When Satire Becomes Serious: The Trump Massacre
A videoclip played at a pro-Trump conference in October 2019 has recieved an intense media backlash. The specific clip of concern was part of a larger “meme exhibition”, and it consisted of a scene from the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, with Trump’s face applied on the head of a man on a killing spree inside of a church. The faces of the people he kills are replaced with the logos of media companies like BBC News and CNN, or with the faces people seen as Trump’s enemies. Some of these people include James Comey, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Mika Brzezinski, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, Adam Schiff , Maxine Walters, and Bernie Sanders.
Provocative and sometimes violent political videos are frequently circulated on the internet, but this specific event was especially concerning and has garnered a lot of media attention because of where it was shown. The conference at which the video appeared was organized by the pro-Trump group American Priority, and it was held at the Trump National Doral Miami hotel. Donald Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were slated to speak at the conference. While the video was apparently played in a side room of the conference, it is still concerning that this sort of material is circulated around a group that has enough respect from the Trump administration to attract Trump Jr. and Sanders to speak there.
An important point of emphasis is the categorization of this video as part of a “meme exhibition”. It seems strange to be displaying memes at a political conference. Aren’t they more of a juvenile distraction, at best tangentially related to political concerns of the conference attendees? No— memes are actually a staple of some right-wing groups on the internet. However, they do more than just provide an entertaining aspect to political engagement online. As silly as it may sound, meme culture in right wing online circles has helped to popularize dangerous and extreme ideas.
The tactics of the group known as the “alt-right” have been studied by various scholars, and they have made interesting discoveries about their ironic meme culture. One convincing argument is that the alt-right is able to disguise its socially unacceptable extremist views in irony and ambiguity, in order to disseminate these views farther than they would be able to go otherwise. Dr. Alice Marwick, a co-author of a Data & Society Institute report on online disinformation, argues that this utilization of ambiguous irony “allows them to disclaim a real commitment to far-right ideas while still espousing them.”
Poe’s Law is a saying thrown around on the internet that essentially means: without a clear indication of the writer’s intent, you cannot definitively identify a satire or parody from sincere belief. This is the phenomenon leveraged by the alt-right to disguise their actions in ambiguity. When attacked for posting a meme that represents white supremacy, they give themselves the “it is clearly a joke” escape route. This allows the content to spread with much less censorship. And one significant consequence of spreading this kind of material is that it attracts people who really do hold those extreme views, even if the disseminators of the meme are actually joking.
Consider the Pizzagate conspiracy: a theory generated by online trolls that Hilary Clinton was running a child sex trafficking ring out of a pizza shop. An absurd and likely inconsequential conspiracy that will get a few laughs online, right? No, actually, the owners of the pizza shop received many death threats from convinced conspiracy theorists, and a man even entered the shop to investigate and fired a gun. The notion that these memes are inconsequential and are wholly to be received and interpreted as jokes is discredited when they inspire action. Pizzagate is just one example of material, that is at least partially a joke, being spread and consequently leading to unacceptable behavior.
Not only does online material inspire specific actions, as in the Pizzagate example, but it can normalize more general patterns of thought and behavior. Ryan Milner, communications professor and author the book The Ambivalent Internet, in talking about online conversations endorsing racism, sexism, Islamaphobia, and other forms of bigotry, argued that “every time you see a viral video of somebody shouting down a person of Muslim descent in a supermarket line, what you’re seeing are the effects of an environment where it’s increasingly normal, increasingly accepted and expected to speak in this register, whether or not that started out as a joke,” Milner stated.
Let’s return to the original video. “The Kingsman video is clearly satirical and the violence depicted is metaphoric," said the owner of the video. "No reasonable person would believe that this video was a call to action, or an endorsement of violence towards the media". Consider this argument in the context of Poe’s Law and the tactics of alt-right extremists. Perhaps it was purely satirical with no intent of disguising a true call to violence. The video still could be interpreted by some people with extreme views as an endorsement for this kind of violence, similarly to how satirical neo-nazi memes on 4 chan message boards draw in real white supremacists, or absurd conspiracy theories like Pizzagate inspire real action.
It may seem overly sensitive to want to censor this kind of material, but the reality is that it is harmful, and potentially radicalizing. The fact that it is not intended to incite violence plays into the narrative of the left’s waging an unfair campaign of censorship to appease their hypersensitivity (however, the video itself shows the aspiration of blatant suppression of first amendment rights through violent means).
Gradual normalization unacceptable, and in this case violent, behavior is an inconspicuous and seemingly unthreatening process. It should be treated as neither. The vast majority of Trump’s base will never wage violence against anti-Trump media, Trump’s other enemies, or anyone for that matter. However, the endorsement of graphic violence like this has the potential to inspire the most violent extremists to take action.
“Pro-Trump Massacre Video Prompts Media Condemnation.” BBC News. BBC, October 14, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50039287.
Schmidt, Michael S., and Maggie Haberman. “Macabre Video of Fake Trump Shooting Media and Critics Is Shown at His Resort.” The New York Times, October 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/us/politics/trump-video.html.
Karni, Annie, Kevin Roose, and Katie Rogers. “Violent Video Was Product of Right-Wing Provocateurs and Trump Allies.” The New York Times. The New York Times, October 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us/politics/trump-shooting-media-video.html.
Wilson, Jason. “Hiding in Plain Sight: How the 'Alt-Right' Is Weaponizing Irony to Spread Fascism.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, May 23, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/23/alt-right-online-humor-as-a-weapon-facism.
Marwick, Alice, and Rebecca Lewis. “Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online.” Data & Society Institute, May 15, 2017. https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_MediaManipulationAndDisinformationOnline.pdf.
“Pizzagate Conspiracy Theory.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, September 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory.
Wilson, Jason. “Hiding in Plain Sight: How the 'Alt-Right' Is Weaponizing Irony to Spread Fascism.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, May 23, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/23/alt-right-online-humor-as-a-weapon-facism.
“Pro-Trump Massacre Video Prompts Media Condemnation.” BBC News. BBC, October 14, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50039287.