Hot Meme Warzone
How to protect your head during a hot memetic war and demand a battle plan from government and media
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Although the fascist extremists aligned with Putin and other foreign enemy states are using the same tactics they used in 2016 — memetic warfare, conspiracy theories, victimhood, racism, fear — journalists and media watchdogs are no better at covering these tactics than they were eight years ago — with rare exceptions. And government barely acknowledges the war at all.
Those covering extremism are still showcasing racist, misogynistic, and quite frankly, demonic memes posted by Trump and Elon Musk, etal, without taking appropriate precautions.
First they should ask: does reposting this meme do more damage than not? Once something is seen it cannot be unseen.
In addition, there are proper protocols to doing this work — there’s a reason why I use words to describe memetic warfare and rarely post the cruel and mentally destructive images. I don’t want to sear into your brains what I can’t unsee.
I will never forget where I was when I first saw the anti-semitic and demonic memes used to destroy Hillary Clinton. It’s like looking at a battlefield of ruin.
I am reluctant to even use words to describe the memes in this case, but for the purpose of this report: her image was made to look like a demon-witch, a Star of David hovered in the corner, as she was blamed for the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. Sounds crazy, right? This was the type of work put out from St. Petersburg and boosted by domestic Trump fanboys.
As I think about it now, I can see the intersection of conspiracy narratives that would later form pieces of the QAnon web, and it saddens me to think how many millions of gullible minds were willing to believe the worst about her. But they do not have any inoculation from weapon’s grade memetic warfare. Now, as I see the same imagery being used to wage memetic war on Kamala Harris, I am steeling myself mentally for what’s to come.
As I wrote in the lede to Part One in the 2016 Election Attack Series:
The Crime Scene
Twitter 2016 is a crime scene. The chalk outline around the decaying corpse is an ominous warning — metaphorical yellow tape serves as an attempt to keep people out. But I go in — probing the bombed out traces of memetic warfare. And navigating my way between the mounds of deleted tweets and suspended accounts, I forensically piece together the carcass of 2016 — an election stolen by Kremlin-sponsored attacks facilitated by misogynistic white nationalists — superspreaders of GRU lies.
I start pulling at threads, one at a time, because criminal propagandists reveal their crimes through projection. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones’ InfoWars, Dinesh D’Souza, Don Jr. and Glenn Greenwald are each defending Douglass Mackey, a convicted felon just sentenced to seven-months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election. He targeted people of color to vote for Hillary Clinton with ‘vote by text’ memes — and thousands of people contacted the line.
Voting by text isn’t a thing, but election interference is.
The reason I’ve been writing the 2016 Election Attack Series is if we do not investigate and prosecute those who waged war on us eight years ago, history will repeat and it already is.
Remember, memetic warfare is actual war, instead of bombs, they drop images and disinformation designed to alter people’s brains. If this were Agent Orange being carpet bombed onto people, we would understand the implications and do something to stop it. The longterm impacts are just as deadly.
Memetic Wasteland
Twitter was a wasteland over the weekend, as people spread Trump’s memes trying to make Harris into a Communist or a demon worshipper, whatever sells to the MAGA-QAnon Cult, now fused together.
Extremist researcher Pekka Kallioniemi warned of the latest Russian disinformation narrative being fanned on rightwing channels:
This time, the ever-reliable JackStr42679640 shared a fake story of "Adrenochrome Task Force" led by Putin trying to take down the Ukrainian "adrenochrome business". The story has it all - Nazis, age-old Anti-semitic "Blood Libel" trope, global elites trying to stay forever young, Ukrainian soldiers "torturing children"...
So far, the post has almost 1 million impressions and no Community Notes. It's extremely effective since it can be connected to so many conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate, QAnon and The Great Reset. And of course, it makes Putin look like the great savior.
And the source for this information? QAnon-related Telegram Channel "JulianAssangeWiki".
What that indicates is what I’ve been saying for weeks — the pro-Kremlin faction is rebooting all their greatest hits and in fact, now merging them together in a single cluster bomb.
Pekka did a great job of setting up enough context so those who decide to probe further can put on an emotional hazmat suit before spelunking down rabbit holes designed to disinform and warp brains into thinking Putin and Trump are saviors, rather than criminals.
I am grateful to each and every extremism researcher and reporter that strikes a line through the memes being pushed by the right.
A simple red line drawn diagonally on the meme alerts the viewer that the image is disinformation and that red line is enough to diffuse whatever the image is meant to spark in one’s brain. Some researchers go even further and add chyrons to videos that warn viewers of “Fascist Propaganda” or “Nazi Propaganda.”
