The first and most basic point to contest is the idea that "trolling" is an appropriate descriptor for the white nationalist alt-right. Phillips is particularly resistant to this framing (especially when applied to Donald Trump). Though the word "trolling" rose to prominence in the early-mid 2000s as a specific, bounded point of subcultural self-identification, the term has been applied to so many different kinds of behaviors in so many different contexts over the last ten years that big and small, damaging and harmless, progressive and reactionary, are now flattened into one slippery category vaguely suggesting disruptiveness. Forwarding hateful opinions and calling the President out for hypocrisy. Signaling feminist solidarity and signaling violent misogyny. All, somehow, the same underlying thing.In 2017, the term "trolling" doesn't mean much. And yet it is thrown around as easy shorthand, both to explain what something is and to defend why it's done.When used to explain or defend the kinds of behavior favored by the alt-right, "I was just trolling" doesn't just muddle the definitional waters. It also gives bigots an easy way to deflect personal responsibility for hateful action, as Aja Romano thoughtfully unpacks. In fact, it allows them to redirect that responsibility to the person who "let" themselves get trolled, despite the truth—equally applicable to offline violence, particularly sexual violence—that the only person responsible for an attack is the person responsible.
Image: Shutterstock/George Sheldon
The second claim warranting pushback is the false assumption that alt-right "trolling" is equally interchangeable with 4chan and Anonymous, an assumption that posits static, ahistorical framings of both. Making this claim, either explicitly or implicitly, obscures the one basic, unifying fact of 4chan and Anonymous: that they change, both in terms of demographics and ideologically .Certain vernacular norms have, of course, persisted over time; components of geek culture, meme culture, and rhetorical strategies associated with early trolling subculture and other forms of transgressive humor can still be found on contemporary 4chan and within groups of Anons, although the same could be said for many spaces and communities steeped in the broader category of internet culture, such as reddit (which itself is home to a number of pro-Trump alt-right boards—most notably r/the_donald—often discussed alongside 4chan's "politically incorrect" /pol/ board).But beyond these more aesthetic—and sometimes rhetorical—through-lines, the 4chan and Anonymous of 2017 is not the same as the 4chan and Anonymous of 2008. On 4chan, this shift is most directly attributable to changes within its userbase.That white supremacists from Stormfront decided to recruit on 4chan's /pol/ board, for example, in the process drawing new participants into the 4chan fold, speaks to this variability . So too does the exodus of many users in 2014 to places such as 8chan, when Chris Poole (aka moot), the site's founder and head administrator, decided to ban all discussion of the GamerGate hate and harassment campaign.
The same holds for Anonymous, which emerged not just from 4chan, but a constellation of chans and IRC conversations. Anonymous' organizing quickly moved beyond the chans and 4chan in particular, in large part because many people who did not frequent 4chan began to join, and 4chan didn't meet their needs (which is why, as Coleman shows, some were already talking elsewhere, such as IRC channels). The influx and departure of new Anons from different populations with different objectives over many years (here is an example from 2012) resulted in a number of profound shifts, sometimes in opposing ideological directions, sometimes simultaneously, as Beyer's and Coleman's work both illustrates.Indeed, the assertion—most conspicuously forwarded in Dale Beran's widely shared "4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump" article—that there exists a fundamental continuity between the 4chan and Anonymous of today and the 4chan and Anonymous of ten years ago is complicated by just how much progressive activism has been undertaken by Anonymous since 2008. Contrary to Beran's account, which grossly minimizes Anonymous' role in Occupy Wall Street, the Anonymous of 2008-2015 displayed an ever growing commitment to social justice issues.Members of Anonymous ruthlessly hacked governments and corporations, and eventually embraced domestic social justice, drawing attention both to rape culture and police brutality across North America
