What in the fresh hell is going on on the internet these days? Ever since Trump was elected I have begun paying attention to organized anti-fascists. One of the groups I follow is It’s Going Down. They’re great. One of the things they do is pay attention to the machinations of the alt-right, including people like Richard Spencer, which I am broadly speaking happy to not do, unless he gets punched. Then I enjoy watching videos of him getting punched in the face set to all kinds of music. Great stuff.
Today they posted these tweets:
What they’re talking about is the #YangGang hashtag movement in which anon memers, previously who appeared to support Trump en masse are defecting to Democratic 2020 candidate Andrew Yang because of his advocacy for a $1000 a month Universal Basic Income. As many of these folks self-classify as NEETs (Not in Education Employment or Training) they see his promise of UBI as very appealing.
On one level we shouldn’t over interpret the absolutely absurdist nihilistic viewpoint of this community and the fact that they seem to be willing to embrace almost any ideology (including fascism, racism and murder) as an ironic joke posture. On the other hand I feel that this reveals something about the current political moment. The reason many people were willing to embrace the madness of Trump was that they were coming from a mentality of fear and despair. Yes racism, sexism and general bigotry were a large part of it, but people were vulnerable to the ideology because of the extreme moment we are living in. Now that Trump is collapsing and failing spectacularly (although of course still dangerous) many in this strange group are rejecting him and moving to basically the opposite pole of the political spectrum, embracing a Democratic person of color who is proposing a much more socialist form of national organization than even the self described democratic socialists are proposing.
In this sense, the defeat of Clinton and the rupture in the political system that Trump represents is a crisis, but also an opportunity. All the norms and received conventional wisdom are being shredded, both for evil but potentially also for good. A robust and focused leftist movement is emerging lead by Sanders, AOC, Omar, Warren and Tlaib, and strange shifts are happening on the radical fringes as well. I would never propose that leftists form a coalition with the alt-right to support Universal Basic Income, but I think their chaotic and unilateral changing of sides is a strange and interesting sign of the overall landscape.
It’s worth noting that my posting the memes here is not an endorsement of this group or movement, it’s intended as documentation and evidence of this weird phenonmenon.