I shouldn’t have to be the one making these suggestions or cautioning people about this stuff — we’ve had a decade of this type of warfare and by now, we should have entire departments set up to determine how to protect a civilian population from information warfare. Germany just created a unit to defend citizens from Russian information warfare.
We need to do better, and parroting the cruelty and conspiracy only helps the fascists.
As I reflected over the weekend about how many young men have been radicalized and misogynized by Elon Musk and Andrew Tate, I thought that there is no circle of hell deep enough for those harming the mind’s of our young people. I grieve with the mothers who have lost their boys to these monsters, and I pray that they come back some day.
I also grieve the loss of the elders, who are deep in the Fox rot all day, who believe Kamala is a Communist just as they believed that Joe was demented just as they believed Hillary was a witch.
The same tactics were used against my candidates in 2022 and in 2018. And there was no requirement to note on the racist and misogynist memes where they came from and whether or not they were paid advertisements by opposing candidates. It was just the wild west, scarring and branding the targets without any punishment for those pulling the trigger.
Russia’s military and their aligned Fifth Column in America are seeking our psychological vulnerabilities, and as Stephen Douglas of Disinfolklore and Decoding Trolls reminds us, “it’s hard to accept that we can be trolled.” This is a fact we must all accept — smart or experienced in memetic warfare doesn’t give us immunity. As Douglas says, it’s all about dividing and conquering.
As Douglas told Bette Dangerous in this brief how-to on countering disinfolklore and controlling war magic:
What to look for?
Stories that provoke immediate and extreme emotional reactions. This is the energy / Mana Ruschia uses to provoke us into sharing nonsense.
Memes that depress spirits should be considered as trolls.
Ruschia is a One Trick Pony. It’s lazy, uncreative.
It knows some proud know-it-all veteran journalists will repeat the same nonsense that sounds plausible - watching highly experienced journalists unknowingly promoting Ruschian Disinfolklore by echoing stories they’ve read in respectable media outlets, is disconcerting.
Core teaching in Counter Disinfolklore:
We are all susceptible to being trolled, for good or for bad.
We can however learn to get better at Controlling how such War Magic manipulates our moods / attitudes / intentions and motivations.
Emotion-moving communications of all kinds whether an actual bomb exploding beside us or an info-bomb stopping us sleeping through the anger, disgust, sadness it provokes in our minds.
I operate what I label my ‘Incoming Troll Radar.’ You can’t unsee, unhear or unthink certain kinds of malicious negative information. So I try to prevent it getting into my inner mind in the first place. The most effective trolls meld themselves into our energy / Mana / inner mind, before we even know what’s happening. So staying mindful about what we allow access to our minds is crucial especially in such information and troll rich environments as most of us live in. Never be ashamed of simply preventing negative trolls enter our minds. Politely refuse to talk about them. Change the topic. Discover new ways of avoiding speaking about the subject altogether.
If I find myself wondering ‘is this true?’ of some meme I encounter online or in conversation (often others pick up memes online or elsewhere and serve them up to us during conversations- for me, this is the same thing as getting trolled online directly by a Tweet from Twitter’s owner). This questioning of a meme in itself is an indicator that I am being trolled. Something has engaged my emotions. My curiosity enough to occupy scarce mental real estate and precious time I could be allocating to thinking about positive matters. Once I find myself wondering about a meme, this engages my Incoming Troll Radar. Then I don’t need to enquire any more deeply into it. I just dismiss it, without investing further cognitive energy.
Those words read like a salve to me — an emotional balm after years of troll trauma.
These are patterns that we can break, but we have to be willing to do so. The joy of the DNC is already being tampered with by memetic warfare fanned by US propagandists and Putin is pushing out narrative bullshittery today about satanic Americans finding refuge in Russia. That Alex Jones is pushing Putin’s bullshit on Twitter is terribly unsurprising. You see the pattern, right?
We use these communications platforms like public utilities now, and just as we need the water we drink and the air we breathe to be safe, we need our comms platforms to be safe from toxic levels of hate speech, disinformation, and memetic warfare.
In my latest Unmusked report, I turn to Britain and the EU to see if new digital safety regulations can be deployed to stop online harms and hold platform owners to account.
Something’s gotta give.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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Thank you for the examples of supportive and specific ways we can recalibrate our early warning systems. "Incoming!" is a key word inwardly that I use, a term often used in positive comedy.