In A Cowslip's Bell I Lie

(Trump’s billionaire ally has helped normalise toxic and cynical political views that had lurked for years on online fringes.)

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In the past few days, US media have been reporting that billionaire Elon Musk will step back from his leading role in President Donald Trump’s administration.

This is after his highly publicised stint as unofficial head of the nongovernmental agency DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and various political initiatives – most recently, his campaign for the election of a conservative judge to a vacated Supreme Court seat in the state of Wisconsin – backfired.

How and when Musk will make his exit remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: He will leave behind lasting damage that goes way beyond the disruptive work of his invention, DOGE.

Through his behaviour online and offline, Musk has introduced incredibly toxic and cynical politics from the obscure fringes of the internet into the chambers of power in the world’s foremost superpower.

His Nazi gesture at an event following Trump’s inauguration on January 20 was a perfect illustration. Musk immediately weighed in on the accusation that he made a Nazi salute with a mix of denial and humour, making a slew of Nazi-themed jokes on his X account.

Doing something outrageous and then denying the obvious is a clear case of “trolling” – a favourite practice in fringe internet spaces where toxic and cynical political views dominate.

Among them is an infamous website called 4chan, which Musk is believed to frequent. Just at the start of this year, he decided to change his X account name to “Kekius Maximus” and his profile picture to a Pepe the Frog image – memes taken straight from 4chan. He has also openly referred to the site on his X account.

Although many have heard of the website 4chan, there is still very little public understanding of what it is and how it is connected to the rise of the far right in the US.

Simply put, it is a website where people can share text and image messages anonymously with no registration or login for users. It is a space for discussions, humour and the creation of an online community. Founded in 2003, 4chan reached 8.2 million visitors monthly in 2010 and 22 million in 2021.

Due to the anonymous cover afforded by the website’s structure, users feel confident to express problematic and fringe political views usually mixed with a veil of humour. This irony-laden form of political expression has come to define the website. Often you would see racist, sexist and/or homophobic slurs posed as jokes. Anyone who calls these out is mocked even further for their naivety or sincerity.

The disclaimer under the main forum on 4Chan, /b/, states: “The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.”

This is exactly why journalists and commentators who took Musk’s denial of his Nazi salute at face value completely missed the point. To those far-right fans of Musk, the appeal of his actions was in fact reinforced by the very denial, by the fact that he did a fascist gesture so brazenly and then “got away with it”.

Musk engaged in a transgressive act against what he describes as the “woke mind virus” or more traditionally “PC [political correctness] culture”. By adding humour to the equation, Musk and his fans were able to further obfuscate and derail any serious discussion about the implications of normalising Nazi symbols.

All of this is the primary function of “trolling”. Posed as merely a form of play, a way of pushing people’s buttons “for the lolz” (laughs), far-right actors are able to use this technique to shift the Overton window – or the range of acceptable terms or opinions – to the right.

Immediately after Musk’s salute, far-right figures such as Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, mimicked the same salute and used the same distancing excuses that Musk employed. These are people who have gained tremendous amounts of social and political capital through online subcultures.

However, it is not only the far right that employs memes and other expressions developed online to further its political goals. In fact, some may argue that these subcultures emerged as a response to what is described as the “memefication” of politics.

In her book Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right, Angela Nagle traces the origins of these subcultures to the US election cycle of 2008. Many will remember the “Hope” posters of Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, which went viral across the internet. To Nagle, this was a crucial turning point in the use of memes, which at that point were a fresh and exciting new medium, in US politics.

Despite the rhetoric of hope and change, the Obama administration did not deliver on its vague, utopian promises. This mismatch between the messaging and the reality spurred online debates that promoted mistrust as a healthy response to the insincerity of the political class.

Thereafter, on 4chan and other platforms, anyone who expressed strong support for any one party, cause or movement became the object of ridicule. This essentially formed a type of cynical, nihilistic view of the world and our place in it.

Fast forward to the 2024 election cycle, these dynamics were very much present again. Kamala Harris’s campaign relied on a rebranding of the Obama campaign and used the same empty memes, instead of focusing on policy or anything else rooted in reality. Not only did she rely heavily on celebrity endorsements, but also had her X account banner written with the same font and colour as the “brat” meme, a trend inspired by pop star Charli XCX’s Brat album cover.

The liberal political establishment in the US, which has further revealed its deep flaws over the past year and a half with its disregard for the struggles of poor Americans and triumphalist support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, has not learned the lessons of the past decade and a half. Relying on hollow messaging while issues compound for most Americans – from skyrocketing inflation to growing inequality to climate collapse – does not invigorate voters.

Politics is not simply a meme battle. This is a lesson that should also be heeded by the wider public, especially those who re-shared the infamous Musk salute as a form of satire or ridicule. Even though many may have believed they were disparaging him by adding insults or jokes to it, in fact, they helped spread and legitimise the act itself as a spectacle.

It is time to acknowledge that we cannot meme our way out of fascism. The only way to defeat fascist trolls is to refuse to enter the arena, to refuse to play on their terms. That is, to insist on grounding discussions and actions in reality, to reject any of their obfuscations and to build actual (offline) power to resist the rise of the far right.

It is definitely no easy task, especially when the far right has entered the highest chambers of power in the US and has made strong gains in South America and Europe. The marriage of far-right discourse and symbolism matched with an unprecedented capture of wealth by the billionaire class and the rising authoritarianism within these countries has thrown many into hopelessness and despair.