‘CULTURE
JAMMING’
How the extremist right hijacked ‘Star Wars,’ Taylor Swift
and the Mizzou student protests to promote racism
BY KEEGAN HANKES ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON PRADES
As online platforms like Twitter and
Facebook become increasingly important
for the dissemination of breaking news,
racist leaders are quickly recognizing the
power of subverting mainstream coverage in the service of their own agendas.
So far, this subversion has manifested
itself in two major campaign styles:
overtly, with memes and images designed
to elicit outrage and disrupt messaging,
and covertly, through the spread of disinformation, fraudulent eyewitness
accounts and fake news reports.
But no matter the method, the racists
behind the tactics have one goal: hijacking the media in the service of more
“racially awakened” minds.
One of the foremost practitioners of
both types of campaign is Andrew Anglin,
administrator of The Daily Stormer, a neoNazi website that thrives on the type of
vicious racism formerly confined to anonymous boards such as 4Chan and 8chan.
In recent years, the site has originated racist campaigns targeting both the mainstream media and social justice organizers.
During last fall’s protests calling for
the resignation of Tim Wolfe, president
of the University of Missouri, over his
handling of a series of racist incidents
on campus, Anglin was able to generate
thousands of retweets and “likes” for
false information purportedly coming
from the demonstrations.
Using the hashtags #Mizzou and
#PrayForMizzou, Anglin manipulated
the audience following the situation
online to unwittingly spread reports that
the University of Missouri police were
complicit with the Ku Klux Klan and that
crosses were being burned on the university lawn — an effort apparently meant to
show that overly sensitive anti-racist protesters will believe anything. When his
efforts were discovered, Twitter banned
his username. But the damage had been
done. Anglin touted his efforts as a major
success and called for similar campaigns
as soon as possible.
It didn’t take long for copycats to follow suit.
spring 2016 19