For the past few days, US media has reported that billionaire Elon Musk will step back from his main role in President Donald Trump’s administration. This is after his highly publicized stints and various political initiatives as the informal head of the informal agency Doge (Government Efficiency Bureau). Most recently, after his campaign for the election of a conservative judge against the Wisconsin vacant Supreme Court seats.
We don’t know yet how Musk will make his exit, but one thing is for sure. He leaves behind permanent damage far beyond Doge, the destructive work of his invention. Through online and offline actions, Musk has introduced a highly toxic and ironic politics from the ambiguous fringe of the internet into the world’s first superpower’s council of power.
His Nazi gestures at the event following Trump’s inauguration on January 20th were a perfect example. Musk quickly scrunched the accusation that he had made lots of Nazi themed jokes on his X account, giving him a Nazi salute with a mix of denial and humor.
Doing something outrageous and then denying the obvious is a clear case of “trolling.” This is my favorite exercise in the Fringe Internet space, dominated by toxic and cynical political views. Among them is the infamous website called 4chan, which is believed to be frequently masked. Earlier this year, he decided to change his X account name to “Kekius Maximus” and change his profile photo to a Pepe The Frog image. He is also openly featured on his X account site.
Many have heard of the website 4chan, but there is still little general understanding of what it is and how it relates to the rise of the far right in the US.
Simply put, it is a website that allows you to anonymously share text and image messages without having to register or log in. It’s a space for discussion, humor and creating online communities. Founded in 2003, 4chan reached 8.2 million visitors per month in 2010 and 22 million in 2021.
Because of the anonymous cover given by the structure of the website, users are confident in expressing problems and expressing political views that are usually mixed with a veil of humor. This ironic form of political expression has now defined websites. You will often see racist, sexist, and/or homophobic slur posing as jokes. Anyone who calls these will be even more laughed out of their simplicity and sincerity.
The disclaimer under the main forum /b/ of 4chan states:
This is exactly why Musk completely missed face value by journalists and commentators who denied his Nazi salute at face value. For Musk’s far-right fans, the appeal of his actions was actually reinforced by a very denial.
Musk engaged in violation of what he described as “awakened heart virus” or more traditionally “PC (political correctness) culture.” By adding humor to the equation, Musk and his fans were able to further obfuscate and derail serious debate about the meaning of normalizing Nazi symbols.
This is all the main feature of “trolling”. You can simply pose as a form of play, “for Lolz” how to press people’s buttons (lol). The far-right actor can use this technique to shift the Overton window, or the range of acceptable terms and opinions to the right.
Shortly after Musk’s salute, far-right figures such as Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate mimic the same salute and used the same distance excuses that Musk adopted. These are people who have acquired a huge amount of social and political capital through online subculture.
However, it’s not just the far right who adopts memes and other expressions developed online to promote political goals. In fact, some may argue that these subcultures emerged as responses to what is called “memeification” in politics.
In her book, 4chan and Tumblr to Trump Online Culture Wars, and alt-right Online Culture Wars, Angela Nagle traces the origins of these subcultures into the 2008 US election cycle. For Nagle, this was an important turning point in the use of memes. At that point it was a fresh and exciting new medium in American politics.
Despite the rhetoric of hope and change, the Obama administration failed to fulfill its ambiguous, utopian promises. This discrepancy between messaging and reality has encouraged online debate that has fostered distrust as a sound response to the dishonestness of the political class.
Then, anyone who expressed strong support for either party, cause, or movement on 4chan or other platforms was the subject of rid lol. This essentially formed a kind of ironic, nihilistic view of the world and our place within it.
Fast forward to the 2024 election cycle, these dynamics were once again very present. Kamala Harris’ campaign relies on rebranding the Obama campaign and used the same empty memes rather than focusing on policies and other things rooted in reality. Not only did she rely heavily on celebrities’ support, she also wrote an X account banner written in the same font and color as the “Brat” meme, a trend inspired by pop star Charli XCX’s Brat album cover.
The liberal political establishment of the United States has further revealed its deep flaws over the past year and a half, ignoring the struggle of poor Americans and support for the victory of Israeli war on the war on Israeli massacre in Gaza, but has not learned the lessons of more than the last decade. From surge inflation to inequality growth, relying on hollow messaging, for most Americans, while relying on compounds, does not encourage voters.
Politics is more than just a meme fight. This is a lesson to listen to the wider public, especially those who have re-shared the infamous musk salute as a form of satire and ridiculous laughter. While many may have believed he was lightly paring by adding humiliation and jokes, in fact they helped spread and justify the act itself as a spectacle.
It’s time to admit that we can’t meme how to get out of fascism. The only way to defeat a fascist troll is to refuse entry to the arena and play on their terms. That is to refute to ground real arguments and actions, or obfuscate, to build actual (offline) forces and resist the rising edge of the right.
It’s definitely not an easy task, especially if the far right is in the highest power chamber in the US and has strong profits in South America and Europe. The marriage of far-right discourse and symbolism coincided with the unprecedented capture of wealth by the billionaire class and the rise of authoritarianism in these countries, casting many into despair and despair.
In response to the rise of things like musk, we need a kind of repolitical hope to fight the deliberate despair that feeds the far right. We need honest hope rooted in the realization that we cannot afford anything, and that there is a way to resist through collective action, build new alternatives, and embrace new visions of the future.
The views expressed in this article are the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.