A new series of memes are being shared on social media platforms, including 4Chan and the 8Chan replacement EndChan. These memes visually connect violent Incel culture – an offshoot of Pick Up Artist culture from the ‘Manosphere’ – to violent radical right culture using gendered logics of masculine shame and redemption. Ultimately the visual rhetoric of these memes poses violent mass murder within a frame of sanctified dominance as a pathway for disaffected young (white) men to recover their “proper” masculinity.
This series of memes presents a volatile and disturbing development since the 2019 attacks in Christchurch, California, Texas, Dayton, and Norway. (It is important to note that the Dayton attacker, as far as we know, did not espouse radical right ideology, nor do these memes specifically include him. I include Dayton because of its temporal relationship to the other attacks, and because of the attacker’s clear participation in misogynist culture.) This power of visual argumentation, particularly in digital media, is well noted in the field of communication studies. The meme format for visual argument is particularly useful for propaganda because as rhetorical scholar Davi Johnson notes, “[m]emes persuade, or rather memes infect, because they ‘program’ people to respond in particular ways”.
Radical right attackers as Chads: Meme series
On August 25, 2019, The Independent published an article by journalist Lizzie Dearden titled, “Revered as a saint by online extremists, how Christchurch shooter inspired copycat terrorists around the world.” Dearden describes how recent manifestos of radical right attackers have been distributed online with effects, including acting as triggers for potential attackers, “copying each other’s ideas,” and forming “a loose format for their atrocities.” Embedded in the article are a series of videos and images, including a meme from this new series. Yet, no discussion is included about the appropriation of Incel visuals into the service of radical right ideology. It is, however, perhaps one of the most important aspects of the circulation of manifestos after these recent mass attacks.
