"Trump’s bizarre, inconstant, incompetent, embarrassing, ridiculous behavior — what the left (naturally) perceives as his weaknesses — are to his supporters his strengths.
In other words, Trump is 4chan.
And I knew, I was on balance, luckier than most. My private school and private college education was the deviation from the norm. My chances were better than the majority of people my age. Yet here I was stone broke. All I owned (and still own) is my college debt. So it wasn’t a surprise there were a teeming mass of people out there who knew with fatalistic certainty that there was no way out. Why not then retreat into your parents’ basements? And instead of despairing over trying and failing, celebrate not-trying? Celebrate retreating into the fantasy worlds of the computer. Steer into the skid — Pepe style. Own it. And why wouldn’t they retreat to a place like 4chan? To let their resentment and failures curdle into something solid?
Like the Hollywood heroes, right and left have been competing to become this new radical anti-status quo party. And so far, in both Europe and America, the right has won, implying that, as Arendt predicted, the powerlessness created by bourgeoisie systems of capitalist exploitation might once again implode into far right totalitarianism."
https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-t
"It’s time to embrace Memetic warfare" by Jeff Giesea
http://www.stratcomcoe.org/download/fil
Memes appear to function like the IEDs of information warfare. They are natural tools of an insurgency — great for blowing things up, but likely to sabotage the desired effects when handled by the larger actor in an asymmetric conflict.
“It’s time to drive towards a more expansive view of strategic communications on the social-media battlefield,” Giesea wrote in his essay on the power of memes. “It’s time to adopt a more aggressive, proactive and agile mindset and approach. It’s time to embrace memetic warfare.”
“The broad manipulation of public sentiment is really not in [the military’s] wheelhouse,” Robb said. “All the power is in the hands of the people on the outside doing the disruption.”
Meme wars seem to favor insurgencies because, by their nature, they weaken monopolies on narrative and empower challenges to centralized authority. A government could use memes to increase disorder within a system, but if the goal is to increase stability, it’s the wrong tool for the job.
“For many of us in the social media world, it seems obvious that more aggressive communication tactics and broader warfare through trolling and memes is a necessary, inexpensive and easy way to help destroy the appeal and morale of our common enemies,” he said.
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