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An internet meme is a piece of media that may take the form of an image, video or catchphrase and it is generally spread via social media channels for humorous purposes. [1]

However, internet memes may also be used for expressing beliefs and political views, and in recent years, communities on 4chan and Reddit have radicalized a significant number of young men. These online communities gain much of the traffic from political memes and have evolved into echo chambers for many far right ideologies: pro-guns, anti-feminism, anti-multiculturalism, etc. Accordingly, they quickly became bases of Trump fandom during the last American elections. [2]

Pepe the Frog is an anthropomorphic frog character from the comic series Boy’s Club by Matt Furie and has been widely adopted by these communities. Pepe the Frog memes have been propagated with such strength that some even reached to Donald Trump, who on many occasions retweeted them himself. [3]

“@codyave: @drudgereport @BreitbartNews @Writeintrump
“You Can’t Stump the Trump”
https://t.co/0xITB7XeJV pic.twitter.com/iF6S05se2w“

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2015

As a result of the massive propagation and power of political memes, Michael B. Prosser, now Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps, suggested in his Master Thesis the creation of a “Meme Warfare Center”, “to win the ideological metaphysical fight”. [4]

A year after the Meme Warfare Center proposal was published, DARPA, the Pentagon agency that develops new military technology, commissioned a four-year study of Memetics. Memetics is the study of meme theory and it’s a mix of biology, neuroscience, psychology, propaganda and marketing. [5]

“Memetic warfare” has been seriously studied as an important concept with respects to information warfare by NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.  “Memetic warfare” is defined by Jeff Giesea as

“Competition over narrative, ideas, and social control in a social-media battlefield. One might think of it as a subset of ‘information operations’ tailored to social media. Information operations involve the collection and dissemination of information to establish a competitive advantage over an opponent.” [6]

In Spain, the conservative party of the current Prime Minister (Presidente) Mariano Rajoy, requested in Congress last year to ban internet memes with defamatory statements that didn’t have the consentient of the persons portrayed in the meme. Naturally, the internet reacted with more memes.

Rajoy quiere que no haya más imágenes como esta,
coartar nuestra libertad de expresión.
#SinMemesNoHayDemocracia pic.twitter.com/3kQZlOGheu

— cagonros (@cagonros_) November 8, 2016

However, despite authority’s efforts to combat the “Memetic warfare”, it seems that political memes only favor insurgencies, because by nature, memes weaken monopolies on narrative and empower challenges to centralized authority. Donald Trump’s campaign was founded as an oppositional movement -against the Republican establishment, Democrats, the media, and “political correctness.”- and he won the “Memetic warfare” because as an opposition, it benefited by increasing disorder.

References:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme

[2] http://theconversation.com/how-donald-trump-won-the-2016-meme-wars-68580

[3] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog

[4] http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a507172.pdf

[5] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xyvwdk/meme-warfare

[6] https://www.democracyendowment.eu/we-support/institute-of-post-information-society/what-is-memetic-warfare-and-how-it-threats-democratic-values/