A Normie's Guide to the Dissident Right - Part 3 - 2015 & 2016: The Alt Right, Trump, The Great Meme War

A Normie’s Guide to the Dissident Right

& the Culture War Era

Trigger Warning

If an entire book could be written about GamerGate, an entire library could be written about the Trump Presidential Campaign in 2016. As with GamerGate, I will not be giving a play by play of the entire campaign. I will be forced to leave out many memorable and important moments.

Also, a slight warning for my normie audience, you might call it a trigger warning. This is a chapter in which some of the most offensive, racist, anti-Semitic and explicitly Nazi content will appear. I try to explain at length the historical context in which it occurred, and the importance the use of this shock humor.

While my beliefs had already been influenced by /pol/ by this time, I would only consider myself to be something like half-redpilled. I entertained the ideas I read about on 4chan and found them fascinating, but I was unsure whether to believe them or not and I certainly did not hold them with conviction. I never accepted wholly white nationalist or neo-Nazi beliefs, but I did believe that the Alt Right held within it some valid critiques of liberalism.

Some people would recognize these valid critiques (the kernel of truth from within the chaotic explosion of the Alt Right) and develop them, thus influencing the Dissident Right of today. Others simply moved away and abandoned the movement after it stopped being about lulz and trolling SJWs and matured into a real political movement, dropping the shocking Nazi imagery and shock humor but retaining far-right anti-establishment ideas.

I don’t mean to brag, but I predicted all of this in 2016. I remember being invited into my Leftist friend’s groupchats in 2016. All of them, of course, predicted that Trump was going to be the next Hitler. Not being aware of my real views and assuming I was on their side (given my socially liberal libertarian lifestyle at the time: drugs, parties, etc.) they invited me to these groupchats where they would feed off of each other’s paranoia and grow increasingly hysterical. My response was simply this: “the Alt Lite is more important than the Alt Right.”

“The Alt Lite” referred to a faction within the Alt Right that was more moderate, classically liberal, and much more akin to the larger anti-SJW trend than the /pol/-dominated Alt Right, which by this time involved genuine white nationalists such as Mike Enoch, Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin among the trolls. My logic was simply as follows.

Prediction 1: Trump would not become Hitler

1. America was already almost 50% non-white.

2. Therefore, even if you wanted to turn America into a white ethnostate, its demographics simply made it logistically impossible to do so. People might be willing to post a racist Pepe the Frog meme, but the majority of them would not be willing to comply with oppressing their own friends and relatives.

3. Therefore, it was impossible for white nationalism to ever become a reality in America in 2016.

Prediction 2: The Alt Lite would become mainstream, but the Alt Right would not

1. Unless the Internet was totally censored and shut down, Chinese style, the Streisand effect meant that Alt Right ideas would continue to spread and become mainstream (I never thought that that could happen to the Internet, but it began to happen just one year later).

2. However, as these ideas spread, they would become diluted and less extreme. Because of American demographics (see P1-1) they would also have to become palatable to non-whites and whites with non-white friends and relatives. This point was supported by the fact that much of /pol/ itself was non-white. In pictures I had seen of IRL /pol/ meetups, the demographics were similar to the demographics of America, with as many hispanics and Asians and there were whites. There was even a black person or two and maybe even a Jew.

Prediction 3: Trump would be assimilated

1. Most politicians say whatever will get them elected, then conform to the uniparty after they get elected. So Trump might not even genuinely believe what he says.

2. Even if Trump succeeds in getting elected, and even if he genuinely believes in his campaign promises, he has no base of power to set them into motion. Trump came out of nowhere. He had no movement behind him, not even a faction within the Republican party, and the establishment Republicans hated him and were dominated by never-Trump neocons right up until he became President.

3. Therefore, the Trump administration would not live up to the hype. Its actual policy decisions would basically be the same as a normal Republican administration, albeit it with extremely unorthodox rhetoric.

Although I got some of the details wrong, my predictions have held up better than anyone else who I personally know. The same cannot be said for the hysterical Leftists in the groupchat. The only people who made more accurate predictions than me are people I do not know personally: professional influencers who do politics for a living.

Because of prediction 3, I actually never ended up voting for Trump until 2020. I came close to doing so, and I did secretly love Trump and hoped that he would win, but something a few days before Election Day changed my mind. At my office, there were TVs all over the place tuned to the news, mostly business channels but also CNN, MSNBC and Fox. This made it possible for me to follow politics literally all day, every day, while browsing 4chan on my phone (I had a cushy desk job). A few days before the election, Fox News ran a segment where they predicted who Trump might assign to his cabinet if he were to win. Every name was somebody I hated, like Mitt Romney, Michael Bolton, or Paul Ryan. “Wait a minute? Am I just being tricked into voting for a Republican?” I thought. Thus, I never voted in the 2016 election and instead stayed home. My first vote for a Republican was during the 2018 election, by which time I had been convinced that Trump was the real deal.

As a result, I never got to fully participate in the victory of 2016.

Trump Comes Down the Escalator

“Trump formally announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015, with a campaign rally and a 46 minute speech at Trump Tower in New York City. In the moments before his announcement, he came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, which has since become a metonymy for Trump's announcement.”

...

Trump declared that he would self-fund his presidential campaign, and would refuse any money from donors and lobbyists.

…

Following the announcement, most of the media's attention focused on Trump's comment on illegal immigration: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best ... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with [them]. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

-- Wikipedia’s entry on the Trump 2016 Campaign announcement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign)

From the very first announcement speech, Trump became the human embodiment of the Alt Right’s two major focal points: anti-establishment sentiment and, most importantly, political incorrectness.

The anti-establishment sentiment, which had been growing for quite some time since at least the 2008 financial crisis (and really since 9-11) was a feature of both sides. Similarly to Trump, Bernie Sanders ran on a populist, anti-establishment message with a self-funded campaign that had extremely popular grassroots support. In fact, at the time I missed most of the Republican primary due to following Bernie Sanders, whose campaign I donated to and for whom I voted for during the primary. It was only after Bernie Sanders’s loss to Hillary Clinton that I began shifting my attention to Donald Trump.

But it was impossible to miss the other focal point of Trump’s campaign, political incorrectness. His comments about illegal Mexican immigration would usually spell the end of a typical presidential candidate’s campaign. The media of course called his comments racist against Mexicans. But some defended them, saying that Trump was not referring to all Mexicans, or even to all immigrants, but exclusively to illegal immigrants. Note the use of typical anti-SJW rhetoric, which does not challenge concepts such as racism on a fundamental level, but rather defends itself against allegations of racism in a particular case. Trump himself offered no apology, as would be expected in normal circumstances. Instead, Trump stood by it, commenting “somebody’s doing the raping.” Immigration (and, in reality, white demographic replacement, though not explicit) would become the cornerstone of Trump’s campaign with his promise to build a “great, great” wall across the entire border with Mexico, and claiming that Mexico would pay for it.

This was only the beginning of Trump’s politically incorrect comments. Every single day, there would be a new headline bearing a new Trump controversy. One memorable moment included mocking former Republican presidential candidate and bloodthirsty warmongering neocon John McCain.

At a July 18, 2015, event Trump described McCain as a "loser" and added, "He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."

–Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign#Conservative_movement)

In December of 2015, he proposed an “Islamophobic” ban on Muslims entering the country:

On December 7, 2015, in response to the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack, Trump further called for a temporary ban on any Muslims entering the country. He issued a written statement saying, "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on"

--Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign#Temporary_Muslim_ban_proposal)

In a typical campaign, any one of these statements would have been suicide. Instead, with each new headline and controversy, Trump only became more and more popular. Attacking Trump in the media, a tactic that had sunk so many other anti-establishment campaigns, such as Ron Paul, was completely backfiring. The establishment had no idea how to counter this. For the first time, the spell had been broken.

The Alt Right unleashed

Trump’s epic trolling instantly drew the attention of 4chan (all of 4chan, not simply /pol/, although /pol/ was starting to eclipse /b/ in terms of cultural output by this time) who decided to throw their support behind Trump and try to get him elected for the lulz.

In addition to support for Trump being an epic troll, 4chan’s power only seemed to be growing, and it was easer to test this power. After the Anonymous hacktivism of the late 2000s and early 2010s, anon gained a sense of invincibility, always trying to push the limits of how far its decentralized “ops” could go in shaping events IRL.

But Trump’s support was not merely limited to 4chan. Trump was also extremely popular on YouTube, Twitter and even parts of Reddit (which was seen as a center-left site, especially in contrast to 4chan).

Trump also united the many different anti-SJW ideologies (including many libertarians, anti-woke classical liberals, and conventional Republicans), white nationalists such as Richard Spencer, and /pol/ with its army of online trolls. It gave them a central mission: elect Donald Trump to the White House. It was this moment of unity and clarity of purpose that marked the definitive beginning of the Alt Right.

Etymology of the Alt Right

The name “Alt Right” was popularized by Richard Spencer, and many erroneously paint him as some sort of de facto leader. This is not really accurate. First of all, the movement was entirely decentralized, and while there were some well known figures like Richard Spencer, none of them rose to the level anyone could call a “leader.” In contrast, Nick Fuentes is the undisputed leader of the America First movement, one of, if not the, major faction in the Dissident Right of today. Neither Richard Spencer nor any other individual ever rose to this level of prominence in the Alt Right movement.

Richard Spencer also popularized the term to describe a phenomenon that was by that time well underway, not one that he was responsible for creating. It was, however, a fitting term, reflecting the “big tent” nature of the movement. The Alt Right was not really about white nationalism, although this was one ideology under this tent. It really was a term that encompassed anyone who was Right Wing, but did not fit in with the conventional Republican party. Some of the ways in which they differed from the Republican party of the time included:

• Support for Trump

• Political incorrectness

• Distrust of both the Republican and Democratic parties

• Lack of respect for traditions, rules, and decorum in general (a “burn it all down” attitude). This was in stark contrast to mainstream Republicans, who sold themselves as the “adults in the room” and acted like the “bigger man,” by following norms to the letter, even when this meant political defeat

• Opposition to foreign wars such as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan

• Economic populism rather than emphasizing the “free market”

• Nationalism and a protectionist foreign economic policy as opposed to “free trade” and globalism

• Opposition to immigration instead of support for a pathway to citizenship

• Criticism of the central tenants of liberalism (ie race realism over “colorblindness,” historical revisionism vs explicit condemnation of fascism, questioning of feminism and homosexuality -- although this applies more to the Alt Right than to Trump himself)

• Atheism or agnosticism as opposed to Christianity (although this last point is complicated)

A note on the last bullet point, which is a bit of a paradox. The Republican party was at the time associated with social conservativism and the “Religious Right.” This was certainly true of the base. And the establishment leaders, such as George W Bush would invoke the name of God and make concessions with the base over issues such as abortion. However, while Christian in rhetoric, the establishment considered these religious concerns a personal matter, and not the role of “big government” to legislate from the top down. As such, they were often seen as being “liberals from five years ago,” adopting opposition to the latest liberal cause such as transexuality, while conceding on social causes from five years ago such as gay marriage.

In contrast, the Alt Right was the exact opposite. The part of the Alt Right that leaned more towards the far-right or fascism considered things like homosexuality, drugs, and even tattoos “degeneracy” and advocated for their abolition. However, they themselves were often the biggest degenerates of all. This is because the Alt Right was mostly agnostic towards religion. Many of its prominent figures were atheists like Richard Spencer. Nietzsche was popular among this contingency. There were many Christians in the movement, but there were just as many pagans who considered “christcuckery” to be “Jewish subversion” of the “ancient gods” of the white race, such as Thor and Odin.

This contradiction would eventually be resolved during the Optics Wars, when Christian Nationalism and social conservatism became a central part of the movement. But in the Alt Right, this Christian element was noticeably absent. While the Alt Right criticized earlier libertarian arguments for social liberalism (ie “the government shouldn’t legislate morality”) in favor of a more explicitly authoritarian government, this “social conservativism” was not a product of Christianity.

Trump was most certainly no social conservative, and even accepted LGBT openly during the 2016 campaign. Many even thought that the Trump campaign meant the universal acceptance of “gay rights” by both major parties, a claim that would later be made by Rick Grenell, an openly gay member of the Trump administration.

Mr. Bond and Moonman

“Sicker than your average coon slayer / Skin as white as snow and I dress like a player / I'm Moon Man / representing White Power / I'm the man of the hour / Yake a trip to the showers”

-- Moonman, Notorious KKK Pt.2

Why would anyone be proud to be black? / Your whole fucking race is addicted to crack / I'm Moon Man, representing "White Power" / I stack bodies higher than Trump Tower / Control the memes, control the planet / Fascism is back and the left can't stand it / Death camps for the blacks, sit back and relax / Right wing death squads prepare to attack

-- Moonman, Right Wing Death Squads

I bring the 1940s the fuck back / I’m a Nazi you can’t stop that / Rolling on commies take the block back / Democrats running to the cuck shack / Bring those 40s the fuck back / I’m a Nazi you can’t stop that / Rolling on commies / Take the block back / Homos running like a rocket

Now why'd you like a racist party with anti-Semites in it / They already lost the game / Why you still trying to win it? / What did they ever do to you / Why do you hate those Jews?

-- Mr. Bond, Fashout

Let the Frankfurt School corrupt these Whites / Make a happy merchant's paradise

Push the six gorillion guilt on Whites / It's a happy merchant's paradise

Our feminism breaks their family ties / Make a happy merchant's paradise

Have our media promote race-mixing Whites / It's a happy merchant's paradise

-- Mr. Bond, All White Paradise

I do not endorse the above lyrics. I also don’t endorse the Encylopedia Dramatica excerpts from earlier, or for that matter, any of the excerpts in this text. I especially disavow violence, that should go without saying. The above lyrics are included to illustrate the extreme shock humor of the Alt Right.

Moonman and Mr. Bond were two Alt Right content creators who would upload parody raps such as the one above. Moonman used a computer-generated voice and the McDonald’s character “Mac Tonight” as his avatar (a character who, like Pepe the Frog, had started out as a non-racist meme on the website YTMND but then became appropriated by the Alt Right).

Moonman took the typical Alt Right approach of simply being as shocking and racist as possible by saying racial slurs over and over again and describing going around killing black people, Jews, and homosexuals.

Mr. Bond seemed to have been a legitimate Nazi. Most of his songs revolve around praising Adolf Hitler and advancing the cause of Nazism. Tragically, his song “Power Level” would be used in the livestream of the Halle Synagogue shooter in 2019.

I was not really into this stuff, although I did come across it from time to time. At the time, the Internet was full of extremely offensive content, so I didn’t think much of it. I can’t find many of the other Moonman and Mr. Bond songs that I remember from almost a decade ago because I do not know their names, but here are some of the titles that appear in an Odysee search for Mr. Bond: “Pop Some Fags,” “Fascist,” “Kill All Faggots,” “Concentration Camp” and Moonman: “Ni**erland,” “Go Kkkrazy,” “The Klansman,” “49 Faggots and 1 Doon Coon,” “Notorious KKK.”

