Does digital activity lead to real-life political action? Discuss in relation to a recent political or media issue debate around the use of social media. This essay will question if digital activity leads to real-life political action through an exploration of how social media platforms inform extremist ideas with a focus on the alt-right and its effects on the political culture in the United States in the mid 2010’s. By looking at the origins of social media, forms of digital communication and identity, along with ideas of online celebrity, I will explain how social media can be used for political action and, more specifically, how extremism can spread online. This analysis will not only explore the origins of digital communication and political ideas online but also how these ideas translate into the real world, ultimately questioning if they do translate and what the outcomes of that translation are. With reference to writers exploring extremist ideologies including Angela Nagel and David Neiwert, along with writers focused on the digital world itself, I’ll explore the timeline of events and culture that lead to the 2017 Unite the Right rally, which I believe exemplifies the digital interacting with physical within the political sphere. In order to discuss the impact of social media on real-life political action, we must first understand what social media is and its history. If we understand “social media” to simply mean spaces of digital communication then, as stated by Fuchs (2021, p. 34) social media can be traced back to the 1990s in forms such as blogs, or potentially as far back as the 1970’s with the invention of bulletin board systems (Burgess, et al., 2018). These early forms of social media, however, bear little resemblance to the social media platforms of today. A key steppingstone in the transition from these early forms of digital communication toward the social media platforms we know today was LiveJournal, an early adopter of personal profiles (Trottier, 2016, p. 5). These personal profiles, now the norm within sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, allow for a de-anonymised online experience and potential to further connection between users, a stated goal of Meta (2023), Facebook’s parent company. While allowing for further connection, personalisation online has been questioned for potentially creating digital spaces in which ideas and views go unchallenged (Woolley, S. C. and Howard, P. N., 2019). Despite this critique, social media has also been credited in allowing and creating new forms of interaction (Sujon, 2021) such as communication via memes. The idea of a meme originated in 1976 in Richard Dawkins’ novel The Selfish Gene (Kreidler, 2014), defined as “a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” (Dawkins, 2016, p. 249). While ideas of cultural transmission and imitation remain in modern use of the term, the concept of a meme has evolved away from evolutionary biology and into a description of online popular culture, hence this essay will use the term as defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary (2012), “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media”. Along with this definition, it is important to understand internet memes as intertextual, a form of media that does not exist as a stand-alone unit, but as a collection of contexts and ideas. This idea is illustrated by Shifman (2014, p. 52, fig. 6) with the “Pepper-Spraying Cop” meme (figure 1) showing how an image can be re-imagined and changed by internet users. Generally, memes are spread broadly across the web, with copies, recreations, and remixes being created along the way with these different versions of the original media reflecting general mindsets of users (Shifman, L. 2014). Through this, we can understand memes, in and of themselves, as reflections of social norms and ideas. The wide-spread nature of memes is another important aspect in viewing them as an influential form of communication. The way memes spread can be understood through the concept of virality as a form of word-of-mouth dissemination where messages or media are sent between large groups over a short period of time (Hemsley, et al., 2012), meaning that if a meme gets popular or “goes viral”, it will be seen by millions, potentially billions, of the roughly 4.89 billion (Statista, 2022) social media users worldwide. One such viral meme is Pepe the Frog, shown in figure 2 (BBC, 2016). Pepe the Frog, an anthropomorphic cartoon frog originating as a character in Matt Furie’s comic Boys’ Club (Niewert, 2017, p. 255), became one of the most popular memes of the 2010’s, being named Tumblr’s “Biggest Meme of The Year” in 2015 (Glitsos and Hall, 2019). This popularity was due in no small part to the character’s simple yet expressive appearance, making it easy for users to alter the frog's expression to convey various messages (Niewert, 2017, p. 255), maintaining relevancy through constant evolution