Truth and falsehood in memes

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All the memes in this post came from Facebook.

No matter where a propagandist is on the conservative spectrum, from merely conservative to full-on fascist, it is always necessary to lie. One of the wonderful things about being a liberal is that you don’t have to lie about your values and intentions. To argue for fairness, caring, and equality is easy and can be honest. But arguments for dominance, hierarchy, systemic unfairness, exploitation, and, yes, even cruelty, have to be disguised.

Right-wing propagandists also have to lie about the natures and intentions of the people who oppose them. That’s a part of the right-wing need for scapegoats and demonization.

Here is what J.D. Vance said. He was speaking to Tucker Carlson in 2021:

“We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Can you count the lies? What is Vance even trying to say, in between the lies? I’d put it like this: To be liberal is to be miserable. Liberals are so perverse and fascist in their misery that they align with corporations (!) to make everyone else miserable. The liberal agenda = misery for all. Liberals are illegitimate as citizens. They don’t have a stake in the country and thus should be marginalized. Only authoritarians can be trusted with power, because in a democracy the inferior people that right-wingers demonize can’t be kept down.

Vance singles out Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez not because they are miserable (obviously they’re not) but because they are the kind of people who are scapegoated and demonized in right-wing propaganda.

Only someone without the slightest talent for politics would allow himself to be caught on video saying something like “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.” Half a second’s reflection would see what kind of hilarious and effective blowback it would cause outside the right-wing propaganda network.

I have been greatly entertained by the tsunami of cat memes. Cat memes were already a top genre of memes. Vance provided a way for the cat meme genre to be turned against MAGA Republicans. My guess is that these cat memes will even change more than a few votes. Consider the messages behind the cat memes. None of them lie, because they don’t have to. They don’t have to be mean. Instead they convey a much-deserved ridicule in a funny and even heartwarming way. Such a thing would be impossible in right-wing propaganda.

⬇︎ For comparison, consider this right-wing meme that I found this morning in a Republican Facebook group. It tries to be funny but isn’t. The lie is rather obvious — that real men vote for fascists. It demonizes liberals as infantile and feminized. It tries to stoke and draw power from the gender wars. It unintentionally — and embarrassingly, though it goes over their heads — reveals the insecure masculinity of rural, working-class males and offers no remedy for that insecurity other than meanness and fascism.

⬆︎ A Republican meme from Facebook.

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Update: