The Patriot Post® · 'Insurrection' Caused by Memes?

Evidently, those who can’t meme don’t want those who can to be allowed to continue. That essentially is the message from the Leftmedia rag The Atlantic in its recent article titled “How Memes Led to an Insurrection.” From that ridiculous title, it’s not hard to guess the premise of the piece. But just in case there was any confusion, the teaser clears things up: “A president who understood the power of memes was able to send thousands of people into battle against democracy itself.”

These clowns have no idea how funny they are.

For clarity’s sake, a meme is defined as “a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.” What likely comes to mind for most folks with the term “meme” is an image overlaid with a brief text message. We in our humble shop make them all the time.

A meme is a quick and effective way to spread an idea via a combination of both imagery and text. Good memes require a thorough recognition of cultural touchstones, along with wit and often a heavy dose of humor. Clearly, memes are a form of speech.

Therefore, given the Left’s growing dismissal of Americans’ constitutional rights on the grounds of “safety” or — ironically, in this case — the preserving of “democracy,” it comes as little surprise that The Atlantic would attack free speech.

The Atlantic attempts to make its case that memes are a dangerous threat to U.S. “democracy” by appealing to that old adage that a lie told often and widely enough will result in people believing that lie. Thanks to the reach of social media, we’re told, a “dangerous” meme can be spread widely with dangerous effect. The Atlantic uses the example of the January 6 riot to support its claim, suggesting that the meme #StopTheSteal effectively caused the attack. It is indeed ironic that even as The Atlantic declares the #StopTheSteal meme a lie, it peddles a Democrat lie by repeatedly referring to the riot as an “insurrection.” Yet the #StopTheSteal meme was not calling for an insurrection; rather, it was calling for the rectification of what its supporters believed was a fraudulent election.

The real beef The Atlantic has is not actually against politicians lying. Its beef is that Republicans are much better at using memes to get their message across than are humorless Democrats. “The 2020 election illustrated that social media could be turned against U.S. democracy when wielded by domestic political actors who understand how to use it to make their ideas go from the wires to the weeds,” complained the article. “Trump was the first president to fully adopt meme wars as a campaign and governing strategy.”

On a side note, every time Leftmedia actors wring their hands over conservatives and Republicans somehow being a “threat to democracy” simply by being conservative, a good rule of thumb is to replace “democracy” with “Democrats,” which gives a clearer understanding as to what they are actually saying.

In a nutshell, the Left is whining about the fact that those on the Right are simply better and more deft in their meme skills than are those on the Left. Probably because leftists caricature themselves for us, and they don’t find it funny when we notice. As a result, the Leftmedia sees this as not fair and calls for the silencing of “dangerous” conservatives.

To be fair, it is difficult to win an argument when your opponent has more truth and facts backing up his position. Hence, the Left goes low and engages in that lowest form of argumentation — name-calling.