This is how extreme the most extreme parts of the Alt Right became. This material was openly available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple music and Twitter during 2016. To their credit, Leftists were not entirely unjustified in their fears of fascism in some ways, since there were genuine fascists in the movement. Indeed, in the coming years, there would be mass shootings inspired by the Alt Right, their manifestos rife with /pol/ memes.

However, although it should be easy for anyone to disavow these songs, even in this extreme case there is another side to the story.

Mr. Bond was arrested at his home in Paternion, Carinthia, Austria and has been held in detention at Josefstadt Prison since his arrest on January 20, 2021, for "producing and broadcasting Nazi ideas and incitement to hatred". In 2022, he was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Hassler's younger brother, the manager of his anti-Semitic website, was sentenced to four years in prison.

-- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Bond_(musician))

Even if you condemn the content of Mr. Bond or Moonman’s speech, is it still appropriate to go so far as to arrest them for it?

I spent a lot of this text defending the Alt Right and adding context to the movement, but it’s important to remember why the Alt Right ultimately failed and where it went too far. In one sense, it was the concept of “free speech absolutism” taken to its furthest extreme. Is it really too far to create a parody rap song with violently genocidal racist lyrics? The speech itself, taken in isolation, isn’t hurting anybody. On the other hand, it may in fact have played some part in inspiring real world violence. So does that mean that “free speech absolutism” is invalidated as a serious principle? Should people like Mr. Bond, who did not commit any violent act themselves, but inspired others to do so, really be arrested simply on the basis of their speech?

On the other hand, the Alt Right would later give birth to more valid critiques of far-left social justice politics by the Dissident Right, which does not advocate for race-based violence against minorities. Even political activists such as Chris Rufo, LibsOfTikTok, Jordan Peterson and Matt Walsh can be said to be partially influenced by the Alt Right. If it were not for a policy of free speech, the reforms that Right Wingers believe are necessary for society could never be openly discussed. So is the cost of allowing “hate speech” to proliferate worth it, in order to receive the benefits of free speech and the necessary societal reforms it provides? And if we allow far-left speech, such as Communism (itself responsible for tens of millions of lives) to go uncensored in society on the basis of free speech, must we also allow far-right speech such as fascism? If we allow far-left speech, but not far-right speech, then is it not simply inevitable, given enough time, that society will ultimately drift further and further to the radical Left, making any opposition to the Left’s agenda impotent?

In the end, the true value of the Alt Right is to provoke a conversation about these deeper intellectual topics. That is why I have taken pains to contextualize it throughout this text, rather than simply dismissing it due to some of its worst personalities. However, in my opinion, the ultimate failure of the Alt Right is that it was rooted in extreme nihilism. Yelling racial slurs at people in order to “troll” them is not the basis for a legitimate political movement. Neither is trying to one-up each other to see who can be more offensive to impress people on the Internet. What you get with that, eventually, is Mr. Bond and the synagogue shooter.

However, if we consider it in context, it was a necessary step at the time. Just as Trump was able to defeat the media slander that had buried respectable-presenting candidates, such as Ron Paul, by doubling down and leaning into the controversy, so too was the Alt Right’s extreme offensiveness necessary to defeat political correctness and allow the beliefs of the social justice Left to be critiqued in the first place. This would have been impossible if one wanted to uphold his respectability in the face of an unreasonable, radical Leftist opponent, a strategy that had failed conservatives for decades.

The Alt Right was a destructive force that could only burn but could not build. It was missing a positive vision for society, such as the one that God can provide. It had critique and mockery, but it did not have virtues of its own. In that sense, it really was born out of hate. Still, for the moment, burning had some utility in and of itself.

Can’t Stump the Trump

Not all Alt Right memes went to the extreme level of Mr. Bond and Moonman. Just as typical, were videos that were much more tame like “Can’t Stump the Trump”.

On July 28th, 2015, the conservative news site The Ralph Retort published an article titled "Can't Stump the Trump," which lauded Trump's ability to deflect criticism. On August 9th, YouTuber ZarosTemplar uploaded a montage parody titled "Can't Stump the Trump," featuring footage of Trump from the first 2016 Republican presidential debate

--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cant-stump-the-trump)

Note the mention of The Ralph Retort. This was a publication created by Ethan Ralph, one of the main protagonists of GamerGate a year earlier. Later, he was also creator and host of the livestream show The Killstream, one of the few places where one could watch unedited footage of the BLM riots or openly question Covid during 2020, during the height of the Censorship Era. After the Capitol riot on January 6^th 2021, which he broadcasted live on The Killstream, he would be removed from all livestreaming platforms, and forced to move his show onto Nick Fuentes’s platform Cozy.tv, until moving to Rumble after a falling out with Fuentes in the summer of 2023. This is one example of the throughline from GamerGate, through Trump and the Alt Right, all the way to the Dissident Right of today. But back to “Can’t Stump the Trump.”

“Can’t Stump the Trump” was a series of videos created by Comrade Stump. It was a montage of clips from Trump’s press conferences or presidential debates, edited in the style of other montage video memes of the day. It is a perfect example of the Great Meme War, Trump memes, as well as what Internet culture generally looked like during its height of sophistication and popularity.

Video begins with Trump at a podium during the primary debates.

Narrator (taken from a National Geographic-style nature documentary): It's a nimble navigator. And some can be highly venomous. Just like the tarantula it's killing, the centipede has two curved hollow fangs which inject paralyzing venom. This centipede is a predator.

Camera zooms in on a still photo of Trump as a dubstep buildup plays.

Trump: I think you heard me, you're having a hard time tonight.

Dubstep drop. Cut to Trump at a press conference, heckling a journalist from Univision

Trump: Go back to Univision!

Dubstep breakdown continues to play as money falls from the sky over Trump’s podium.

Trump: Go ahead!

An image of a sniper rifle from a first person shooter appears over the journalist’s head. The camera zooms through the crosshairs of the rifle.

The text +100 appears over the scope in red, indicating a headshot. #stumped appears in red over the scope.

Cut back to Trump at the debates.

Trump: Only Rosie o'Donnell.

A second sniper rifle appears over the debate moderator’s head.

The text +420 appears over the scope, followed by #stumped.

-- Comrade Stump, Sep 8 2015, You Can’t Stump the Trump Vol.2.(https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=vJhoLUgeIhc)

Note that unlike Mr. Bond and Moonman, it is still available on YouTube, containing little questionable material.

Hundreds of these videos, along with Trump parody songs and Trump memes of all kinds, were created throughout the Internet. The amazing part is that all of this support was entirely grassroots. At the very peak of Internet culture, at the very peak of the Internet’s popularity with the younger generation, the Internet’s greatest content creators all had organically decided to create what was essentially free campaign material for Trump simply for fun, thus using what was essentially the bleeding edge of culture and technology in Trump’s service. This phenomenon became known by anon as “The Great Meme War of 2016.”

The Great Meme War

The Great Meme War took place from June 16, 2015 - November 9, 2016 and was the Internet(primarily social media) battle between supporters of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Gary aka Aleppo Johnson, and Jill Stein. Attacks and battles took the form of arguments and memes in comment sections, threads, photos, videos and more. These memes were used to attack a candidate or sway their supporters. The War also included heavy shitpposting, spam, copypastas, and dank memes. The War's fronts include Reddit, instagram, ifunny, YouTube, the news and media, and many others.

