Memetic Warfare in the Trumpian infosphere

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Warning: the images in this article have been converted to low quality and marked with the “violent content” watermark to prevent further dissemination for propaganda purposes. They are submitted to the readers of Formiche.net for them to visualize the phenomenon object of the scientific study conducted by Prof. Antinori. We selected the least shocking and violent ones (so you can imagine the rest).

[The first chapter can be found here]

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2. TRUMPIAN INFOSPHERE AND MEMETIC WARFARE

The Trumpian infosphere is a peculiar environment of social interconnection, operating at the political, social and cultural levels. It deals in the extremist-violent distortion of reality of the para-military, anarcho-insurrectionist, supremacist, conspiratorial and magical variety, and its connective tissue consists of hatred and violence.

Pepe The Frog wears the MAGA red cap while, driving a tank, sows destruction. The war for America has just begun!, it is claimed in one meme, adding in another that it was chosen to insult the Dems not because it is easy, but funny, also specifying that the Dems’ main error of assessment was to victimize mild people to the breaking point, turning them into angry militant strategists. They also share the view that, in having to choose between eco-socialism and the collapse of human civilisation, there is no doubt, better self-destruction.

The extremist-violent essence of the pro-Trump movement describes a connective movement reminiscent of the Popperian “closed society” that resembles a flock or tribe (…) clings to its magical forms by closing in on itself.”

Here, Memetic Warfare campaigns take place through the repeated use of stereotypes to tailor ironic, satirical narratives in which humor actually implies a deflagrant ferocity and hatred. It is therefore highlighted the centrality of emotional communication through social media, also in the structuring of community meta-languages, with the aim of influencing the emotional, cognitive and behavioral processes of individual subjects, while mitigating negative processes at the in-group level, for the purpose of strengthening identity belonging.

The actors of pro-Trump violent extremism seem to have treasured the Russian theory of hybrid warfare, particularly with regard to the purpose of introducing geopolitical disorder into American domestic activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremists, racists , and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the United States.

In the action-representation of contemporary terrorism and violent extremism, creativity and self-ism have fostered the progressive performative characterization of destructive action, as widely documented in the assault on Capitol Hill.

Memes are rooted in American pop culture, especially TV, comics and cinema, as is the case of Star Wars. Some openly make fun of everything that is an expression of Dem inferiority. Weapons, an integral part of US culture, are at the heart of extremist-violent memetics. Gun rights activism takes on increasingly violent and revolting tones, to the point of identifying itself with gun rights extremism. Armed competition with the State for the monopoly of violence is upheld, and the caption that reads life has many doors, Fed Boi commemorates the victims of the Capitol Hill assault and hints at avenging their deaths by attacking the Federals.

It is a war of iconic-ironic symbolic narratives, in which the insult conveyed through the meme also useful to drive out opponents. Its aim is to influence social behavior, promote identity recognition, and encourage public opinion to react, also through memes in which the America First flag is often placed next to the Nazi one, in selfies of militiamen who show themselves armed, but with their faces covered.

Altering reality is one of the key words of pro-Trump violent extremism, thus the Russian broadcaster RT’s social media posts, reporting on the construction of a detention camp in Dresden, are “bounced off” and partly memified. The detention camp in Dresden is the place in which the German government intends to deport COVID-dissidents. At the same time anti-Semitic memetics made up of cartoonized stereotypes, tries to open up other lines of disinformation attack, thematicizing the pandemic. An example could be the facial paralysis that would affect some Israeli citizens following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine.

All this happens thanks to a community of pro-Trump memetic warriors, composed of suggestive characters such as the self-styled head of the Crypto-Reich Eugenics Program which, in an incessant production of memes celebrating genocide in history and their sponsors, from Hitler to Mao Zedong, from Stalin to Polpot, threatens the same epilogue for “the people included in the list” – as the many infographics bearing Trump’s list of opponents in various ways are generically defined, with related personal data and/or professional profile – while the Socialists are reserved a mousetrap ready to crush them. The list of politicians and businessmen who should not be trusted because they have dual US and Israeli citizenship is published and shared, and meanwhile Fuhrer Friday is celebrated by praising the Holocaust. “1776.2” is the number that, along with the #civilwarII hashtag, recalls the advent of a new civil revolution, reiterating that it is much closer than it seems.

Everyone was sarcastically invited to prepare pop-corn for the show of pedophile Biden’s settlement, alluding to the possibility that there might be unpleasant surprises. The proliferation of direct communications, by means of shared flyers, and indirect through threatening memes, related to the multiplication of armed marches, concretely represented an articulated operation of digital swatting through the saturation of false flags, as confirmed in the days following the event by the Trump Digital Soldiers themselves.

