‘Colion Noir’ is the latest weapon to be deployed in The National Rifle Association’s ongoing battle to win over minorities to their maniacal cause. Noir has become a YouTube sensation – and a darling of the NRA – because supposedly he is a young black man who opposes even the most common-sense gun control laws.

At least that’s how he portrays himself. The self-described “urban gun enthusiast” articulates the need for black people to take up arms to defend themselves against all enemies – including the government.

Colion Noir has appeared in dozens of YouTube videos. While his rhetoric doesn’t necessarily qualify as hate speech, it is certainly polarizing.

In this post I will demonstrate how Noir’s video clips for the NRA easily fall into the category of ‘propaganda.’ I will address each of these points individually, based on the six definitional characteristics of propaganda:

1) propaganda is ideological; 2) it uses mass media; 3) it conceals and misleads; 4) it aims for uniformity; 5) it circumvents the reasoning process, and 6) it manipulates symbols for emotional effect.

Noir’s message is clearly ideological. His video endorses many of the NRA’s most popular talking points – specifically the government’s inability to protect its own citizens – and it supports the completely false notion that the Obama administration plans to systematically disarm Americans by taking away their guns…

In a brazen move, Noir ties the battle for gun ownership to the civil rights movement of the sixties, arguing that black people must now be responsible for their own protection. Describing the epidemic of gun violence in urban communities, Noir claims, “It’s not a gun problem. It’s a culture problem. It’s a poverty problem. It’s a history problem…”

Unfortunately, history shows that media images of angry black men with guns have helped to stimulate higher gun sales among panicky whites. Noir’s cynical rhetorical strategy exploits the justifiable fears of both races – all in the name of profit for the gun manufacturers!

Noir’s message overlooks all the time and money the federal government spent trying to disarm the Black Panther Party – or the time and money the FBI spent assassinating their leaders in cold blood. So much for civil rights.

According to The Center for American Progress, Black people account for almost fifty-six percent of all victims in gun deaths despite making up just thirteen percent of the country’s population.

The profusion of guns is clearly a major factor in the number of gun deaths in America, especially in the Black community. Noir’s opinions represent the belief-driven, dogmatic view of the National Rifle Association: an organization whose membership is overwhelmingly made up of white males who simply love guns.

Common sense tells us that more guns means more crime. Firearms don’t protect anybody: they make life far less safe for everyone around you. Bringing more guns into our neighborhoods just brings more violent crime, more suicides and more accidental gun-related deaths.

How fucking hard is this to understand?

Critical thinking is such a rare and beautiful thing. Join us.

NRA Shill Colion Noir uses the Internet – the simplest and most readily available form of mass media – to get his message out to as wide-ranging an audience as possible. The NRA News website receives millions of hits each day. Because of this, the Internet is the perfect medium for spreading propaganda.

Colion Noir’s NRA spots certainly aim to conceal facts and mislead its audience. Just as I suspected, ‘Colion Noir’ is not who he claims to be. The Howler’s Den, a progressive political blog-site, exposed Coloin Noir’s true identity: Collins Idehen, Jr., the well-heeled son of an elite black American family. His father, Collins Idehen, Sr. is a world-renowned master chef who has served many famous celebrities and even US Presidents, including George Bush junior and senior.

You really can’t get any better-connected than that!

Collins Idehen, Jr. (aka Colion Noir) has lived a sheltered, privileged life, and he can’t possibly relate to the experiences of other young men and women of color who come from communities ravaged by daily gun violence and police brutality.

The NRA is lying about the real motives behind their hip young Black spokesman and their misleading and deceptive NRA propaganda campaign. Setting up this imposter as someone who identifies with the issues of young black men in America when in fact he has no life experiences that correspond to their everyday reality is highly deceptive, to say the least.

The NRA promos clearly aim for uniformity. Everyone knows it’s not a gun problem, after all. Only an idiot would think otherwise, right? It’s a cultural and historical problem, obviously – because that’s what the NRA says it is. Everybody, jump on the bandwagon!

Noir’s argument is a lame attempt at antithesis – the balancing of one idea against another. Antithesis is the basis of most arguments. Unfortunately, in this case, it’s not very effective.

This segues perfectly into the fifth characteristic of propaganda: it circumvents the reasoning process. Noir’s video tries to do this in several ways. The topos Noir uses to make his case is dubious at best, however. There is no rational logic involved in any of his declarative statements, and no evidence is given to support them. His assertion that, “no one wants to fight for their own protection” is an obvious logical fallacy. Who on earth wouldn’t fight for their own protection?

We can’t trust the police or the government to help us anymore, either, according to Noir’s logic – because they can’t always be there to protect you. Well, duh. It’s a dangerous world BECAUSE everyone is armed to the teeth!

Stupid!

And as for the police: ironically, he’s correct – but only because if you’re a black man you’re more likely to be shot by some trigger-happy cracker cop than saved by one.

These abstract, blanket assertions are perfect rhetorical examples of ‘card stacking’ and hyperbole -being used to drive home a (questionable) point.

Through the use of pathos, Noir tries to cloud viewers’ reasoning skills by tugging at their emotions: “The same government who at one point hosed us down with water, attacked us with dogs, wouldn’t allow us to eat at their restaurants and told us we couldn’t own guns…”

Sigh. Seriously?

As Colion Noir and the NRA are both well aware, the Civil Rights era was not just about water cannons, batons, protests and police dogs. It was also a time when exaggerated media portrayals of armed blacks mobilized a significant response from terrified white Americans. This is because the image of a black man pointing a gun plays to several racialized historical subtexts in which the NRA’s white male culture is deeply embedded.

Later in the clip, Noir looks dryly at the camera and declares: “‘I wish I had less bullets’…said no one ever who’s been in a gunfight!” as if to imply that shootouts and street combat will soon become a normal part of our daily lives.

Get used to it, America! If you think it’s bad now, just you wait…

Finally, propaganda manipulates symbols. In his noxious videos, Colion Noir wears hip-hop clothes and a wide array of baseball caps in various configurations. Here the symbols of modern, urban Blackness are manipulated to present a false image to the viewer. Indeed, over time guns themselves have become much less symbols of self-defense for many: they have become symbols of oppression and mistrust.

The National Rifle Association perpetuates a vicious cycle in which the implements of violent conflict and death have tragically become our only means of salvation; notably in the absence of any real attempts by the government to resolve our current out-of-control gun problem.

Colion Noir is a sham. The NRA is trying to use this hip, young black man – who is not what he claims to be – in order to manipulate public opinion. His entire persona is simply another instance of rhetorical sleight-of-hand being perpetrated upon the American people by the NRA. The NRA promos featuring ‘Colion Noir’ represent a nearly definitive example of contemporary propaganda.