-- UrbanDictionary.com (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20great%20meme%20war)

Thousands of anon can claim the title of Great Meme War veteran. Many simply created and distributed Trump memes independently and at random, for fun. Others ran groupchats and more deliberate ops, especially as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump became the official nominees and the race really heated up.

For example, one op was “draft our daughters.”

#DraftOurDaughters is a satirical social media hashtag launched by supporters of Donald Trump which encourages American women to register for Selective Service in preparation for hypothetical scenarios of United States military operations that would supposedly be launched by Hillary Clinton if she were elected as president of the United States.

-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/draftourdaughters)

This op, organized on Twitter and 4chan, designed these memes to look like genuine Hillary ads, while also mocking Leftist social justice ideas like feminism in a way that was intended to “redpill normies” into questioning their assumptions.

Another tactic included hijacking topics trending on Twitter, creating satirical versions of them that would then appear in the feed next to other tweets with the same hashtag. This tactic also revealed a stark contrast between Trump and Hillary’s social media strategy. The latter was deliberate and led by professional consultants and the mass media (which the Internet had by now dubbed the “dinosaur” or “legacy” media to highlight its irrelevance, as many Twitter accounts and independent YouTubers by now had larger audiences than professional news programs). The former was led by anon.

“#HillarySoQualified she knows exactly which foreign dictators to hit up for slush fund contributions”

--Ricky Vaughn @Ricky_Vaughn99 (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/103/197/c85.png) Attached to the tweet is an infofgraphic, listing foreign donations to Clinton from countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE with the caption “These countries donated to Hillary Clinton’s foundation, then got weapons deals”

Essentially, the Great Meme War was the culmination of Anonymous-style “hacktivism,” utilizing weapons such as trolling, raiding, ops, memes, and anti-SJW humor that had been developed on the Internet over the last decade or so. In addition to getting Trump elected, and simply trolling for fun, it was intended to “redpill” ordinary people by exposing them to the same sorts of critiques of liberalism that had been developed by the Alt Right. It was often organized on sites like 4chan, but actually carried out on Twitter and Facebook, platforms considered more surface level and more popular with normies. The main front of the Great Meme War was Twitter. Not only was this the main platform where Trump himself reached his audience, but also one where anon freely mingled with normies and the two cultures met. Additionally, Twitter was home to mainstream news media, independent journalists, and celebrities -- all of whom could amplify the message.

Social Media: Internet Culture goes mainstream, resulting in a mass redpilling

The Alt Right and Trump were the product of a very unique point in time, in which several trends happened to all converge at once. While Internet culture had been slowly developing over the course of the last decade, the nature of the Internet itself began to change due to advancements in technology. For almost this entire decade, the culture of the Internet was a subculture. Some people used the Internet heavily, while others did not. Increasingly, the counter-culture created from 4chan began to bubble up into IRL more and more. But there was still a barrier between offline and online. Right around the time of the 2016 election, two innovations changed this dynamic, explosively merging the two worlds.

The first was the invention of the smartphone.

“In contrast to the largely stationary Internet of the early 2000s, Americans today are increasingly connected to the world of digital information while “on the go” via smartphones and other mobile devices.”

-- Pew Research Center (https://www.pewresearch.org/Internet/fact-sheet/mobile/#:~:text=Mobile%20phone%20ownership%20over%20time,smartphone%20ownership%20conducted%20in%202011.)

While the iPhone, one of the first successful smartphones, was released in 2007, it took some time for it to be adopted by the masses. This mass adoption was completed by about 2014. By that time, the smartphone had become standard on most cellular plans. I was actually a holdout, fearing that I would become addicted to the smartphone due to my already present addiction to the Internet, and put off getting a smartphone until 2013, when I was forced to get one by my cellular company. This is borne out in the official data from Pew Research.

In the U.S., 56 percent of adults are now smartphone owners, according to a study published Wednesday by Pew. This is the first time since Pew began tracking the numbers that the majority of the population owns a smartphone.

--CNET, “Smartphone Ownership Reaches Critical Mass in the US”, June 5 2013 (https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/smartphone-ownership-reaches-critical-mass-in-the-u-s/)

With everyone, even the normiest of normies, suddenly running around with an Internet-connected smartphone at all times, the Internet became less of a subculture and more of a fact of everyday life. Its omnipresence also meant that one never really “logged off,” but instead had access to Twitter at all times. This was further facilitated by the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, which were much more user-friendly to normies, designed to be used primarily on a smartphone rather than PC or laptop, and were based around simply connecting people into a social network and allowing them to share content or text-based information, rather than being based around some particular hobby or serving as a content creation platform such as YouTube.

As a result, normies flooded into an Internet ecosystem already populated by anon and dominated by the culture of 4chan, causing the two worlds to mix with each other and providing access to millions who could potentially be redpilled. The Internet was still the Wild West, censorship virtually unheard of, and it was not under the control of the establishment. Yet it now had a userbase which rivalled, and even eclipsed, the traditional mass media. This would be the state of affairs for roughly four years. It would end when Trump rose to power in 2017. After this, the establishment caught up to technology and realized that they had lost control of the narrative, leading to the Big Tech censorship that they would begin to roll out in 2017 in an effort to get the media back firmly within their control.

In other words, there was a small window between the rise of /pol/ around 2011 and the Censorship Era of the Internet which began in 2017. This small frame of 6 years was really the only time that you could be exposed to these heterodox ideas online without censorship. And it was maybe only four of those six years when the “means of information” was truly in the hands of the people and truly democratized, rather than in the hands of the establishment and their transmitters. If you were not “redpilled” during these 4-6 years, it is very difficult to become redpilled in the same way that people during this time period were.

“Based and Redpilled”

What does this word “redpilled” mean? Though we have been using the term throughout this text, we have never directly addressed its meaning. As with many Alt Right terms, people tend to get it very wrong. It does not mean being a fascist. It does not even mean being conservative or Right Wing at all. Essentially, it simply means understanding that “the world is not as it seems.” That for example the media, rather than existing to inform, is in fact propaganda made to push a certain agenda and influence public behavior. Or that academia also has an agenda, rather than searching for the unbiased truth with an open mind, as they claim. Or that the country’s politics do not work the way that you learn in a typical High School civics class, but instead follows a separate, non-explicit set of rules based around money, cronyism, and informal conventions.

The fact that this leads to a viewpoint that is considered Right Wing by the mainstream is purely incidental. That is because to be redpilled is to believe what people would believe organically if the means of information was in the hands of the people and there was no censorship, as there was not in the years 2011-2017. And because society has shifted so far to the Left, this is considered far-right. In contrast, to someone from 100 years ago, or really at any time throughout the majority of history, “redpilled beliefs” would probably be considered normal (outside of other extremely liberal time periods such as the late Roman Republic).

The term obviously originates with the film The Matrix. Thus, as you would expect, the opposite of the “redpill” is the “bluepill.” A bluepilled person is someone who takes the world at face value and does not question it. A bluepilled ideology is one of the false ideologies of the liberal mainstream, such as feminism.

In addition to the red and blue pills of the film, anon created a few other variations. There is also the “blackpill,” like the “redpill” except describing a more cynical and pessimistic mindset. The “whitepill” which is the opposite of the blackpill, an optimistic mindset. And the “clearpill” which is a stoic perspective of being neutral in regards to outcome.

