Can the Left Make Memes?

In 2016, during its nineteenth season, South Park framed the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Mr. Garrison -- a proxy for Donald Trump -- as the contest between a turd sandwich and a giant douche. Closer to home, we're reminded of a joke by @bauerbrun about the democratic system as the bland choice between "chicken or pasta" on an airplane.

Faced with a world that is, at the very least, complex and changing, some young people mobilize the restorative reaction of "the West" in spaces like 4Chan. But not all is lost. A Gaulish village -- progressive, leftist, and quasi-Marxist -- resists. Just kidding. On the internet, podcasters, youtubers, and other creatures are flourishing who read, interpret, and propose leftist narratives to the democratic dilemma of the turd and the douche. My favorites: ContraPoints and Chapo Trap House. But it doesn't all stay on the internet. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the first young politician, a daughter of immigrants, to win a seat in the United States Congress in the post-Trump era. Her enemies won't stop accusing her of being a socialist.

Disenchantment with the establishment can also swing left.

ContraPoints

Natalie Wynn is a trans woman who makes YouTube videos. Her channel, ContraPoints, has 438 thousand subscribers and 7,366 Patrons, a platform that allows you to monetize online content. Her most successful video -- where she explains and refutes the argumentative logic of incels -- has 1.7 million views. With a background in philosophy and a clear inclination toward drag, ContraPoints discusses topics related to social justice and adjacent issues with the goal of:

"Providing a counterweight to the hatred toward progressive movements that is so common on the internet. With style, I try to please the audience but I also try to avoid preaching about things most people already agree on. I try to make videos I would want to watch: well-produced, informed, funny, and entertaining."

Her videos are great, her arguments quite solid, and her performances have a level of production high enough to become sought-after content on the web. Viral and leftist is not a common combination. Quite the opposite, in fact. Natalie's main contribution to dismantling right-wing positions like racism or sexism is based on moving beyond the mere position of feeling offended, in order to actually discuss the core: the arguments.

ContraPoints does the work that nobody on the left wants to do: refuting what seems "obvious." Anyone with a background in social sciences, with a completed introductory college course, or with a bit of empathy for other human beings, immediately realizes that the new right often borders on idiocy. It's the dilemma of seriously debating a flat-earther. But the reality is there's no other option. If the debate doesn't happen, the right takes over the explanations of the world.

Someone has to get their feet in the mud. You have to go toe-to-toe with common sense. ContraPoints stepped up, and that's why we love her.

"Political dissent begins with the vague feelings that something is wrong. And a lot of people feel that the way things are isn't working. But the problem with vague feelings is that they can be channeled in any direction. The same anxiety can lead people to communism or fascism, or anything in between. The general feeling among young people is that we were lied to -- and that feeling is perhaps the sharpest among white, middle-class men, who were apparently promised they could be millionaires or movie gods or rock stars. The term 'special snowflake' that's used today as a derogatory for gay teenagers actually comes from the movie Fight Club, where it refers to a generation of white guys who grew up only to realize they're weaker than their dads; that they don't have glamorous jobs; that they don't have girlfriends; and more recently, that in the world of video games their sovereignty is being challenged (...)

The thing is, white dudes are not even wrong that society is screwing them over in some way. The thing is, it's screwing over everybody else even more. So the masculinity of this whole right-wing analysis of society is exactly backwards: dudes, you're not being dominated by a Judeo-feminist conspiracy to turn you into spineless wimps. Cultural Marxism wasn't what turned you into a placid IKEA consumer. That was capitalism."

All I wanna be is El Chapo

Just as ContraPoints thrives on YouTube with a progressive narrative, Chapo Trap House does the same in another format: the podcast.

They met on Twitter posting about the American political landscape. Around 2016, they became a podcast of political commentary and satire; last year they published their own guide to achieving the Revolution (though they recommend you don't buy it). Will Menaker, Matt Christman, Felix Biederman, Amber A'Lee Frost, and Virgil Texas are Chapo Trap House, and they map "the rotten landscape of contemporary American politics and culture, through our scientific ideology of irony, half-baked Marxism, revolutionary discipline, NoFap November, and posting on the internet."

They're on episode 286 and -- with a dynamic that flows through long commentaries on the political landscape, tons of obscure internet references, and the systematic destruction of editorials written by journalists and politicians of all stripes in mainstream media -- they received the blessing of being reviewed by The New Yorker as part of the dirtbag left.

Now they're famous, living off thousands of paid subscriptions to their podcast, though they claim to have lost everything in a bad investment in Bitcoin Dark -- a dodgy cryptocurrency.

