Maybe you already know about the Alt-Right political movement. I’ve been researching it for only a few weeks now. Its footsoldiers seemingly consist of tech-savvy young white males who freely and obscenely express a desire for racial identification and segregation. They also uphold a crude sense of male superiority over women, not necessarily in terms of intelligence or political rights, but in more psychological matters, often subjecting females to sexual hazing and mockery rituals.
I have read some articles and got a little first-hand experience in online chat forums. If you visit the image-message board “4chan /pol/”, you will almost certainly experience an overwhelming display of vulgarity, web slang, coded messages, board bullying, anonymous trolling, trash talking, racist banter, sexist jokes, nationalistic rhetoric, occasional expressions and discussions of actual philosophy, as well as the many artistic products of a robust meme factory.
For the most part, these footsoldiers, or “autists,” as some call themselves, operate anonymously online, in great hordes. They swarm more obscure chat rooms in dark corners of the Internet, and then spread out to places like Twitter and Facebook to conduct “memetic warfare” on “normies,” or the general population of people like those in The Matrix who haven’t been unplugged from their unreal, virtual reality. You see, we normal, ignorant folk need to be awoken to the real reality of the fundamental importance of racial politics. We need to be “redpilled” and “unplugged” like the heroes in The Matrix.
But first the Alt-Righters have to get our attention, and that is where tactics come in. One effective tactic is the use of memes, or intriguing, perhaps shocking, messages that are spread through popular social media and call attention to bread crumb trails leading back to the wild and frenetic caverns of the Alt-Right. The memetic phrases and attractive images are tailored for young, intelligent, hyper-active males. As the rabbit hole gets deeper, these messages become more and more racial, sexual, and political in nature. And this is when the real socialization and indoctrination process begins.
The allure and charisma of the Alt-Right autists in places like 4chan is real and visceral. An uninitiated observer must simply marvel at the creativity, pace, and output of their online society. Young people, with curious and confused minds, will be tempted to join in on the fun, especially if they wish to rebel against the anti-white, anti-male ideologies, movements, and policies of the Establishment. The rebellion is real to these boys, because Establishment “shills” regularly raid these boards in an attempt to “correct the record” and exert influence. And even if there are no shills, the autists themselves will anonymously role-play the enemy, in order to keep the masses in fighting form.
Another tactic being employed is the use of “crowd sourcing” in order to rapidly produce valuable media products which appeal to news agencies and intellectual-types. This is how I was pulled deeper into the rabbit hole very recently while looking for analysis of the Podesta Emails released by Wikileaks. At first I noticed that the so-called “mainstream” news sources seemed remarkably uninterested in reporting the contents of the emails. Being curious, I went to the Wikileaks website but found the volume of emails there overwhelming. But then on Wikileaks’ Twitter feed I saw a link to a Reddit forum that, through crowd sourcing, had already produced a fairly detailed and referenced explanation and analysis of Podesta’s emails. Indeed, they have produced a forum thread for each day’s batch of releases.
After learning what I could about the emails, I started to wonder about the people who produced this work, which at times seemed sloppy and inaccurate, as if purposely done to mislead those who only read the analysis and didn’t bother checking the referenced emails for themselves. The group was called r/The_Donald, and some members were indeed very biased and ungenerous toward the Clinton camp. Though others were more grounded in reality and pointed out some mistakes in the group’s reporting.
Researching this group ultimately enlightened me to the existence of the Alt-Right and more hardcore hangouts like 4chan /pol/. The group says things like, “4chan has weaponized autism, but The Donald has weaponized shitposts.”
A “shitpost” is an insincere social media post intended to shock or disrupt the flow of a conversational thread, and it often carries some sort of Alt-Rightist meme or bread crumb trail leading one deeper into the rabbit hole of racial and sexual politics. The descent seems at first like a free-wheeling slide into a productive, creative, non-PC world where everyone is free to curse and be themselves, no matter how obscene and crude. But eventually it becomes a world where sexist, racist, white male bullies verbally abuse and excommunicate those who refuse to conform. This hardcore socializing happens primarily in the darker corners of the Internet and spreads outward as the memetic warriors grow in number and claim new territory.
These shitposting meme brigaders find easy pickings among two generations of white males whom the New Left and modern Establishment have previously and currently condemned as intrinsically racist and sexist. For decades, these victims of the Establishment have been made ready for the Alt-Right ideology. And they are actively taking on the corrupt government in power–and preparing to replace it with a segregated republic!
As Objectivists, we must actively differentiate ourselves from these despicable race-based collectivists, and all of us must learn how to battle and push back the storm of shitposts and meme trails. For, the shitstorm is already upon us, and it’s already having a devastating impact on the conservatives and Republican Party. Every professional and amateur intellectual should be concerned with accurately assessing the nature, ideas, and actions of the Alt-Right, and critically attacking them with logical and historical arguments.
We should also expect the Left to adopt these tactics too, if they haven’t done so already. It’s going to be one giant shitstorm coming from all directions, and it won’t be confined to the Internet for much longer.