Since then the word “redpilled” has changed in meaning over time, like all long-lived memes. Probably its most popular contemporary usage is in the so-called “redpill community,” where influencers such as Andrew Tate and Fresh & Fit give “redpilled” dating advice to men. This “redpilled” advice usually involves a rejection of the tenants of feminism, and advice on how to pick up girls. It shares little in common with the original meaning of “redpilled” other than the fact that it sees feminism as a “bluepilled” ideology.

Another common Dissident Right term is “based.” The word “based” is similar to the word “cool.” It means that someone is their authentic self and speaks the truth, without worrying about political correctness or what others will think of them. It is often used to describe someone who has politically incorrect opinions and states them openly, as Trump did. Like someone who is “redpilled,” it just so happens incidentally that someone “based” will inevitably have Right Wing beliefs according to mainstream society. This is again due to how far society has shifted to the Left due to the Left’s capture of the means of information such as the media and academia.

The phrase “based and redpilled” used together was originally meant ironically, satirizing something that a typical Alt Right person, especially someone naïve and recently redpilled, might say. Eventually, over time it has evolved to be used both unironically or ironically depending on the context in which it was used (another example of “meta-irony”).

Pepe The Frog

An entire book could also be written around Pepe the Frog, perhaps the most famous meme of all time, and a symbol that has now become synonymous with Internet culture. A documentary, actually, has already done that, Feels Good Man (2020). In part this documentary is an attempt by its original creator, Matt Furie, to redeem Pepe the Frog after he became associated with the Alt Right.

Matt Furie was about as far away from Alt Right as one could possibly be. In fact he was a hippie, drawing strange Muppet-like cartoon characters, in his home city of San Francisco. I was a fan of his art in college, when Pepe was one of many obscure memes, much less well known than “rage comics” or “advice animals.” I was happy that Pepe gave him exposure when I saw the meme briefly mentioned in an article about him in the art magazine Juxtapoz. A few years later I laughed at how horrified he must have been at what Pepe the Frog became.

So, how exactly did Pepe the Frog go from hippie Muppet cartoon character to mascot of the Alt Right? It all started in 2008.

On 4chan, another common type of thread were “scanslation” threads, where anon would post scanned copies of manga, or occasionally western indie comics (as in this case). They usually posted them slowly, one page per post, so that anon could comment on them and read them together in real time. In 2008, one of these comics happened to be Furie’s Boys Club, a comic where Pepe the Frog and his Muppet-like monster friends hang out, eat pizza. and do drugs (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/937/799/6ad.jpg).

In one comic, Pepe the Frog pulls his pants down to his ankles in order to urinate, exclaiming “feels good man.” (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/095/218/feels-good-man.jpg)

The image, and sometimes just the phrase by itself, soon became a meme on 4chan.

In 2009, a variant of Pepe frowning with the text “Feels Bad Man” became the first Pepe variant, also known as “Sad Frog.” (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/248/081/7d1.jpg). The final of the initial three variants was “Smug Pepe” created in 2011.(https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/862065-smug-frog).

Most memes tend to explode in popularity quickly, with hundreds of variations, and then die down. In contrast, Pepe was a very slow burn. There was a year between the initial and sad variants, and then two years between the sad and smug variations. Until 2014, for some reason, these were basically the only three variations used.

Then in 2014, Smug Pepe started becoming very popular, and people began making more Pepe variants including angry pepe (“REEE”) (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/913355-angry-pepe), Well Meme’d Pepe (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/903981-well-memed), and others.

Soon Pepe would become one of the most popular memes on 4chan. “Smug Pepe” began to be associated with trolling, used by a troll in much the same way as the “trollface” of years earlier to indicate the troll’s mischievous, aloof nature in contrast to the “triggered” person being trolled. Pepe in general, due to his role as a “blank slate,” became easy to riff off of and apply to any situation or to express any emotion. Another meme, “rare Pepes” was created, where anon would pretend to trade different images of Pepe as if they were trading cards, leading to hundreds more variations. Eventually, Pepe came to be the new symbol of 4chan and underground Internet culture.

The next stage of Pepe occurred right around the same time as the rise of Trump and the Alt Right. By 2014, /pol/ and the proto-Alt Right had emerged as a prominent Internet subculture. Pepe was beginning to become popular on Reddit, which was seen as the dorky tag-along little brother of 4chan and a bridge between anon and normies. The perception was that memes created on 4chan would then cross over to Reddit, be dumbed down for mass consumption, picked up by normies on Facebook, and then thoroughly ruined. This was often in fact the case, and the evolution of “rage comics” and “advice animals” followed exactly this course.

In order to stop this process, anon had an idea. They would intentionally try to associate Pepe with Nazism and white nationalism in order to make it repellent to normies. Then they would no longer be interested in using it, therefore ensuring that it remained only for other based and redpilled anon. Anon got to work creating hundreds of Pepes dressed as Adolf Hitler or the KKK, throwing roman salutes, or covered in Swastikas. The strategy, apparently, worked. On April 13, 2017, a few months after Trump’s successful election, The Daily Beast ran a story with the headline “How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt-Right Symbol”

The green frog was behind the United States side of the metal fence at the country’s southernmost border, smirking and holding a Donald Trump campaign button up to his chin.

A caricature of a Mexican couple—the man dressed in a sombrero and poncho, the woman with braided hair and an infant in her arms—looked out at him through the barricade and cried.

Then the frog was someplace else entirely, this time covered in Nazi insignia: above his smirk, the phrase “SKIN HEAD” and a swastika; over his left eyelid, “14,” the numeric shorthand for “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”; and over his right eyelid, “88,” which stands for “Heil Hitler.”

And there the frog was yet again, standing at a lectern stamped with the presidential seal, a red tie hanging from his green neck, Trump’s iconic hair arranged on his head and an American flag at his back.

-- The Daily Beast, Apr 13, 2017, “How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt-Right Symbol” (https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-pepe-the-frog-became-a-nazi-trump-supporter-and-alt-right-symbol)

However, in the end, especially after the dissolution of the Alt Right, Pepe has once again become a symbol for Internet culture in general, rather than the Alt Right specifically. This appears to be his final and most enduring meaning. In 2019, he would be appropriated as a symbol of the Hong Kong protestors, many of whom, like Occupy Wall Street, used the Internet as a means to organize and share memes

To much of the world, the cartoon frog is a hate symbol. To Hong Kong protesters, he’s something entirely different: one of them.

-- The New York Times, Aug 19 2019, “Hong Kong Protesters Love Pepe the Frog. No, They’re Not Alt-Right.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/world/asia/hong-kong-protest-pepe-frog.html)

However, the same year, Pepe, or at least a variant of him, once again became associated with far-right politics. By now, Pepe the Frog had spawned an extended family of other meme frogs, such as Apu Apustaja, a cuter, child-like version of Pepe (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/apu-apustaja), and Groyper.

In 2019, during the “Groyper Wars,” fans of far-right streamer Nick Fuentes would troll more mainstream political commentators such as Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA (a pro-Trump organization aimed at college students) during Q&A panels on college campuses, criticizing him for his liberal stance on immigration and other issues where he was not seen as sufficiently far-right. Fuentes began referring to these trolls as “Groypers,” a reference to Groyper being a popular avatar among anonymous far-right Twitter accounts at that time (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/groyper). “Groyper” thus was coined as a word referring to a fan of Nick Fuentes and follower of his livestream/political movement, “America First.”

