A new online ad promoting the National Rifle Association exploits America's political divisions and calls for a "clenched fist of truth."

The video, moving beyond the powerful lobbying group's traditional advocacy for gun-owner rights and the Second Amendment, uses violent imagery and rhetoric to portray as dangerous anyone who opposes President Donald Trump. It also offers a conspiracy-theory view of the world in which powerful liberal elites mock and lie to decent Americans.

"They use their media to assassinate real news," NRA spokeswoman and conservative commentator Dana Loesch says in the ad. "They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars, singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance, all to make them march, to make them protest, make them scream 'racism' and 'sexism' and 'xenophobia' and 'homophobia.'"

The only way to combat this "violence of lies," Loesch says, is a patriotic "clenched fist of truth."

The reaction to the advertisement has been as visceral as the ad itself. Liberal Esquire magazine columnist Charles P. Pierce writes that Loesch "is very close to sounding like an out-and-out fascist" in the membership pitch.

Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, also criticized the ad's tone, The Hill newspaper reports. "It's about profits," Beyer wrote on Twitter. "The profits of gun manufacturers have fallen in 2017, because the NRA can't lie to people about [former President Barack] Obama 'grabbing guns.'" He also accused the NRA of using the recent shooting of Republican Congressman Steve Scalise to increase its membership.

Responded Loesch on Twitter: "This ad was filmed in April. Disappointed you don't condemn the violence I'm condemning in this ad. Your assumptions are divisive."

Watch the ad below: