Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

III. Methods and tools
end of the political spectrum
Whichever
originated from, these memes carried a
they
anti-establishment sentiment and
signature
in volumes that had no parallel among
came
have offered the example of meme
We
surrounding the US Presidential
culture
because it might be culturally
election
linguistically accessible to many
and
of this book. But outside of
readers
politics, and indeed the English
US
internets, political memes are
language
in various contexts. Discuss the
produced
How would you explain their success
4.
reach, or their lack of success
and
To what extent are memes an effective
5.
of communicating knowledge
form
What are the limitations of memes in
6.
of communicating knowledge
terms
politics, and how might these
about
be overcome?
limitations
meme subcultures are generally
Political
subversive, grassroots and
youth-led,
In other words, they are everything
collective.
the cyberevangelists told us to be
that
power of the internet. These
democratizing
also marked progressive
characteristics
may have expected political memes and
We
who produce them to also be politically
those
we may have been wrong.
progressive—and
Nagle is author of Kill All Normies:
Angela
Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr
Online
Trump and the Alt-Right and wrote the
to
describes the online alt-right as a
Nagle
group of anti-politically-
heterogeneous
meme-makers, trolls and abusers,
correct
unified in their suspicion of insincerity
loosely
competitive liberal virtue-signalling. In
in
of her more controversial claims Nagle
one
that these groups were at least partly
suggests
backlash against the moral high-grounding
a
self-righteousness of the organized online
and
shaming phenomenon. She claims it was
public
a reaction to the performative wokeness of
also
politics, with its overzealous policing
identity
any and all linguistic and cultural offences.
of
again, it is impossible to disentangle who
Then
reacting to whom in the feedback loops of
was
that followed.
outrage
see how this happened, and why so many
To
not see it happening until it did, let’s take a
did
look at the transgressive methods adopted
closer
the digital alt-right, enabled by the same
by
tools that accompanied the Arab
technological
Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous and
Spring,
2
countercultural groups of past decades.
the mainstream media.
For discussion
Political memes
following.
This was unlike the culture wars of the 60s or the
90s, in which a typically older age cohort of moral
and cultural conservatives fought against a tide
of cultural secularization and liberalism among
theyoung.
(Nagle 2017)
followingquestions.
1. What do political memes look like in
your context?
What do you know about who
2.
them, and why? Where do
produces
they appear?
What would you say is their influence
3.
the political affinities of your
on
generation?
andreach?
about politics?
excited about in terms of the organizing and
Wikileaks.
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