A meme: an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.
Alt right: a right-wing ideological movement characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics(usually conservative politics) and by the use of online media to disseminate provocative content, often expressing opposition to racial, religious, or gender equality.
4chan: an online anonymous message board
Doxed: someone is to publicly identify or publish private information about that person
/pol/(short for politically incorrect): a forum on 4chan where people talk about politics, commonly associated with neo nazis and the alt-right.up to 30% of messages contain hate speech on the forum.
Everyone loves memes right? Well that Everyone includes the alt-right and over the last 5-6 years the alt-right have used memes and internet culture and gaming to recruit people into, sometimes neo-Nazi, organizations. This all reached a worrying crescendo at the capitol insurrection of January the 6th.
How did this happen?
A Report from the Media and manipulation project at the data society, an independent nonprofit research organization, credits the rise of the alt right to gamergate. “gamergate” started in 2014 when a few women, most notably Zoe Quinn, in the industry started calling out casual sexism withing videogames. These article where then used by a small group of people on the 4chan website to effectively wind up the gamer community and prove how in there eyes all feminists are evil. This small group used the the Gamer identity of a geeky, uneducated, unemployed male who may have trouble finding a romantic relationship, to perpetuate this anger at feminists in general. Quinn and other feminists were doxed and threatened. Although gamer gate finished in 2015, the seeds had been sown and internet culture had its first taste of being politicised. It also was a key moment for alt right leaders, who saw the power of gamer and meme culture to infiltrate communities and divide, in this case by gender.From gamergate communities such as “mens rights activists” and “Incels(involuntary celibates)” grew hugely in popularity.
The common feeling between gamers and the alt right, is that of oppression. During gamer-gate gamers were made to feel like they were oppressed as Journalists were attacking there games for sexism. This is the same feeling of Neo-nazis and white supremacists. The alt right used this feeling to radicalize gamers and those in the online world.
A key problem is the blurring of the line between a joke and something serious. At first someone may say “ I really like adolf Hitler” this seems so ridiculous so is therefore taken as a joke, but once many others start to spew neo nazi and racist hate it becomes serious. The alt right infiltrate these servers and start posting things.
Another common tactic is hijacking memes such as pepe the frog, for many this is where the lines blur. The pepe the frog meme was once a harmless joke, but a white supremacist campaign which started on 4chan. The joke is used by both the alt right and the average internet user, so it is very hard to tell who is who. Therefore you cannot tell who is alt right and who isn’t.
Real world impacts
Just a few years ago we saw the devastating impacts of radicalization during the Charlottesville unite the right rally, we saw a huge gathering of alt right members some of which dressed as.the “pepe the frog” meme and also “the based stick man” meme. There was 1 dead at the Charlottesville rally, the perpetrator was a known gamer. He had a prior criminal record involving violence towards his mother, when she asked him to stop playing games.
With the rise of Qanon, they are also targeting young people on social media, but they are using aesthetic to lure them in with the hashtag #savethechildren both president trumps campaigns have been shrouded with alt right activity for example the proud boys.
Conclusion
Like all young internet users I look at memes and enjoy them, just because they are used by the alt-right should not mean a full on ban of memes, that would be absurd. But legislation on the internet is outdated and has to be updated.
