Epstein & 4chan

As is well known, the documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the Epstein case reveal that both he and his partner were closely linked to 4chan and Reddit. Two of the most influential spaces for online political discussions that largely shaped the "public discourse" on the internet about politics in general.

In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, what was uncovered through the search of his emails is that he had a close relationship with Christopher Poole, alias "Moot," the creator of 4chan, and that after coming into contact with him, Moot created the now-infamous board /pol. The quintessential unmoderated political discussion space on the internet.

The tweet suggests that the creation of /pol is a direct influence from Epstein (which wouldn’t be surprising) and that therefore everything that happened on /pol would be a direct consequence of an operation by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies, given Epstein's connections to the intelligence community and the suspicion that he worked for the CIA and Mossad.

While these links are difficult to prove with concrete evidence due to the very nature of intelligence work, one doesn’t need to be particularly astute to understand that a character like Epstein, with the activities he was involved in (human trafficking and sexual exploitation of minors) and the figures surrounding him, from Bill Gates to Donald Trump, including Noam Chomsky and the creators of Google, could not be outside the operational scope of the most important intelligence agencies on the planet.

On the other hand, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was his partner and accomplice in his criminal activities, also played a significant role in online discussions, but this time on Reddit, much more associated with the wing known in the U.S. as liberal (what we would call progressives here).

In light of both "revelations" (which are more like hints or suspicions), the debate online revolved around how all the extreme right movements, neo-Nazis, and reactionaries that emerged from the combined ideology of /pol were a form of astroturfing by the Mossad and/or the CIA. Regardless of whether it was true or not, the leverage it brought to the online discussion is crystal clear, and no one can claim a lack of rigor, fact-checking, or honest discussion here, when those characteristics of online discourse were crushed by the hypermemetic train at least ten years ago.

Coincidentally, the least surprised were those oldfags who had inhabited /pol for ages, fully aware that it was, in one way or another, a honeypot. Although back then, the main target was the FBI.

4chan and me

The relationship between online culture, memes as a form of native expression, the correlation between radicalization and online culture, and memetic radicalization is a topic that has been explored for quite some time. In fact, and that’s why I’m writing this article, it’s the first article of my career that did very well and led me, in one way or another, to end up publishing a book on the subject.

Despite having originally published it on Medium and later moving it to Substack, it now rests peacefully on 421. The little article to which I owe everything. Of course, the article itself wasn’t groundbreaking; it was actually published in early 2019 when the now-classic book by Angela Nagel "Kill All Normies" had been around for about two years. The trick of that article was to translate that novelty into Spanish and highlight the potential danger of an expansion of that modus operandi in gaucho lands. Something that ultimately happened.

But the relationship between memetics and politics had already been highlighted years earlier. The most important book on the subject is credited to Limor Shifman from the University of Jerusalem (lol), who published her seminal "Memes in Digital Culture" in 2013. This was well before GamerGate and was more focused on the Obama phenomenon and Occupy Wall Street. Limor Shifman’s titanic task was to translate the fallen-from-grace concept of meme as it had evolved up to the early 2000s into the burgeoning digital culture. For those interested in the history of the evolution of that concept in the academic field, I seriously recommend reading "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore.

As a result of my article for 4chan, I became a reference on the subject, but mainly because there were no "journalists" or similar figures addressing it in Argentina. And while there were surely academic works on the subject by then, the link between academia and the media was still strange. Experts find it harder to reach the media, and the media rarely seeks out "experts." In this hybrid of being a fat reader and knowing how to write somewhat (and being validated by the media system having written for a newspaper), I became part of the consultation menu. Thus, I expanded the original article in the magazine nueva sociedad, adding a bit more conceptual apparatus, and later in the same outlet, I ended up writing about Qanon and memes

By the end of 2019, the best book on the subject was released, which I believe is the most comprehensive research on 4chan and its surroundings, titled "It Came from Something Awful" that recounts the entire origin story of 4chan, its creator, and puts forth a very interesting hypothesis on how this entire culture is the culmination of the classic American nihilistic countercultural movement.

In parallel, radicalization, manifestos, and shootings by the far right continued. Brenton Tarrant's manifesto was the most significant, closely mirroring that of Anders Breivik in Utoya. I also wrote about this and found a small unexplored gap, which was the relationship between memes and explicit political violence. Thanks to my connection with Pablo Stefanoni, editor of Nueva Sociedad, I tried to convince that year that there was a book to be written for the Siglo XXI publishing house, but it didn’t happen.

