(((They))) rule: Memetic antagonism and nebulous othering on 4chan

Abstract

Previously theorised as vehicles for expressing progressive dissent, this article considers how political memes have become entangled in the recent reactionary turn of web subcultures. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s work on political affect, this article examines how online anonymous communities use memetic literacy, memetic abstraction, and memetic antagonism to constitute themselves as political collectives. Specifically, it focuses on how the subcultural and highly reactionary milieu of 4chan’s /pol/ board does so through an anti-Semitic meme called triple parentheses. In aggregating the contents of this peculiar meme from a large dataset of /pol/ comments, the article finds that /pol/ users, or anons, tend to use the meme to formulate a nebulous out-group resonant with populist demagoguery.

Hate Contagion: Measuring the spread and trajectory of hate on social media

“…Users' initial hate posts were more explicit and less nuanced compared to later posts; they contained a higher proportion of explicit hate terms, high obscenity, lower sentiment, and fewer obfuscated hate symbols. This lack of subtlety, together with the fact that ingroup specific language only occurred in later hate posts, suggest that the latter develops by spending time on the platform, supporting the idea that differential causes underpin early and late hate postings (Tuters & Hagen, 2019). Similarly, the number of outgroups that users targeted with hate increased over time spent in the platform, while users initial hate targets were more focused on a specific group.…”

“…This has important implications for group extremism and intergroup conflict, because as the number of outgroups targeted with hate increases, the negative contact opportunities increase and the likelihood of resolution decreases. There is evidence that exposure to hate speech online can lead to an effect of 'nebulous othering', whereby groups construct an increasingly vaguely defined 'other' to whom prejudice and intolerance is targeted (Tuters & Hagen, 2019). Ultimately, this transfer effect of hate speech across groups could expand to encompass all those not part of the ingroup.…”

Bridging White Supremacist Discourse: An ethnography of the online world of the ‘Alt-Right’

“…While it may initially appear to be an odd typo or technical glitch to the outside observer, the practice of enclosing words in (((triple-parentheses))) is a common white nationalist dogwhistle used to identify suspected Jewish people, or proponents of Jewish conspiracies, and mark them for potential harassment/targeting (Anglin, 2016;Lee, 2020;Tuters & Hagen, 2019). The practice, known as 'echoes' or 'echoing' in far-right circles, originates from a white supremacist podcast…”

“…where the broadcaster used to play an ominous-sounding audio 'echoing' effect every time a person with a Jewish-sounding name was identified (Anglin, 2016;Tuters & Hagen, 2019). In this context, the above user's identification of "(((who)))" marks any dissenter or opponent of the poster as "parentheses", a term intended to signal a Jewish conspiracy or the obliging white 'slaves' of such conspiracies.…”

“…An (anonymised) Twitter user condemns white fragility on Stephen Lawrence Day in the UKThe above examples demonstrate how Alt-Right trolling campaigns, like IOTBW, are implicated into dualistic processes of 'nebulous othering'(Tuters & Hagen, 2019). With IOTBW, just as opponents to the poster are identified as 'humourless' 'Others' who have failed to demonstrate an understanding of the joke, they are simultaneously identified as 'non-White' 'Others' who are the unwitting 'White slaves' to 'white guilt', if not the actual Jewish agents of it, themselves.…”