Populist baiting
Back in 2018, when I was launching my novella Shitstorm at Brick Lane Bookshop here in London, during the customary Q&A the conversation veered towards Donald Trump, who was then in his second year as president, and would routinely outrage people on social and legacy media with his comments. I can’t remember very well the discussion, but I said that I didn’t think Trump was stupid, that in my view he’d clocked pretty well how to win an election by winding people up. I can vividly recall the face of a literary critic who was sitting in the audience — the mix of confusion and disbelief on her face: “How can you say something relatively nice about such a horrible man?” The consensus among liberal types back then was that Trump was a fool who had accidentally lied his way to the White House. There was a refusal to see his ascendancy as the result of a cleverly planned and executed political strategy. I’m not a Trump fan in any possible way, but I think the easiest way to be defeated at anything is to relax about one’s opponent, to think whoever is facing us is a halfwit. This is the arrogant attitude that got Trump elected, the same one that lost Remainers the Brexit referendum, the same one that will probably get Trump elected a second time. If we are to counter the advance of reaction we need to both take the opponents seriously, and understand how they use public discourse against the grain, in order to propagate their own ideas.
Trump and other populist grifters are quite savvy in the art of the disseminating a message. Trump, Johnson, Orban, Meloni, Milei, plus a wide array of edgy rightwing commentators, know that a message can be amplified not only by their supporters, but also by those who disagree with them, ergo the scandalous tone of much of their baiting. This was true in 2016, when liberal communist Jack Dorsey1 pulled the strings on Twitter, and is true in 2024, now that Elon Musk has turned his favourite toy into a toxic playground in which mostly everything goes. But if in 2016 reactionary malfeasance was disseminated as collateral damage, in 2024 it is disseminated by design.
Agendas
Yesterday a thirty-six year old man went on a rampage with a samurai sword in East London, wounding several people and killing a fourteen year old boy. This tragic and nonsensical incident took place against the backdrop of local elections throughout the country. This type of event will always generate online commentary, but because of the elections the commentary was politicised to the point of nausea.
I won’t rewrite Shitstorm here for you, but part of my satirical criticism in this book focused on how the social media commons always tries to appropriate atrocities, so that they fit a specific agenda. This is true both of progressive and reactionary social media users. Within seconds of any atrocity speculation begins: rightwingers will attribute the attack to islamist terrorism and/or illegal immigrants; progressives to rightwing terrorism and/or disenfranchised white natives. The events that have taken place move to the background as a battle is fought over their interpretation. It happened with the recent Moscow attacks, it happened with the Sydney attacks, it happened yesterday with the sword attack, and it will continue to happen.
This sadistic speculation has become part and parcel of how we deal with atrocities: speculating, policing speculation, concocting our own speculative narratives, rejoicing when we are right, piling on on those who are wrong.2 But here is where reaction has the upper hand over us: when they attribute Atrocity X to islamist terrorism or illegal immigrants, they don’t need to be right — they score a point as long as the message, whether true or false, gets across. That’s why it’s so important to deny them the air.
Negative PR is still PR
I don’t agree with P. T. Barnum’s dictum that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”. One has only to look at what happened with New Coke in order to realise Barnum is wrong. But P. T. Barnum might be right when it comes to the algorithmic playgrounds of social media: negative PR is still PR.
Let’s take the case of Twitter/X. Let’s imagine a hypothetical reactionary tweet that is released into the void, by an account with 100 followers. Engagements with this tweet — likes, RTs, quotes, replies — will contribute to its “algorithmic rating”, and the higher this rating, the more likely this tweet will feature in the “For you” tab on the platform, being seen by non-followers. Verification status — now a paid-for feature — will contribute to its rating too. So far, so good. The problem is that the algorithm couldn’t care less whether the engagement is positive or negative, otherwise there would be an option to downvote tweets (think of Reddit). The only thing the algorithm cares about is engagement, for engagement means attention, and attention means clicks, and clicks mean advertisement money, or at least its possibility. This is why there’s no more pointless way to oppose reaction online than by engaging with it. It doesn’t matter if this engagement is condemnatory — it is still just engagement for the algorithm, and this will make the hypothetical tweet more visible. And what is the worst form of negative engagement? Well that’d be the outrage quote favoured by many well-meaning useful idiots and professional click-activists with a brand to take care of. Because this type of engagement not only makes a tweet more visible — it also makes it immediately visible to a new audience, by removing it from the rather closed vessel that were the original 100 followers of the account that released it into the void, in order to deliver it it to an exponential number of users, as it keeps being re-distributed by other useful idiots.