and reference to other popular memes. The meme was so popular that versions were posted on social media by celebrities such as Rapper Nicki Minaj and Singer Katy Perry (Collins, 2015), allowing the meme to be seen by their collective millions of followers. The meme, unfortunately, was not as innocuous as it appeared to the average social media user who may have seen it posted by friends or celebrities. Use of Pepe the Frog as a meme did not originate on mainstream social media sites like Twitter or Instagram, but rather on 4chan. An anonymous “simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images.” (4chan, no date). As the meme continued to develop on mainstream social media platforms, 4chan users instigated a campaign to reclaim the meme they considered to be their own by creating offensive, unappealing incarnations of the frog (Glitsos and Hall, 2019). This offensive imagery, however, did not only serve to offend and dissuade the average user from using the meme but acted as a form of far-right propaganda by placing extreme messaging inside a familiar image. In the wider online consciousness, the proliferation of offensive “rare Pepe’s”, as shown in figure 3, could be perceived as a mark of a general shift toward acceptance of darker, edgier humour with other popular figures and memes being “hijacked” by the online far right such as cute cartoons or Taylor Swift (Niewert, 2017, p. 256-257). Despite attempts to claim other images as right-wing figureheads, Pepe the Frog eventually became the face of the alt right, being named a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League in 2016 (BBC, 2016). One of the internet’s most popular memes being branded a hate symbol did not dissuade further proliferation of extreme messaging within the popular online consciousness, however. In January of 2017 Felix Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie; the most popular creator on YouTube at the time (Ohlheiser, 2019), posted a video wherein he paid two men to hold a banner stating, “Death to all Jews” (Guardian, 2017). Along with other antisemitic and racist jokes made by the youtuber, this resulted in drastic ramifications from all sides, with publications such as the Wall Street Journal investigating Nazi imagery and antisemitism in Kjellberg’s videos (Mahdawi, 2017) along with Disney removing him as a co-owner of a multi-channel YouTube network (Guardian, 2017). While large, mainstream news corporations and businesses scrambled to denounce Felix, support came from less desirable recesses of the internet, most notably: The Daily Stormer (Hokka, 2021). The Daily Stormer is a neo-Nazi forum (Niewert, 2017, p. 17) which, in 2017, branded itself as ‘the world’s #1 PewDiePie fansite’ (Hokka, 2021). Despite the youtuber’s rejection of this endorsement, this is still relevant as his frequent antisemitic remarks drew the attention of the online alt right, with PewDiePie being branded by 4chan as ‘/ourguy/’ (Solon, 2017), a meme or moniker used by 4chan users to designate an individual as representative of a group's general beliefs (Hagen, 2022). With this branding, we can see a clear connection to gamer culture within the alt, or far, right. In order to explore the alt right and its connection to gamer culture, we must define what the ‘alt right’ is. As defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary (2023), the alt right is “a right-wing, primarily online political movement or grouping based in the U.S. whose members reject mainstream conservative politics and espouse extremist beliefs and policies typically centered on ideas of white nationalism”. The digital nature of this movement is important as, unlike the traditional far right, this new embodiment of extreme ideals targeted young internet users by associating with popular figures like PewDiePie and Pepe the Frog. Gamers, typically young white heterosexual men, who followed online influencers like PewDiePie during the 2010’s felt alienated by mainstream media outlets such as the Guardian or Wall Street Journal labelling the youtuber as a racist or antisemite. At this point, the anonymous and de-anonymised internet became more clearly in opposition with users of 4chan and other anonymous or semi-anonymous message boards rallying behind rising alt-right figures while, in contrast, highly personalised sites like Tumblr gained prominence with users rallying behind progressive causes in a manner described as “performative” (Nagel, 2017, p. 68). As far right narratives masked as humour gained traction online, so too did a distinctly digital form of left-wing messaging. “Social Justice Warrior”, often shortened to SJW, is a term that gained traction on the online right to describe this self-serving form of activism (Phelan, 2019) (Nagel, 2017, p. 69) primarily concerned with fighting against groups perceived as privileged, notably; white men, along with political correctness (Salzman, 2018). These activists were seen as a