‘The Left can’t Meme’ is something that holds very true. But it’s just as interesting to note where it doesn’t hold true as where it does. There are some Leftists who can meme. Invariably those Leftists are kind of insane, and off the beaten path. Stalinists can meme. Transhumanists can meme. Weird Hardline Utilitarians, Occultists, Georgians, Hardcore Socialists, and a host of other bizarre stances can meme. But your average Neoliberal or normie Socialist can’t.
Kind of strange, ain’t it?
There’s been a lot of posts on this subject, some written by me, but this isn’t one of them. The reason why the mainstream Left can’t meme is complicated and due to a lot of different factors. I’m only interested in one of those factors at the moment. The fact that Mainstream Leftists hate definition.
If you look at all the Leftists that are actually good at memes, it’s not hard to see what they all hold in common. All of them stand for a very definite ideology. They’re often the type that is quick to celebrate or brush off historical atrocities. They are proud Communists, Transhumanists, or Anarchists and they aren’t shy about embracing the dark implications of their position.
Which works well with meme culture. Meme culture is a cult of shamelessness. It rewards you for sticking to your guns. It praises immoderation.
Even the moderate Right tends to do better than the radical Left because the fact is that the moderate Right is somewhat of an oxymoron. It has things it will kill for and die for.
The Moderate Left Winger eschews this because they hate being defined. For a long time, the Right called them Socialist and they denied it right up until the point where Socialism ceased to be a dirty word. Now the older Right-Wingers tend to use the term ‘Postmodern’ and still they turn up their noses. These are all wrong, they’re not the purveyors of some strange ideology. They’re just helpful people. Good people.
It’s called being a decent human being.
Strange how being a decent human being seems to entail a number of curiously ideological platforms.
Moderate Leftists are in a continual quest to convince you that their positions are the human baseline, and so they can never be ‘positions’. They have to be normal people. It’s everyone else that has positions. And given that their positions are just the human baseline, it only makes sense that they would become the dominant opinion in Academia, Media, Government, etc.
It’s a fantastic trick because it’s less visible it allows them to act as though their power was somehow granted by the heavens instead of by a coordinated ideological effort.
.The Right is in a constant quest to define the Left. The Left, or at least, the Western Academic post-1960s Left, is an equally constant quest to defy definition. They don’t even like really being called ‘Leftists’ and it’s not a title they use for themselves with the same regularity. They are simply Good People. Caring people. It’s all the others who are ideological.
But since they are just ‘normal’ in their own view they can never be special, they can never be exceptional, they can never have great insight. And without dreams of glory, without a clear, defined belief system, there can be no memes.