The original popularizers of “Groyper” on Twitter (such as “Professor Groyper”) who were not associated with Fuentes, complained that Fuentes had “stolen” Groyper. A fact that they were still seething about as of 2021, when I last interacted with their accounts on Gab (where they migrated to after being banned on Twitter). On Gab, they continue to complain about Fuentes and remind everyone about their hand in creating Groyper in their bio and all of their pinned posts, and basically make whining about stolen memes their entire personality.

Donald Trump Retweets Pepe, Hillary Clinton Cancels Pepe, Richard Spencer Gets Assaulted over Pepe

As the Trump campaign continued, the Internet’s support for him grew stronger and stronger, and its influence over the election in general began to become more pronounced. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would end up addressing Pepe the Frog.

On October 13th, 2015, Donald Trump tweeted a picture of a Pepe version of himself standing at a podium with the caption “You Can’t Stump the Trump”(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/028/964/4b3.jpg)

On September 9th, 2016, Donald Trump Jr would also post a rare Pepe. The meme featured Donald Trump, Pepe, Alex Jones, Roger Stone, Milo Yiannopoulos, and others with their faces photoshopped onto the poster of the 2010 action movie “The Expendables” but with the title “The Deplorables,” based on a speech in which Hillary used this term to describe supporters of Donald Trump (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/169/809/a2b.jpg).

The following day, NBC News published an article about the photoshop, which referred to Pepe the Frog as a "popular white nationalist symbol" based on a statement made by Southern Poverty Law Center's Heidi Beirich. That day, several news sites published articles referring to Pepe as a "white supremacist meme" and "white national symbol," including The Hill, Vanity Fair, Talking Points Memo and CNN . On September 12th, a post mocking the NBC article reached the front page of /r/KotakuInAction.

--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog)

/r/KotakuInAction is an anti-SJW subreddit created during GamerGate. Its banner features Vivian James and the slogan “Gaming * Ethics * Journalism * Censorship.” Yet another example of the information infrastructure built up after GamerGate, and employed to great effect during the election.

The same day, the official Hillary Clinton presidential campaign blog published a post titled "Donald Trump, Pepe the frog, and white supremacists: an explainer," which labeled Pepe the Frog as "sinister" and a "symbol associated with white supremacy." Over the next 24 hours, posts about the Clinton campaign's reaction reached the front page of various subreddits, including /r/cringe, /r/politics,/r/OutOfTheLoop, /r/4chan and /r/The_Donald. In the comments sections, many Redditors mocked the Clinton campaign and the mainstream media for failing to understand the Pepe meme. Meanwhile, The Daily Dot published an article titled "Pepe the Frog is not a Nazi, no matter what the alt-right says," stating that "Pepe lacks political affiliation."

--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog)

Once again, in a sense, the Left was right. Some white supremacists were appropriating Pepe the Frog, quite intentionally. But the meaning of the symbol was ambiguous and hidden behind irony, as was much of the Alt Right, and had other legitimate meanings. Therefore, Hillary’s response simply made her seem uncool, and “out of the loop” with the Internet savvy youth. Contrast this with the “based” Donald Trump, with a massive arsenal of young and enthusiastic supporters and a large, organic online following.

Hillary had previously addressed the “Alt Right” earlier that year, devoting an entire speech to it during a campaign stop in Reno, Nevada.

“From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.

He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party.

...

A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the Internet, should never run our government or command our military.

...

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.”

…

The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

…

This is not conservatism as we have known it. This is not Republicanism as we have know it. These are race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas, anti-woman –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’

Now Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loose but organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

And this is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

– The Washington Post, “Hillary’s Alt-Right Speech, Annotated”, August 25 2016 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/)

In a way, Hillary was again right. But by now, the Left had “cried wolf” too many times about “race-baiting”, “anti-Muslim”, “anti-immigrant” and “anti-woman” ideas. Americans were sick of hearing about it, and her pleas fell on totally deaf ears. People preferred Trumps bold, brash, “based” bravado to Hillary’s shrill, stern scolding.

Instead of being lectured by their “betters” in Washington and the media, Trump was speaking directly to the people, assuring them that “I will be your voice.” Instead of telling Americans what they must do or not do, say or not say, Trump was instead telling Americans what he could do for them. Such as ending the wars, re-industrializing the country, bringing jobs back to America, shutting down the border, and taking a tougher stance on America’s rival, China. Americans were sick of the way the country was being run and wanted a radical change, and if that meant joining forces with the radicalism of the Alt Right in order to change it, then that was a concession they were willing to make. If that was “race-baiting ... anti-Muslim ... anti-immigrant ideas, anti-woman,” then so be it.

One of the last times Pepe made an appearance in American politics was on January 23, 2017. Richard Spencer appeared on ABC news wearing a Pepe pin on the breast of his suit jacket. A journalist accused him of being a Nazi, which Richard denied, and then asked him about the pin. “Well, it’s become sort of a symbol,” Richard started to say, before a man clad in black ran up to Spencer and punched him in the face on live television. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFh08JEKDYk)

This event sparked a meme on the Left: “it’s okay to punch Nazis.” Again, the Alt Right acted as a provocateur that brought forth deeper questions, once hidden beneath the surface, into the light of day. Richard Spencer was perceived as a Nazi and considered to be a Nazi by many in society, but were those truly his views, since he denied it? Who gets to determine who is truly a “Nazi,” and according to what basis? Was it appropriate to use violence against someone, simply over their beliefs? The traditional answer in America up until now had been “no.” But this assumption was now being put to the test.

Meme Magic

There were many more pivotal moments in the Great Meme War. I have tried to stick to those that I think show the development of Internet politics and their intersection with technology, and not simply copypasta every single meme from that year from Know Your Meme. However, there is one one meme I would be remiss not to include. The god of the meme war, KEK. So stand back and stand by for even more excerpts and copypasta from Know Your Meme.

The story of KEK goes back to one of oldest memes of them all: lol or laugh out loud. Through time, this was corrupted into many forms on 4chan, including of course “lulz.” Many more variations of lol would eventually be created on 4chan, most of them on the board /s4s/.

Shit 4chan Says was created on April 1st, 2013, as a parody of the Shit Reddit Says sub-reddit, with fake upvote/downvote arrows added on the board, before being changed back to the original 4chan board layout.

--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/s4s)

/s4s/ was a late addition to 4chan, and basically became a board that was a satire of 4chan itself, with users making intentionally stupid posts and intentionally trying to force them to become memes, including “lel” which was essentially a parody of “lulz” (which itself was sort of a parody of “lol.” This is typical of the very end of this era of Internet, with multiple layers of irony and self-referential meta jokes).

Eventually, posts seemed to have degenerated to users posting random three letter combinations such as “wew” (whose variation “wew lad” eventually came to express sarcastic exuberance and feigned interest) and “kek,” which also indicated laughter in the same way as “lol,” “lul,” and “lel.”

This is where I first encountered kek, anyways. But this is not the most popular etymology. Most anon say that “kek” actually came from the MMORPG World of Warcraft, and was used to indicate the laughter of Horde characters in the game. It then made its way to /s4s/ from there.

Since I never played World of Warcraft, I don’t know if this is true. I do know that “kek” became one of /s4s/’s most popular memes, especially after a silly looking Turkish snack cake called “topkek” was discovered, and users began spamming pictures of topkek on the board (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/617/382/1d8.png).

This is only the first iteration of the meme.

