We usually believe symbols inject meaning into the conversation. For the white power movement, empty symbols are more powerful.
We visited the National Archives when I was a teen. I was almost as nerdy then as I am now, so I was excited to see the Declaration of Independence. But I was easily distracted from geeking out by a special exhibit running that year.
They were displaying propaganda posters from World War II. Some were from other countries, but most were ours. And I was horrified to see the caricatures of the German and Japanese people; the violent and racist imagery. The intoxicating appeal of nationalism against the threat of these “monsters”.
The language and the images were grotesque. They were intending to be crudely funny while dehumanizing whole nationalities of people. And they embodied a level of toxic ideology I couldn’t imagine seeing out “in the world.”
The experience made me feel physically sick. But I forced myself to see each one.
I learned far more about nationalism in that hour than I had before (or since).
The current meme culture from the dark corners of the internet reminds me of these posters. Primarily how they use humor and dehumanization to persuade us of some great danger.
But there is one way today’s memes are different: the extreme levels of irony.
While you may not be terribly familiar with memes, listen up. This is the turn.
The meaning of the meme isn’t the point of the meme.
What is in the meme is less important than the meme itself.
This is essential to understand because stupid pictures on the internet are playing out in the real world. And to understand why, we have to first see why these pictures aren’t completely a sum of their parts.
But first, we need to talk about a frog.
The strange case of Pepe the Frog.
You may recall seeing this little green guy online a few years ago. He’s the one some liberal sources referred to him as “the racist frog.” But Pepe isn’t racist. And this is important to realize.
Pepe is a stoner. He’s actually quite indifferent to people’s differences. Originally, he represented a kind of millennial malaise which rejects the Boomer obsession with work/life imbalance. In an entirely objective way, he is the total opposite of anyone in the white power movement.
There is literally nothing racist about Pepe. And that is why fascists wanted him as a racist mascot. He epitomizes plausible deniability. And, at the time, he was a ubiquitous meme character.
Because he isn’t racist, seeing him in a meme wouldn’t logically make the meme racist. That is, if we follow that the contents of the meme are what make the meme racist.
But if we flip that on its head, we can see the problem.
Pepe isn’t a racist symbol, but racists used him as a symbol. And their reasons are instructive: plausible deniability and making anti-racists react.
1. Plausible deniability
This one is obvious. Pepe isn’t racist, so neither are we. Rather than merely be racist in public, they set up a system which they can communicate to other racists while claiming it was all just a joke.
But the more clever truth is less obvious.
2. Making anti-racists react
In getting anti-racists to react to racist Pepe memes by calling him “the racist frog,” they prove that “the PC police” are keeping us from having fun and making jokes.
And this is the devious appeal.
They aren’t only making these memes for people in the white power movement. These aren’t simply in-jokes for the worst among us. This is the overt recruitment strategy.
Getting anti-racists and anti-fascists to react to racist memes becomes the vehicle the white power movement uses to recruit among the far-right. They all take pride in “owning the libs.” Pepe gets the fringe and the mainstream at the same table together.
Just like the OK sign.
The OK sign isn’t racist.
It is objectively not racist. Which is the point.
Some have speculated that it has some deep white power symbolism. I doubt it. This strikes me, at best, like a chicken-or-the-egg situation. Though it’s probably more like a go-back-and-fill-in-a-meaning-after-the-fact deal.
Because the point is deniability and getting anti-racists to react, not some origin story.
Every time we call it a racist symbol, they laugh.
They use plain symbols to be racist.
And that imparts a meaning upon them.
The OK sign isn’t objectively racist, but the more racists use it to be racist, the more racist it gets.
The symbols become the thing they claim it is not.
The OK sign isn’t objectively racist. But it becomes racist because of its racist context. Much like people.
Using it in these ways actually removes all of that plausible deniability. But not because of what the symbol brings, but how it behaves. Again, much like people.
At this point, I fear that the OK symbol has been irrevocably destroyed. Not because it started out racist. Or just because it became racist. But because it’s true, pure meaning has been buried under the garbage of white supremacy.
And people should recognize what is actually happening here.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center lays out, it is primarily a deep trolling tool now. It has become a tool for trolls and white supremacists. And the rest of us are increasingly locked out.