Attacks on Dem personalities come in quick succession. Vice President Harris is labeled drunk, with images of an office full of booze, or as the Jamaican caregiver of the old white man Biden. Harris also turns out to be the main target of sexist memes that transform her in various ways into a sexual object. At the same time, Nancy Pelosi is transformed into a Joker, while Hillary Clinton is threatened with death, because there is a noose waiting for her.

According to these memes, we are at the sunset of the Union. The triad made up of Dems, media and tech companies is implementing an articulated plan, which includes the repression of freedom of expression, the blacklisting of undesirables, the introduction of new “anti-terrorism” laws, the seizure of weapons, the transformation of universities into re-education and concentration camps, and even the genocide of the undesirables. A meme with the image of a forearm with numbered stamps on it reminds us that in Venezuela people queuing in supermarkets are stamped; this is what will happen under President Biden, who will lead the US into a Venezuela 2.0 scenario until China takes full control of the States.

The language of populist degeneration is ironic, communication is anxious. This is the communicative tenor and the contents of the pro-Trump victimistic-catastrophist memetics that ironically offers the comparison between the fire and destructions occurred during some Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations, defined as peaceful protests by the media, and the photos of the insurgents sitting in the rooms of Congress, labeled as terrorists by the press.

President Biden is portrayed as a dictator or a terrorist who is arrested and handcuffed by a US soldier with the face of Trump.

Self-victimization, as an identity expression of the Trumpian people subjugated by Obey Biden, emerges above all among conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers, where the narratives are intended to trigger the toughest reaction against the censorship regime. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is the traitor who stabbed Trump in the back in the middle of the electoral tussle. Thus, the presidential election and its outcome become the Grand Theft Election in the pro-Trump memetic gamification, the biggest scam in history, which will lead to a reaction of unimaginable magnitude. In fact, memes are decorated with eagles, runes and other Nazi symbols, SS corps on parade with gas masks are labelled as Rebels and we are reminded that the Storm is coming! All this while Pepe the Frog affirms that multiculturalism is like genocide, and feminism is cancer. In the memetic illusion, the plans get confused, the emotions ignite, transcend, are shared, socialized.

It is precisely these emotions, from the beginning, that “support” the imagery of the MAGA movement which, after the election result, progressively strengthened the personalization campaign around Trump, through memes characterized by a certain mysticism. Here biblical iconography blends with video game screenshots to symbolically represent the manichean conflict in progress, which will end with Trump’s final victory over Evil.

Memes and merchandising are two functional elements to group identity. The coin with the effigy of Trump is sold while Biden is mocked through the graphic creation of a Zero Cents coin with his face. The delegitimization of the new President has just begun.

Meanwhile, the memetic wave hits the media because the radical fake news socialists and Big Tech have stolen the elections. After Twitter’s deplatforming at the expense of the extremist pro-Trump community, the hatred towards digital platforms and the media system, more generally, grows. Twitter, YouTube, Google and Facebook are represented as the Axis of Evil. After Parler closure, the Boycott Big Tech slogan was widely memified. The stars of the Chinese flag are replaced by the Twitter birds – the derision on this front is constant –, along with the claim to leave the platform and migrate to Parler and Gab, as represented in the famous meme in which a car on the Twitter highway swerves at the last moment to take the Parler exit.

One may end up with the perception of living in a world where the CEOs of Big Tech companies are Nazi hierarchs who plot behind people’s back. The Nazis used to call it “information control.” Today, they call it “fact checking” is one of the most used slogans. Moreover, another question arises: if Big Tech shut down platforms, apps and sites, why do we still have to allow Child Porn?

As for the deplatforming, one has to clarify that, inasmuch it contributes to the mitigation of the threat in the short term, at least at an organizational and tactical-operational level, there is consensus on the fact that it is ultimately not a useful tool for the containment and/or neutralization of the threat in the medium-to-long term. This is because deplatforming generates a migration and repositioning within one or more social platforms, strengthening group identity and cohesion in the identification as a community of the rejected. Furthermore, this censorship infuses Memetic Warfare with new argumentative force, allowing further dissemination for the purposes of assimilation and testimony of pre-existing false conjectures and conspiracies. Finally, it can facilitate what I call “frogging,” namely literally jumping from platform to platform – like a frog in the pond from one water lily leaf to another – creating distracting trajectories through hybrid modes of communication. A few examples include the integration of in-game chatting and microblogging, imageboarding and live streaming, or cross-chatting. In this regard, it should be noted that, in a less sophisticated way, these methods of distraction are already used by organized crime and terroristic groups.

 

End of the second part. Next chapter: “Memetic Policefalia”