threat by the alt-right, believing that, along with the mainstream media they were responsible for the suppression of their views (Niewert, 2017, p. 257). We can see the weaponisation of this narrative in the aftermath of a talk by right-wing figure (Wong, 2017) Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington. On the 20th of January 2017, the night of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of Washington (Neiwert, 2017, p. 338). Left-wing activists gathered on the university’s campus to protest the speech, blocking entry to the event. As described by David Neiwert (2017, p. 338-40), protesters and fans of Yiannopoulos came into close contact. Verbal aggression such as chanting and shouting rose on both sides, quickly evolving into physical aggression with shoving and punching between the groups. As fights broke out on the campus, some of the protestors attempted to de-escalate the situation. One of these protestors was 34-year-old Josh Dukes (Wong, 2017). Dukes was shot that night (Neiwert, 2017, p. 340) (Nagel, 2017, p. 120). As Dukes was treated by anarchist street medics and eventually rushed to hospital (Wong, 2017), the talk continued without remorse, Yiannopoulos painted himself and his alt-right fans as victims in the situation, stating “If we don’t continue, they have won.” (Neiwert, 2017, p. 340). This narrative of victimisation continued as violence grew at Yiannopoulos’ speaking events, resulting in a riot at the University of California, Berkeley with violence predominantly stemming from left-wing protestors targeting the speaker’s right-wing fans (Nagel, 2017, p. 119-20). Subsequently, memes were created from the counterviolence (Trumpland: Kill All Normies, 2018, 32:50), as shown in figure 4, creating a narrative that violence against “SJWs” was not only acceptable but also funny. By placing a spotlight on violence against the right, the narrative of the alt-right, and by extension white men in general, being victimised and oppressed grew (Trumpland: Kill All Normies, 2018, 31:40), however, so too did political violence with 3 reported instances of fatal far-right terrorist attacks in the US in 2017 (Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, 2019). One of these attacks took place during a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Unite the Right rally took place in Charlottesville from 11-12th August 2017 as a response to the planned removal of a statue of confederate general Robert. E. Lee (Katz, 2017). Emboldened by figures like Milo Yiannopoulos claiming they were under attack and online communities showing support for the alt-right, attendees of the rally openly displayed white supremacist symbols including confederate flags and swastikas (BBC News, 2018). Symbols and ideas people aligned themselves with anonymously online now on full public display, as described in Trumpland: Kill All Normies (2018, 33:00) “online trolls [had] become an actual physical militant movement”. Despite the victimisation narrative, the lack of anonymity made it clear the attendees of this rally felt their views had become acceptable. Chants of “you will not replace us” implying a fight against social justice moralism turned to chants of “Jews will not replace us” (Gabbatt, 2017), making it clear that arguments of free speech were simply a cover for antisemitism and goals of ethnic cleansing. As the rally continued into its second day, violence escalated with counter protestors gathering and fights between groups breaking out (Trumpland: Kill All Normies, 2018, 34:20). This would be the final day of the rally as one of the far-right protestors drove into a crowd of counter protestors, injuring 19 people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer (Kennedy, 2017). It’s very possible this tragic event would not have happened if it weren’t for the weaponisation of memes and online influencers as a tool to recruit and radicalize young, disenfranchised white men. However, it’s important to note that though there were clear digital underpinnings to the ideology behind the Unite the Right rally and the violence that occurred, white supremacist ideas have existed long before the internet. Through the events explored in this essay, it’s clear that digital activity can lead to real-life political action, though it's important to remain aware of the offline influence on these actions and movements. While the alt-right were influenced and mobilised on social media platforms, they were also encouraged and motivated by figures in the real world such as Milo Yiannopoulos and then-President Donald Trump who, following the Charlottesville tragedy, remarked that attendees were “very fine people” (Kessler, 2020). Social media and its creation of new forms of communication has affected the ways in which people interact with ideas and with each other, but those interactions only affect the real world when taken offline. 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