In 2016, the Yes Men (previously), everyone’s favorite political pranksters, hoaxed the NRA: today, they’ve released their short documentary, which lays bare the NRA’s internal culture of racist-driven fear and gun-humping murderous fantasies.
Featuring a Yes Men hoax performed June 22, 2016 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the film tells:*
how Republicans—in a terrified reaction to the Black Panthers’ performative activism—once promoted the first gun-control legislation;*
how, once the Black Power movement was crushed, Republicans began calling for looser gun-control legislation, presumably for (white) “defense”;*
how the NRA, once a moderate organization, became a tool of racist Republican fear when it was hijacked by extremists including LaPierre, its current president; and*
how fear of a Black uprising partly morphed into the right-wing street’s signature terror of “government” (which in its best form, after all, is just another word for “people power”).