully,” “terrorize.” It suggests, however, that the most immediate threat viewers face is not to their bodily safety, but to a shared racial and cultural identity.
NRA ads often aim to convince viewers that deadly adversaries plot their imminent demise. The chance that an individual will die in a terrorist attack is miniscule. U.S. crime rates have declined dramatically over the past twenty-five years, despite a recent uptick in some cities. Yet the NRA insists that gun ownership is all that protects decent citizens against the monsters besieging them. One ad catalogues dangers that the government can’t protect viewers from. Another shows a woman’s gun vanishing into thin air just as an intruder breaks in to her home—blaming Hilary Clinton’s gun control advocacy for this bit of sorcery. In a 2015 ad titled “Demons at Our Door,” NRA President Wayne LaPierre warns viewers of impending terrorist attacks in which “innocents like us will continue to be slaughtered in concert halls, sports stadiums, restaurants, and airplanes.” The NRA offers comfort in the face of these nightmares: “Violence of Lies,” like many of the organization’s recent ads, ends with the slogan “I am freedom’s safest place.”
The disappearing gun ad and “Demons at Our Door” present violence as assaulting not only people but spaces, breaching literal and symbolic doors. “Violence of Lies” makes such boundary breaking its central visual motif. The first part of the ad features time-lapse shots of crowds milling in public spaces. Most of these spaces are part of U.S. iconography: the Lincoln Memorial, the U.S. Capitol, Central Park and the Empire State building in New York, and Grant Park in Chicago. Among these landmarks appears footage of a schoolyard—chrysalis of America’s future. The ad suggests that encroaching chaos threatens both heritage and future. Again and again, Loesch refers to the sources of this threat as “they,” the monosyllabic pronoun evoking an archetypal other. “They” control Hollywood, the media, comedy shows, and the nation’s schools; “they” shut down highways and challenge the police; “they” smash and burn.
Loesch insinuates that “they” are a coalition of coastal elites and people of color. Visually, the ad portrays the first of these groups as a series of institutions, showing the Hollywood sign, the Los Angeles skyline, the New York Times building, and the Frank Gehry–designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, its metallic arcs an affront to both conservative taste and right angles. No people appear in any of these shots. These lifeless bastions of liberal news and entertainment, the ad implies, are alien to and encroach on the healthy body politic.
By contrast, the ad portrays protestors as swarming masses in perpetual motion. They push past limits, overwhelming public spaces, filling a street in an aerial shot, packing so tightly that they jostle against each other. They stream down a highway (where pedestrians are prohibited) and stand toe to toe with police in riot gear. One individual smashes a window; another sets tires on fire. These transgressive acts culminate in a crowd burning an American flag, destroying perhaps the most ubiquitous and revered symbol of national identity.
Loesch never addresses race explicitly, and relatively few people of color appear in the protest footage. Nevertheless, the ad links political unrest to black communities, in particular. In several shots, police lines—another kind of boundary—bar protestors’ way. Loesch asserts that “they…bully and terrorize the law abiding, until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs,” and complains that “they” will use this as an “excuse for their outrage.” Loesch’s diatribe is a barely veiled reference to Black Lives Matter and other groups protesting police killings of unarmed black Americans. Further, the phrase “law abiding” has long served as a dog-whistle juxtaposing mythical white innocence against the supposed criminality of blacks and other racial minorities. The ad elides political protest with criminal violence, aligning both with a nonwhite, alien identity.
With rapid editing and increasingly turbulent footage, the ad suggests that the United States is hurtling toward a catastrophic conflict between virtuous order and malevolent chaos. One protestor’s sign reads: “This is war.” A shot of white man in a Trump tee-shirt, face bloodied, implies that skirmishes have already begun. Late in the ad, two men charge a group of police. The ad cuts away at the moment of contact, as belligerent rhetoric explodes into actual battle.
Many have condemned “Violence of Lies” for inciting violence; unsurprisingly, Loesch and the NRA deny that it does so. And in fact, Loesch never tells viewers to harm anyone. She never describes the United States as a war zone. She never calls “them” un-American or less than human. She never tells white gun owners to prepare for the day when they will turn those guns against the demons at their door. Indeed, she never mentions guns at all.
She does not have to.
Monica Achen 