And yes, it's from the bottom up:

"We don't know much. But we know this: as long as the liberal opposition to Trump (and whatever nightmare comes after Trump) reveals itself to be incompetent and irresponsible, more and more people are going to realize that you can't patch up a system based on exploitation and infinite economic growth. Socialism will emerge as the only genuine alternative to the gangster, savage, and hopeless capitalist system -- an alternative that actually offers a future; one where there are enough resources to take care of everyone and face Humanity's challenges with a touch of dignity. It's that or we drown in boiling seawater. It's always good to have options."

"America's favorite commie": Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Democratic Socialist congresswoman a la Bernie Sanders from New York, at just 29 years old melts progressive hearts and ignites the fury of Fox News. From a bar/campaign bunker packed with what could be the equivalent of Sunday brunch-goers at a trendy cafe, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist from the Bronx, learns she has just won the Democratic primary to contest the seat for the New York district in the House of Representatives. While going on air for a local TV channel, she recalls her campaign video speech:

"I know that every single person here busted their ass to change the future of the Bronx and Queens. And this victory belongs to every single grassroots organization that worked for this, to every working parent, to every mom, to every grandparent, to every member of the LGBTQ community who worked for this. Each and every one is responsible for this victory."

In 2018, she first won the party primary; then, a seat in the House as the representative for the Bronx and Queens against Republican Anthony Pappas, on the strength of "100% grassroots," zero corporate money, and an agenda that was almost radical for the average American: free college education, free healthcare, and a renewed commitment to environmental protection. Beloved by American progressives and feared by Fox News and CNN. These networks, however, seem to understand what her platform is about better than the Democrats themselves, who are still wondering how Trump beat Hillary.

"This race is about people versus money. We've got people, they've got money. It's time for us to realize that not all Democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, who profits from foreclosed homes, who doesn't send their kids to our schools, who doesn't drink our water or breathe our air cannot represent us. Not even close."

Ocasio-Cortez is the first American leftist politician to win an election post-Trump with an anti-establishment discourse. To the arsenal of skills a politician needs, Trump's election added a new one: becoming a meme.

A few weeks ago, Ocasio was the target of a failed smear campaign. A member of the Republican party mocked a video of her dancing on a rooftop that she had recorded when she was in college. The video went viral, favored Ocasio-Cortez, and turned her into a Twitter celebrity. Additionally, her press team is constantly looking for spaces to create content and generate conversation. Ocasio-Cortez used Twitch -- a video game streaming platform -- to talk about transgender rights. It's common for at least one thread about her to appear on 4chan every week. If the mountain won't go to Muhammad...

Culture War

The culture war is back. And in token form.

Broadly speaking, the culture war is understood as the struggle between two ideologies to install a hegemonic -- single or at least majority -- explanation of how the world works. It's within that framework that the comment above makes sense. After many years of being sidelined in the cultural arena, the right did its homework, read Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, and realized that if it wanted to survive, it couldn't stay silent.

In that key, for them, the 2016 elections were a culture war where they deployed their most feared arsenal: memes. The election result was taken as a victory for the conservative axis and a reaffirmation of the importance of fighting on the battlefield of discourse.

The Left Can't Meme

It's been almost two articles talking about memes and I still haven't given a clear definition. A meme is not just a funny internet image made in Paint. The first time I encountered the definition of meme was in a text by analytical philosopher Daniel Dennett, who in turn cites biologist Richard Dawkins. According to Dennett's interpretation, memes can be ideas, objects, or events with a high capacity for self-replication and for withstanding the selective pressure of the cultural environment. This means that each meme "fights" against other memes to capture the attention of agents and then replicate. The wheel, for example. The wheel is an invention and at the same time its own transmitter of the idea of wheel. Each wheel is an object with a certain utility and at the same time a vector for its own meme. And memes compete with each other, in culture, to replicate and ensure their existence over time. They can be a video, a phrase, a photo. Whatever comes.

The meme above has a point. Right-wing memes are effective. They work on common sense, reinforce stereotypes, and can be aggressive. When it comes to making jokes, they have it easier. The left is at a disadvantage. There is an asymmetry of length between common sense and its critique. It's easier to replicate common sense -- which is generally conservative -- than to sketch out a critique. But today, that ability to synthesize in order to explain and transmit content is critical.

Chapo, ContraPoints, and AOC are proof that it's possible to break that asymmetry. It is possible, and urgent, to create viral progressive content. The role it plays in public discourse and, therefore, in politics largely depends on it.

Ultimately, it's about the struggle to install a narrative. Conservatives updated quickly and used all the disenchantment with the political system to serve their interests. Now the left, progressivism, has to recover ground and offer an alternative to the establishment from the left. That means with everyone included: immigrants, trans people, the poor, and the declassed. A front against racism and hatred.

The key lies in the magic of memes.