Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

“Pepe the frog, the greedy merchant and #stopthesteal”: A comparative study of discursive and memetic communication on Twitter and 4chan/pol during the insurrection on the US Capitol, by Andrey Kasimov, Regan Johnston, and Tej Heer.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

"A style guide on the Neo-Nazi community The Daily Stormer directs its members to “always hijack existing cultural memes in any way possible [because] packing our message inside of existing cultural memes and humour can be viewed as a delivery method."

"Members are encouraged to carefully encode Nazi messages into viral memes with the agenda of normalizing these ideas within the public discourse. Online far-right communities such as 4chan/pol, 8chan, & Gab often act as a testing ground for these memes before they are deployed".

"4chan/pol, for example, often acts as a space of recruitment and mobilization of online memetic antagonism where users are provided with memes carrying pro-Nazi messages and encouraged to spread the memes on other social media platforms."

"While this has been an effective strategy at spreading far-right messages to larger audiences, platforms like @Twitter do have anti-discrimination policies put in place that allow them to remove text and images that are classified as hate speech."

As a way to get around this, some users have opted to “hide in plain sight” on mainstream social media platforms through the use of dog-whistles such as the triple parenthesis meme (((they))) that carries an explicitly anti-Semitic message ."

"The use of such memes allows those “in the know” to flex their insider status & actively discuss racist ideas, while avoiding censorship. These memes also provide exposure to their ideas by gaining the attention of curious users, who then go to search for what the meme means".

"Alternatively, the use of memes by groups such as the Proud Boys focuses on equating organizations such as Black Lives Matter to the KKK or the Nazis, by presenting them all as hate groups."

"In this way, the Proud Boys use memes to simultaneously legitimize themselves by distancing themselves from Nazis while also disseminating racist and misogynist messages from what they claim is their true political centre."

"The cultural significance of certain memes (Pepe the Frog is not just a kid’s cartoon but also constitutes part of the collective avatar of 4chan/pol) is crucial to the understanding of how memes are used during large-scale movement events like the 6 January 2021 insurrection."

Bundling Pepe: meme, medium, and message.

"4chan/pol users predominantly used the platform to build and maintain identity. One of the ways this was accomplished on 4chan/pol was through using memes to employ a “specific semiotic construction”."

"Under this linguistic conceptualization, 4chan/pol users employed memes for the specific purpose to delineate an “us” and a “them” narrative. The most prevalent meme used to identify one as an insider was Pepe the Frog."

"The appropriation of the Pepe the Frog meme by far-right groups led to it being declared a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League in 2016. However, the Anti-Defamation League have since then acknowledged the interpretation of the meme as a hate symbol is context dependent."

"The meaning of the Pepe meme and how it is used, is in a constant state of renegotiation and repurposing, and is much better understood in relation to the time and place it is used in. In relation to January 6th insurrection, Pepe was used in wide-ranging ways."

"The most common was to react to the news about the insurrection and pose questions about its meaning and repercussions on US politics. As such, Pepe was used to position some 4chan/pol users as neutral bystanders who were there to “enjoy the show” from the sidelines."

"However, Pepe the Frog was also repurposed to depict fascism, anti-Black racism, and to incite violence against people of colour."

"While the Pepe meme remained the most popular symbol of identity before and after the insurrection, posts after the insurrection were also more likely to use memes of Nazi and fascist imagery in conjunction and interchangeably with Pepe."

"In other words, such memes facilitated a gradual transition into more radical identity that was facilitated by a progression from regular Pepe, to Patriotic Pepe to fascist Pepe and the establishment of 4chan/pol as a Nazi-friendly space."

"Memes that were used to incite mobilization on 4chan/pol either depicted direct violence against the “other” or used appeals to authority to urge others to participate in a civil war."

"Users repurposed themes of crusades to incite violence against anyone who was not White & therefore “sub-human.” Pepe was used to spark conversations about “race realism”—a White supremacist philosophy—with a meme that pictured a violent mob of Pepe’s attacking Black people."

"Finally, memes were also used to valorize those who took part in the insurrection and were either hurt or killed in action.

The process of this type of radicalization seems to function as follows:

(1) Pepe is bundled into memes that acknowledge individual or collective grievances to help an individual identify with Pepe;

(2) Pepe is re-bundled with Nazi & fascist imagery so that the individual now identifies or is sympathetic to fascism; and

(3) Pepe is replaced by the individual who is reintroduced as a “hero” or a “saint” once they have taken part in a far-right cause.

Twitter was effective at mobilizing users into storming the Capitol, but was less effective at keeping users engaged once the insurrection failed.

"While before and during the insurrection, Twitter users identified themselves as freedom loving patriots, for some this identity seemed to shift to apologists for Donald Trump after the insurrection had failed."

"This shift in sentiment signaled an implicit agreement with the notion that the insurrection was unconstitutional and served the purpose of damage control for the president who was being heavily criticized for encouraging the insurrection."

One person tweeted, “the president did not incite the violence at the Capitol, change my mind. But you won’t . . . your opinions mean nothing!” Memes in support of Donald Trump no longer spoke of freedom and the constitution but instead focused on loyalty to the president."

There was also a shift in who was targeted as the “other” in memes posted after the insurrection. While Trump supporters maintained their antagonization of the Democrats, a significant number also shifted their focus on Mike Pence and the “traitorous” Republican party...

