You say convenient, I would say significant. 2016 had an unusually paranormal feel to a lot of people, complete with an actual rain of frogs (Pepe wasn't the only frog meme that year as you might recall). The 'meme magic' group in particular was fascinating to me, as it seemed like an evolution of the '80s 'chaos magic' group which I also find fascinating. Only this time, there was actually a relationship with higher powers. That is where the vitality of the movement was when I encountered it, and that is what I found interesting enough to look into further.
I'm disappointed as hell that a secularist wanker like Carl Benjamin successfully co-opted the movement for crass political purposes. But I'm also annoyed that if I tried to re-appropriate the same symbology for the optimistic, metaphysics-exploring group of pranksters that meme'd it to relevance, I'd get called a bigot for associating with the wrong people.
Any group is defined by its lowest common denominators, which is why I and so many people I respect try to seek out smaller subcultures. The trouble I'm seeing is that when a large group like the nationalist right wants to co-opt a smaller but more effective movement, the larger group's rivals refuse to acknowledge any distinction between the different subcomponents, even if those subcomponents disagree on everything that's objectionable about the larger group to begin with. It's bad for the interesting subcultures and it's bad tactics for the larger ones to unite rather than divide their opposition.
Now I'd best go take my own advice and send happy thoughts to those members of the globalist left who like to garden.
It's a strange turn of events, especially when you consider the long-standing ties between chaos magick culture and strongly left spheres, like the Beat movement, cacophony society, and industrial subculture. Of course the early internet had much of this anarchic influence and hacker culture has been colored by anti-establishment, disruptive and radically progressive ideas, in particular radical free speech. "You can't stop the signal". This is a big part of the background early 4chan spawned from.
Now it's fascinating to see the alt-right and fascist-lite communities, fundametally authority-based philosophies, try to co-opt ideas like chaos and "meme magick".
On one hand, it seems what started as a joke/critique of fascist ideology steeped i heavy irony, has moved on while being picked up unironically. On the other hand, it's getting ever harder to tell the difference between genuine beliefs and those parodying them, once obvious satire has gotten boring, and the only way to get a rise is to make a more convincing charicature of the target.
This tactic of appropriation for political ends is sometimes referred to as entryism, and while it's not confined to any one ideology I think the right is somewhat better at it because it's consonant with the idea of machtpolitik and gaining territory by seizure. Given the difficulty and costs involved in contesting physical territory, securing virtual territory (from dominating a forum to 'owning' a particular word or phrase) is a necessary precursor to control of a larger battle space.
Interesting observation. Globalism includes ideas, as small interesting ideas grow the established more powerful and exploitive ideas can absorb the meme momentum then reassociate the imagery and ideas as their own.
I'm disappointed as hell that a secularist wanker like Carl Benjamin successfully co-opted the movement for crass political purposes. But I'm also annoyed that if I tried to re-appropriate the same symbology for the optimistic, metaphysics-exploring group of pranksters that meme'd it to relevance, I'd get called a bigot for associating with the wrong people.
Any group is defined by its lowest common denominators, which is why I and so many people I respect try to seek out smaller subcultures. The trouble I'm seeing is that when a large group like the nationalist right wants to co-opt a smaller but more effective movement, the larger group's rivals refuse to acknowledge any distinction between the different subcomponents, even if those subcomponents disagree on everything that's objectionable about the larger group to begin with. It's bad for the interesting subcultures and it's bad tactics for the larger ones to unite rather than divide their opposition.
Now I'd best go take my own advice and send happy thoughts to those members of the globalist left who like to garden.