Another component of what would become the god KEK were “dubs.” On 4chan, every post would have a unique post number indicated at the top of the post. Since the beginning of 4chan, lucky strings of numbers, such as 12345678 or 22222222 were called “GETs.” On /s4s/, anon started celebrating even minor posts such as a post number that ended in a single set of repeating digits (such as 12148677) calling these “dubs.” Posters even went so far as to begin spamming posts with no meaningful content whatsoever, simply to try to get “dubs,” a phenomenon that soon spread to other boards. At the height of the meme’s popularity, these attempts to get “dubs” caused so much spam that for a time, moderators replaced the last digits of each post number with xs (ie 12148XXX), thus making dubs impossible. Dubs would soon become a key part of KEK worship.

Then, sometime during the Great Meme War, anon made a discovery. 5000 years ago, in ancient Egypt, the ancient Egyptians worshipped a god known as Kek. According to Wikipedia the god “is the deification of the primordial concept of darkness in ancient Egyptian religion.” Kek was “depicted as a frog or frog-headed man.” Anon posted his discovery to 4chan’s history board, /his/.

“So a meme is 5000 years old”

-- 4chan responds to the discovery of KEK

Consequently, 4chan decided to adopt the god as its patron deity, given its association with chaos, frogs, and the word “kek.” Anon even discovered that the word for kek in Egyptian hieroglyphics resembled a man sitting at a computer (https://imgur.com/Wukb4TA).

On 4chan, the character Pepe the Frog is often considered a modern avatar of the diety [KEK], who uses ancient Egyptian meme magic to influence the world, often by fulfilling the wishes of posts that end in repeating numbers. Additionally, the deity is associated with the popular 4chan slang term "Kek", and is often embraced by supporters of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Practitioners are known to frequently write "praise Kek," and jokingly refer to the church as a "religion of peace."

--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cult-of-kek)

The “cult of KEK” included anon creating “meme magic” or “KEK worship general” threads, and trying to roll “dubs” in order to invoke the will of KEK. Posts typically would follow the format “if dubs, x will happen” with x referring to an event (for example “Trump will win big on Super Tuesday”) The culmination of this was the “77777777” GET for “Trump will win” posted on 6/19/16 (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/172/235/dc5.png)

In /pol/’s kek mythos, posts ending in sevens hold more weight than others, as seven is considered a lucky and/or holy number in many cultures, which increases in value for dubs and trips. Similarly, three sixes (666, the Number of the Beast) are considered to represent Satan and evilness. This received one of its highest points on June 19th, 2016, when a post reading "Trump will win" managed to get the 77777777 GET

--Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cult-of-kek)

The meme magic continued when 4chan discovered a song from the band P.E.P.E., whose cover art featured an illustration of a green frog with a magic wand.

"Shadilay" is a 1986 Italo disco song by the Italian band P.E.P.E., which features an illustration of a green frog holding a magic wand in the album artwork for the single. After it was discovered by users on 4chan's /pol/ board in September 2016, many hailed the song as proof of meme magic and the Prophecy of Kek due to the band's name and frog illustration bearing similarities to Pepe the Frog.

-- Know Your Meme(https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shadilay)

Henceforth, “Praise KEK! Shadillay, brothers” and similar expressions naturally became a part of the Cult of KEK. Anon created Vaporwave remixes of the song, interspersed with audio clips of Donald Trump. The song and its various remixes would be played in celebration on November 9, after Donald Trump’s surprise victory — the ultimate proof that meme magic was real!

KEK also evolved into a fictional country called “Kekistan” which was related to the cult. But I am done reposting copypasta from Know Your Meme. You can look it up for yourself (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kekistan).

The cult of KEK is interesting for several reasons. In a way, it represents the zenith of the Internet subculture. It was a complex meme containing a long history and complicated allusions to other memes and board culture. “Meme magic” also represents the height of Internet culture’s ability to influence IRL events, such as the election of Donald Trump, in their organized chaotic way. “Meme magic” is a great way to describe the optimistic, fun, invincible feelings of the Internet during 2016. One that, in the coming years, was about to be crushed into dust and annihilated — shoah’d, one might say — by Big Tech Censorship.

Trump Becomes President

Trump was the first president with neither prior public service nor military experience. This election was the first since 1908 where neither candidate was currently serving in public office. This was the first election since 1980 where a Republican was elected without carrying every former Confederate state in the process, as Trump lost Virginia in this election. Trump became the only Republican to earn more than 300 electoral votes since the 1988 election and the only Republican to win a Northeastern state since George W. Bush won New Hampshire in 2000

-- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election)

On Tuesday, November 8, 2016 I did not vote. But, I did watch the election unfold. Every single major poll in America showed Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by a large margin, and there was no way to make the math add up in a way that would result in a win for Trump. After all, he would have to win the rust belt states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which had not been won by a Republican since the 1980s and in which polls predicted Clinton to be well ahead of Trump.

Up until the polls started closing, many mass media outlets predicted that Clinton had a “99%” chance of winning.

Scientist predicts 99% chance of Clinton win

-- MSNBC, Nov 4 2016 (https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/scientist-predicts-99-chance-of-clinton-win-801634371744)

Survey finds Hillary Clinton has ‘more than 99% chance’ of winning election over Donald Trump

-- The Independent, Nov 5 2016 (independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html)

Clinton has 90 percent chance of winning: Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation

-- Reuters, Nov 7 2016 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/clinton-has-90-percent-chance-of-winning-reuters-ipsos-states-of-the-nation-idUSKBN1322J1)

The New York Times website even featured an animated infographic called “the needle,” which updated these forecasts in real time (a version of the webpage from 2022 can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/us/elections/results-needle-forecast.html) (Author’s note: I do not know if it was exactly the same as this or if it was actually called “the needle” during 2016 but it was very similar), which showed the needle well over to the blue side at 99%. There was also a line graph of the “needle” as it changed over time, showing a blue line meandering across the top of the graph and a red line meandering across the bottom.

Then the polls began to close, moving from East to West: Florida – Trump. Pennsylvania – Trump. Ohio – Trump. Michigan – Trump. Wisconsin – Trump. Suddenly “the needle” did a 180 and jumped to the opposite side of the screen. The line graph backflipped into an X, with the red suddenly at the top at 90% and the blue line suddenly at the bottom.

4chan lost its mind. Threads of celebrating Pepes, Trumps with lazer eyes, and Shadillays flooded the board, causing threads to move at lightning speed. It was the greatest epic win in 4chan history. “We did it, anon. We meme’d Trump into the White House!”

The immediate response to Trump’s election by Democrats was to accuse the election of being “rigged” somehow by Vladimir Putin, who had by now become a popular boogie man by Democrats due to his resistance to far-left social policies such as homosexuality, as well as establishment Republicans due to the power struggle between Russia and America over influence in Ukraine and other eastern European countries (especially after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014). This resulted in years of investigation by the intelligence agencies into the Trump campaign, which actually started before Trump was even elected, when Obama began to spy on his campaign. Trump accused them of spying on his campaign in March 2017, but the mass media vociferously denied this claim for years, calling Trump a liar. NBC called this accusation one of Trump’s “biggest whoppers of 2017” .

On March 4, Trump tweeted that his predecessor had wiretapped him. This is false.

On March 5, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told NBC News in an exclusive interview that "there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign."

Later, the Justice Department confirmed this in a lawsuit in September saying that the department and the FBI “have no records related to wiretaps as described."

-- NBC News, Dec 24, 2017, “Trump’s Biggest Whoppers of 2017” (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-s-biggest-whoppers-2017-n830746)

Later, it was revealed that the substance of what Trump said (that the Obama administration spied on his campaign) was right.