The Trump camp understood this in 2016. And after Trump a myriad reactionary grifters have understood it and adopted this modus operandi. It still works. Outrage was always the currency of Twitter / X. But now, thanks to paid-for verification and a sympathetic boss, it is aiding rightwing populists like never before.
Mistrust is a weapon
A late Brazilian friend of mine, once a member of the Communist Party and a political prisoner during the 1970s, used to go mad when his daughter would spend long hours on the phone as a teenager. He was concerned with the impeding phone bill, but what worried him the most was the amount of information his daughter would willingly surrender over the phone — a phone that had been wiretapped in the not so distant past. He used to say to her: “Darling, only ever use the phone to pass on false information or to agree on a fake meeting place.” He was joking (maybe?) but I think he had a point: we tend to trust too much the technologies that we use to go about our everyday lives; they might make our life better but they can also be used against us.
Maybe it isn’t a case of countering misinformation with misinformation but of being more cautious with the tools we are given supposedly for free. Maybe it’s a matter of being mindful of our own roles in the dissemination of reactionary talking points. Unless that’s exactly what we want to do. I don’t know you, but I rather not be a useful idiot.
I use the term “liberal communist”, as coined by Slavoj Žižek, to refer to those who espouse liberal democratic values, while also embracing certain elements of communism or socialism, particularly in terms of advocating for social justice and the redistribution of wealth. The problem of so-called “liberal communists” is that they don’t challenge the logic of capitalism, arguing instead of reforms within the system.
I’m actually going to rewrite Shitstorm here for you; not at all of it, but the fragment in question. Background: after a hypothetical terrorist attack agains the Eurostar the Metropolitan Police captures a suspect. Since the investigation is ongoing no further details are provided.
No further details are provided. No further details are provided?
No further details can only mean this or that, something murky. No further details can only mean the Mainstream Media will speak of a Lone Wolf. No further details canonly mean the Mainstream Media will not speak of a Lone Wolf. No further details can only mean the suspect is black, can only mean the suspect is white, can only mean the suspect is like this or like that, can only mean the suspect has a beard and a Middle Eastern name, that is has a name. No further details and the suspect will be insane or the suspect will not be insane and insanity will or will not be discussed. No further details and somehow a new shitstorm will ensue. Another shitstorm will be born. Another shitstorm in which we end up trapped for days. Another shitstorm in which we’ll die in proportion to the worlds we excrete into the world. Another shitstorm and I can’t even and I can’t begin to and here I fixed your headline and thread and a lot of clapping between words in uppercase.
There’s always a lot of clapping.
Regarding certain presidents —people who have money always forget that people who don’t have enough are hoping to vote for someone who will make things better, for them, at whatever costs.
once upon a time, I worked at a school where no one liked the acting principal but let me tell you—it was the year of no complaints: he knew how to handle a budget. We all had what we needed and then some! No red tape. Get things done. People get hired and fired overnight. Things got done.
People always vote with their pockets. Both wealthy and the struggling.
Russian revolution’s tipping point was a piece of bread. Of course lots of other “important” stuff but essentially the ladies who made bread but could not afford it didn’t show up to the factory. They were starving to death anyway. I am recalling this from a lecture back in uni right after 9-11 and the uptick in patriotism by people putting tiny American flags on their cars etc.
The neoliberal policies are counting on social media’s useful idiots.
Majority of the world is NOT on Twatter and at best is watching insta and tik tok jokes for entertainment and memes.
A smart person knows that.
If votes count that is.