Kill all Normies paints a picture of the modern world (the “post-post-modern” world might be more appropriate) as a online-bleeding-to-offline battle between transgressive and post-modern forces rooted in Tumblr ‘social justice’ blogs on the one side, and 4chan and various subreddits on the other. The author, Angela Nagle, calls on the left to abandon what she describes as the “transgressive style” for kind of more affirmative politics. She says that since the 1960s, the left-liberal style, which the left has carried with it throughout its takeover of academia, the media, and other cultural centers, has been appropriated by the right. In her reading, there’s nothing inherently leftist about the ‘transgressive style’. Such shock-and-awe can be used to destroy conservative norms and values, as it did when a figure of crucified Christ was submerged in piss and displayed in a New York art gallery, or perhaps more constructively, from the 1960s sexual liberation movement through to today’s broader struggle for rights for gender and sexual minorities. But the transgressive style can be also used to destroy mainstream taboos against sexism, racism, and generally just not being horrible to people in public. Recently disgraced figure Milo Yiannopoulos might be the most famous example yet. He described his role as a “provocateur” (basically a troll but offline, I guess?) and spent months touring around campuses in the US goading liberals into hysterical and violent responses to his transphobic and anti-feminist rhetoric.
Nagle’s response is to call for the left to end its fascination with the “transgressive style”, and to find a new rhetorical aesthetic. The left has not always been about tearing down convention for the sake of it, and perhaps we have some conventions which are worth defending.
But how much does all this matter? Are the obscure corners of Tumblr with their 50 genders and otherkin really influencing wider culture? Or is /r/The_Donald and the rest of the Alt-Right - Richard Spencer, et al. - really responsible for getting Trump elected? Or are they an irrelevant freak-show whose influence and voice are amplified by the media to drive ratings and exaggerated by activists on the other end of the spectrum to validate the necessity of their own cause? I’m sure Trump had his support from the subreddit /r/The_Donald and associated young white and male supporters. But did /r/The_Donald and associated Alt-right and fascist-sympathizing online movements really get the Donald elected?
This is important because if the online culture wars really are shaping the wider discourse, it is possible their influence will grow and it is important to pay attention to them if you want to know where the culture is going and what direction politics is likely to take in the future. On the other hand, if these fringe online movements are mostly just extremes of wider culture, all the media’s attention on them may be unhelpful and even serve to exaggerate support for Donald Trump and the extent of extreme views on both the left and right.
To me it seems like new right-wing media - InfoWars, Breitbart News, etc., played a part. Facebook has also been accused of playing a part by enabling “Fake News” producers to spread untrue findings, like for instance, an infamous story about the Pope endorsing Donald Trump. Both of these forces are obviously a recent phenomenon and you can chalk them up to online movements, but I am not sure how linked they are to grassroots culture movements by young right-wing activists and trolls on 4chan.
On the flipside, I think progressive movements have succeeded in culture change in particular instances, for better and, following backlash, for worse. Black Lives Matter have been very active and have succeeded in getting their concerns into the mainstream. There has been a response by the media and police to try to address their concerns. Though we are not there yet in achieving the goals set out by BLM, they’ve made their concerns known. Activists for transgender rights have succeeded in having transgender rights issues pushed into the public consciousness, although even there it sometimes seems like the backlash has been stronger than the initial movement. In spite of all this, I am not sure these movements really played such a large role in the election. Surely it was the Democratic establishment, not accusations of sexism and racism by “Bernie Bros” and “brosocialists”, that made Hillary’s win?
In general I enjoyed Angela Nagle’s call for a more affirmative politics, less focused on the ‘politics of transgression’; a progressive liberal politic more focused on building than tearing down - abandon irony to the twitter trolls. The right has always focused on the “rhetoric of fear” to the liberal’s “audacity of hope” so perhaps this is not entirely new. But appeals to emotion and group interests are very human and I’m not sure you can just change the political game by refusing to be drawn into them.