Just when it seemed like the topic was dead, Sabag Montiel emerged with his black sun tattoo, his involvement in fringe forums, his leanings towards hyperbolic wisdom, possession of child abuse material, and his assassination attempt on CFK. At that point, Paidós called me and asked for a book that by now was a no-brainer. A book that, if all goes well, should be back in bookstores this week or next (I rolled the dice and got a 20 on timing). The book, in summary, is the culmination of several years writing about the same subject, following a topic until it becomes relevant for the publishing market, translating an Anglo discussion into Spanish, and trying to make a small, focused contribution on the matter.

Is /pol a psyop?

The question everyone is asking now about the possibility that /pol is part of a "larger" scheme responding to psychological warfare needs from the United States, Israel, or their allies has been in the air for quite some time. In fact, the very suspicion among its users that somehow 4chan was collaborating with the government was based on the simple idea of "why is this crap still online" when everyone already knows what the hell is going on inside.

Last year, when 4chan was hacked, it came to light that half of the site's traffic was coming from Israel. I know closely the story of someone whose sister was a regular on /pol and ended up recruited by the IDF. But beyond the anecdotal "evidence," the relationship between memetics, psyops, and the instrumentalization of public discourse has a long history. There has been military literature on the "growing memetic industry in the military realm" since 2006. The relationship between memes, marketing, and psyops has been extensively explored. One only needs to review reports from the Rand corporation (one of the most important think tanks in the US military sector) on "narrative control" or those from the Institute for the Study of War on the Russo-Ukrainian war and the role of memetics in "narrative control" or the "operational field of cognitive warfare."

Which brings us back to the question that opens this section. The links between Epstein and Moot make the relationship and interest between /pol and power circles more evident. However, this fact completes something that has always been there in the form of practice, intuition, or academic research: a consolidated group of users creating, sharing, and remixing memes 24/7, anonymously, discussing and fighting for the attention of their peers, can become a node that feeds the entire internet with their meme-ideas. In the case of /pol, the absence of moderation (or rather, it being almost nonexistent) is what allowed those kinds of ideas to flourish. The case of Reddit, for example, can also be considered, as the more "progressive" wing (though in Argentina it's almost entirely libertarian) is a product of higher levels of moderation.

Something similar happened on the former Twitter, now X. When moderation was strong, there wasn't much room for more radicalized discourses or chan-like practices (threats, doxxing, blah blah blah), whereas since Elon Musk took over the platform and eliminated almost any type of moderation, there has been a notable shift to the right. One only needs to look at the memetic rise of devox_posting, for example.

Weaponized Retards

Reading the current site administrators, it's hard to believe that they themselves are part of some kind of intelligence organization or have ties to agencies. 4chan continues to exist largely due to the support its community provides. It's obvious that if they were, they wouldn't confess it. But on the other hand, it's not even necessary. That's the trick.

Epstein's relationships were always "above board." He was linked with Moot before he sold the site and went to Google (was it Epstein's management?), and he also had a VERY close relationship with Steve Bannon, one of the key players in the rise of the "new" right to power in the United States. In fact, the relationship with Bannon is quite interesting and perhaps even more revealing than his relationship with the creator of 4chan. The idea that makes the most sense to me for now is that Epstein was a sort of "fixer" with a blank check from the most important agencies on the planet.

But what we're getting at is that you don't need to know you're part of the conspiracy to be inside it. Hence the term astroturfing, which basically explains how a community can believe it's doing something "organically" when in reality it's being used, instrumentalized, or weaponized. And how this practice is much more effective on people who have no idea, on idiots, or as we call them in internet jargon, retards. It's much more convenient for those in charge of 4chan not to know they're being weaponized. The weaponization has always been in plain sight for those with eyes to see.

Radicalization through memes or propaganda knows no borders. In fact, the first cases studied are more related to Islamic extremism, recruitment through propaganda, and violence as a memetic weapon in the case of ISIS (hello CIA). We can also think of cases like Luigi Magione or the murder of Charlie Kirk as correlates within this trend. Both shooters being very clear products of internet culture.

Anyway, this is just another new chapter in a saga that I always thought would have a short life but somehow keeps forcing me to write about it over and over.

"when you think your job is the worst shit, think of Juan Ruocco who has to talk about memes, democracy in danger and wrap up with What is a Psyop all his life until death or retirement or whatever comes first at basic units and book fairs during the critical semiotics days at the Communication faculty of Tero Cogido...".