In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks — the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump.

— National Review, Aug 1, 2020 “New Disclosures Confirm: Trump Himself Was the Target of Obama Administration’s Russia Probe” https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/new-disclosures-confirm-trump-was-the-target-of-obama-administrations-russia-probe/

Attorney general William Barr says that American intelligence agencies spied on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and that he feels he needs to ensure that power is not abused in the US government.

“I think spying did occur,” Mr Barr said during a Senate hearing. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I am not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. …. I am not suggesting those rules were violated, but I think it is important to look at that. And I am not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence more broadly.”

— The Independent, Apr 10 2019, “US intelligence agencies ‘spied’ on Trump 2016 campaign, says William Barr” (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-2016-us-spying-william-barr-mueller-report-cia-nsa-fbi-senate-a8863736.html)

This attempt to disrupt Trump’s administration through weaponizing the intelligence agencies and constantly investigating Trump for alleged Russian collusion would last for the majority of the Trump administration and has become known as “Russiagate.”

The Left Wing on the Internet also tried to stop Trump, turning to “virtue signaling” by signing impotent Internet petitions to stop him from being inaugurated, or, later, impeach him:

On the Internet, a number of online lobbying campaigns were launched in an attempt to prevent Donald Trump from being inaugurated in January 2017, most notably the Change.org petition urging the members of the Electoral College to ignore their states' electoral votes and honor the popular vote instead by electing Hillary Clinton. Started by Elijah Berg of North Carolina on November 10th, the petition garnered upwards of 2.59 million signatures within the first 24 hours, and by its fifth day, it had accrued more than four million signatures. Other notable petitions on the site include "Impeach Donald Trump," pleading the U.S. Congress to challenge the president-elect upon him taking the office, and "Steve Bannon's racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic views don't belong in the White House," which was created in response to Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon, the executive chairman of BreitBart News, as his administration's chief strategist on November 13th.

-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/notmypresident-anti-trump-protests)

The inauguration on January 20, 2017 would be met with mass protests in Washington DC, often boiling over into far-left, Antifa-style riots which destroyed public property and injured a few police and civilians.

Protests occurred during the inauguration ceremonies in Washington, D.C. The vast majority of protesters, several thousand in all, were peaceful. DisruptJ20 protesters linked arms at security checkpoints and attempted to shut them down. Some elements of the protesters were black bloc groups and self described anarchists, and engaged in sporadic acts of vandalism, rioting, and violence. Six police officers sustained minor injuries, and at least one other person was injured.

A total of 234 people were arrested and charged with rioting, launching controversial trials that gave rise to allegations that the government was overreaching. Ultimately, 21 defendants pleaded guilty, and all other defendants were either acquitted or had charges dropped by prosecutors; the government failed to obtain a guilty verdict at any trial. In December 2017, the first six people to be tried in connection with the events of January 20 were acquitted by a jury of all charges. Twenty other defendants pleaded guilty and prosecutors dropped cases against 20 others. In January 2018, prosecutors dropped charges against 129 other defendants. In May 2018, prosecutors dropped charges against seven more defendants, after the court found that prosecution had intentionally made misrepresentations to the court and hidden exculpatory evidence from defendants in violation of the Brady rule, and prosecutors also reduced charges against others. Finally, in July 2018, the government dropped charges against all remaining defendants.

-- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inauguration_of_Donald_Trump)

These protests also became a source of “triggered liberal tears” for the anti-SJW movement. The most popular of these was “Luke crywalker,” an androgynous, far-left protestor captured on ITV News crying in agony as they/them watched Trump inaugurated (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/luke-crywalker), becoming a popular meme.

On the Internet, Left Wing Twitter users started the hashtag #NotMyPresident.

On November 9th, 2016, shortly after the announcement of Donald Trump's victory in the election, the hashtag #NotMyPresident became the top trending topic on Twitter and elsewhere on social media, which effectively became the unofficial banner of anti-Trump protests in the days to follow. Throughout the day, dozens of marches and sit-in protests were mobilized in major cities across the country, led by a coalition of activist and advocacy groups for various causes like Black Lives Matter, gender equality and LGBTQ equality, as well as Muslim immigrants and many other minority communities. Also on November 9th, a Facebook event page titled "Trump is Not My President" was created for a march on Union Square, New York City on November 12th.

-- Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/notmypresident-anti-trump-protests)

While this text has mostly focused on the Right Wing Internet, it’s worth mentioning that the Left Wing also utilized the Internet for activism. They had their own ecosystem, particularly Independent media outlets such as The Young Turks and podcasts, typically of the Bernie Sanders-style democratic socialist variety, such as Chapo Trap House. They even had their own version of /pol/ on 8chan, /leftypol/ - a term that originated on /pol/ to describe Leftist posters on the board. This was during the earliest days of /new/ and /pol/, when ideologies were extremely diverse and there was no single set of ideas or culture yet associated with the board.

However, in a way this simply moved the already well-established and mature activist ecosystem that the Left had created in the 1960s into the online world. It did not grow organically out of the Internet itself, but out of IRL. The IRL democratic socialist scene in Brooklyn was the real source of Chapo Trap House, not any Internet forum. In contrast, the Alt Right was simply another part of the Internet subculture. This made the online Right inherently much more counter-culture in nature than the online Left and inherently more cool, or perhaps more “based” is a better word.

This is of course because the online Right is part of the antithesis, and the antithesis occurs across many fronts, both cultural and aesthetic as well as ideological and political. The online Left is still part of the thesis, and carries with it an earlier set of cultural and aesthetic forms appropriate to that thesis, which were developed by the media of the age in which it was formed, not the media of the antithesis (the Internet, videogames, etc.).

Organizing a hashtag campaign such as #NotMyPresident is a very typical example of a Left-wing “op.” It is deliberate, serious rather than ironic, wholly political rather than organic, contains no new ideas that are contrary to the status quo, is not particularly lulzy, and is not anything something from the Boomer generation could not have immediately understood.

The Trump inauguration remains the high-water mark of Dissident Right politics to this day, as of 2023. It can also probably be the considered the high-water mark of Internet culture as well, representing the peak of its influence in politics and mainstream culture as a whole.

A Golden Age of the Meme Culture: Say what you will about the current state of the memescape, but 2016 will soon be remembered as the year when memes broke through another great barrier and stepped into a new realm where no memes have gone before: The Beltway of Washington D.C. About six years ago, we began hearing references to Internet memes on network TV shows. In the next few years, we started seeing memes plastered on advertisement, films, and occasionally, headline news. In 2016, we saw President Obama dropping the mic during his speech and the First Lady doing the Mannequin Challenge with star-studded guests in the Blue Room of the White House. If that doesn't impress, relish the fact that for the first time ever, "memes" was looked up on Google Search more frequently than Jesus and God. So, yeah, memes are sort of a big deal.

--Know Your Meme’s “The State of the Internets in 2016” (https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/meme-review/the-state-of-the-Internets-in-2016)

However, this victory would only last only about a year. Starting almost immediately, Trump would be undermined by the political establishment of both parties, as well as partially assimilated by the Republicans and in the end failed to enact most of his campaign promises. The Alt Right would start to suffer blows as it failed to make the transition from ironic Internet meme to serious political movement, finally imploding in the wake of Charlottesville. And, the most unthinkable of all, the Internet would begin to be the subject of coordinated, widespread censorship by Big Tech.

But before this final downfall, in the years of late 2016 and early 2017, the online Dissident Right would still get to enjoy a few more final victories.

Part 4 →