4chan, Anonymous, and their freewheeling, offensive culture of lulz thus managed to hatch—or at least served as the breeding ground for the expression of—progressive and violently bigoted ideals alike (not to mention a whole range of ambivalent, hard to place expression) over the span of the same decade. The idea that 4chan and its presumably interchangeable spawn Anonymous is fundamentally "united by a common culture and set of values, fuzzy around the edges, but solid at the core," as Beran argues, just doesn't hold up in the face of the verifiable historical record.This faction was never a "skeleton key" to Donald Trump's Presidential ascension —but they sure as hell want people to think they were
Image: Ken Wolter/Shutterstock
The third issue to address is the seemingly explanatory (and, admittedly, tidily appealing) idea that 4chan—and its alt-right trolls—were the lynchpin for securing Trump's Presidential victory.It is certainly true that the alt-right's pro-Trump "shitposting"—the act of flooding social media with memes and commentary designed to bolster their "God Emperor" Trump—raised the public visibility of the alt-right and its memetic handiwork. And it is also true that this uptick in public visibility forced people to focus on Trump more than they would have otherwise. The shitpost connection reached critical mass in August 2016, when Hillary Clinton held a press conference (precipitated, in part, by Pepe the Frog) denouncing Trump's ties to the white nationalist group—much to the delight of precisely those white nationalists. Without a doubt, this speech and all the alt-right activity that preceded and followed it contributed to the overall momentum of Trump's campaign.
But that activity didn't happen in a vacuum, and wasn't self-propelling. "Trolls" and the alt-right may have played a prominent role in the 2016 election, but that fact is dependent upon and cannot be untangled from journalistic coverage that amplified their messaging—shitpost memes very much included. Phillips describes how media coverage—even coverage condemning alt-right antagonisms—helped conjure this monster, and how that conjuring, in turn, helped amplify Trump's overall platform (which itself was a series of memes).The fact that alt-right participants received so much coverage speaks to an even deeper issue, perhaps the weightiest issue, influencing Donald Trump's rise. More than fake news, more than filter bubbles, more than insane conspiracy theories about child sex rings operating out of the backs of Washington DC pizza shops, the biggest media story to emerge from the 2016 election was the degree to which far-right media were able to set the narrative agenda for mainstream media outlets. (This point is ably argued by internet scholars Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman).What Breitbart did, what conspiratorial far-right radio programs did, what Donald Trump himself did (to say nothing of what the silent contributors to the political landscape did), was ensure that what far-right pundits were talking about became what everyone was talking about, what everyone had to talk about, if they wanted to keep abreast of the day's news cycle. Alt-right antagonisms—their "trolling"—was one cloud among many in this gathering storm, one roaring towards the mainstream from the far-far right. Shitpost participants adeptly harnessed this energy, were thrust into prominence because of this energy, and were able to transfer greater attention to Trump through this energy. But they didn't create this energy.Consequently, to assert that alt-right shitposters were a deciding factor in Trump's victory risks minimizing the broader cultural, societal, and media trends that influenced their influence. Worse, when coupled with the aforementioned assumptions about the interchangeable relationship between the alt-right, "trolling," 4chan, and Anonymous, the claim that "trolls caused Trump" bestows a kind of atemporal, almost godlike power to what is no more and no less than a bigoted subset of a faction of an ever-evolving, ever-unstable, ever-reactive anonymous online collective. This faction was never a "skeleton key" to Donald Trump's Presidential ascension—but they sure as hell want people to think they were.And this gets to the heart of why any of this matters. Taking the time to map—to accurately map—the repeated, fractured, reconfiguring mobilizations emerging from anonymous and pseudo-anonymous spaces online allows us to understand where we are and how we got here. It also allows us to anticipate where we might be going next, for better and for worse. But more importantly, fully contextualizing our present moment—particularly given how tenuous facts in our present moment have become—puts us in a better position to safeguard the actual record, and to carefully parse symptom from disease. All the better to resist doublethink with; all the better to stand up to those who attempt to hijack the narrative.To assert that alt-right shitposters were a deciding factor in Trump's victory risks minimizing the broader cultural, societal, and media trends that influenced their influence