...as well as the (then) heads of social media companies such as Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

"The former were deemed responsible for the failed attempt of the Capitol Hill protestors to prolong the presidency of Donald Trump and the latter were painted as enemies of free speech for allegedly censoring both Trump and #stopthesteal content from their platforms."

"Some supporters of Donald Trump distanced themselves from the insurrection via conspiracy theories that the Insurrection was staged to make Republicans look bad."

The most common pro-Trump criticism of the Insurrection on Twitter was the conspiracy theory that it was in fact ANTIFA masquerading as Trump supporters who have invaded the capitol: “Facebook censored a news clip reporting how Antifa infiltrated the #StopTheSteal rally.”

"This demonstrates that while Twitter was useful for funnelling users toward a single goal such as storming the Capitol, once the insurrection was deemed a failure, participants had a hard time agreeing on who to blame and what to do next."

"The lack of a single, agreed-upon scapegoat led #stopthesteal supporters to argue among one another while being heavily criticized by opponents. This illustrates the limitations of Twitter as a platform for mobilization once the fervor of the previous days’ events tapered out."

"Unlike Twitter, the insidious capacity of 4chan/pol/ to recruit and radicalize users became apparent in the days after the insurrection."

"Far-right groups on 4chan/pol/ capitalized on the aftermath of the failed insurrection to channel the anger and disappointment of divided Trump supporters toward a new target through the help of the anti-Semitic angry merchant meme."

"In contrast to Pepe the frog, the merchant meme depicting an anti-Semitic caricature of a Jewish merchant was used to identify the US government (including Donald Trump) as the enemy because of their alleged allegiance to Israel."

"The greedy merchant meme was used both before & after the insurrection as a way to focus the antagonism of the platform’s users on a single enemy (Jewish people) & their allies (People of Colour, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered & Questioning [LGBTQ] community, etc.)."

"As such, it was deployed pre-emptively for the purposes of radicalizing Trump supporters should they find themselves in a position of weakness such as the one shortly after the insurrection."

"These findings demonstrate that despite the lack of ideological uniformity among users on 4chan/pol, the generalized tendency toward White supremacy allows for this meme to be adapted and used ubiquitously on the board."

"Memes were used to depict the greedy merchant’s agenda to take over the world and oppress White people and culture. After the insurrection, the greedy merchant meme was used in conjunction with Donald Trump’s supporter’’ failed bid to overturn the election results."

"The insurrection and its supporters were criticized because it was viewed as ultimately detrimental to the far-right cause. Depictions of Donald Trump aligning himself with a Jewish conspiracy to control the United States were commonplace (see Figure 11)."

Mobilization posts and memes took a more direct approach with one user stating “Americans it’s over. You will never have another Republican president. The last chance is a civil war.”

"The strategic deployment of greedy merchant memes benefitted from on 4chan/pol’s unregulated structure where racist and hateful speech and imagery are not banned like on Twitter."

This allowed 4chan/pol the opportunity to recruit & radicalize disgruntled Trump supporters eager to continue their crusade to make America great again. As one 4chan/pol user stated:

"All of you wignat fucking morons laughing at “MIGAPEDE” because they are stupid is an enemy."

"There's nothing to gain from demoralizing Trump supporters. We should be channelling their anger & double down “the ‘revoluti’nary” spirit. Imagine calling yourself an accelerationist while simultaneously trying to cull the flame of MAGA people."

"Yes they are stupid but they are also the best weapon against a corrupt government."

This statement was accompanied by a meme of a Nazi soldier.

Thus, far-right aligned 4chan/pol users took advantage of the Overton Window of the insurrection to spread fascism, anti-Black racism, and anti-Semitism along with targeting people of colour and Muslims.

"While the present study is merely a snapshot of online far-right communication styles, it sheds important light on how differently regulated platforms and offline events influence memetic and discursive practices on the Internet."

"Findings build on research that has revealed how platforms such as Twitter are used for the production and dissemination of far-right memes and discourse during large-scale mobilization events (Wiggins, 2021)."
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117…

"Unlike past research that has only considered a single platform at a time, we identified important platform-based differences in the use of memes. While Twitter was the preferred platform when it came to mobilization, the scope of this mobilization was narrower than 4chan/pol."

"Few tweets used the #stopthesteal hashtag in conjunction with memes to recruit or mobilize users for any other causes but to support Trump’s presidency. 4chan/pol users capitalized on the insurrection to recruit & mobilize users into far-right causes such as antisemitic racism."

"Memes on 4chan/pol also heavily contributed to the conspiracy-laden identity discourse through the mainstreaming of far-right ideology by bundling it with humour, appeals to authority and pseudo-science that worked to “other” racialized and Jewish people."

"Findings also suggest that platforms like 4chan/pol lack ideological coherence where context is often just as crucial to the interpretation of discourse as the content."

"However, the opportunistic attempts to radicalize users toward a generalized far-right ideology in the wake of a failed coup, mean that /pol/ continues to play a dangerous role long after Twitter becomes #ouroboric to the users who depend on it for mobilization."

"The study has demonstrated that Twitter and 4chan/pol serve somewhat different but complementary functions in the overarching far-right online ecosystem. However, terminology on 4chan/pol user posts evolves quickly, creating challenges when analyzing intent."