The assassination of Charlie Kirk sparked a flurry of debates from the media, politicians, and celebrities, both in the US and abroad. The discussions—amplified and influenced by social media activity—revolved around political violence, gun control, polarization, freedom of speech, as well as the ideological background of the shooter and the “right way” to commemorate Kirk. We witnessed outrage over insensitive comments, and some individuals faced real-life consequences, such as getting fired from their job for “celebratory” posts about the murder. The episode also prompted the US government to take anti-liberal measures, including censorship efforts and the application of political pressure on media companies.
These responses can be explained by the structural characteristics of social networks—not only do algorithms tend to amplify emotionally charged content, to creates the highest level of engagement, but users themselves follow content that is in line with their interests and beliefs, creating echo chambers that intensify perceptions of in- and out-group divisions. However, they can also be viewed through the lens of the overall anti-liberal and anti-democratic sentiments in the country. These sentiments are partly the product of a decade-old mainstreaming process—strategically organized online political campaigns that have normalized extreme content and radicalized both the social networks and a share of US citizens. In our study, we looked deeper into those campaigns because we wanted to understand how exactly they were organized; what were the methods that they employed; and what were the underlying worldviews of the people that organized them?
The importance of 4chan for the (digital) culture
We focused on 4chan, one of the most important corners for the development of internet culture as well as the birthplace of many memes, the Anonymous movement, various trolling activities, and, to a large extent, the alt-right. 4chan is a forum-based website built around “boards” (subforums) where users discuss various topics, such as video games, politics, technology, and sports in individual “threads.” 4chan has two distinct features: first, users are completely anonymous as they do not have to register to read or post content. Second, 4chan content is ephemeral in the sense that, as new threads are created, older ones get deleted. The two most famous boards on 4chan are /b/ (Random) and /pol/ (Politically Incorrect).
4chan has two distinct features: first, users are completely anonymous […]. Second, 4chan content is ephemeral in the sense that, as new threads are created, older ones get deleted.
/b/ is the birthplace of Anonymous and was characterized by massive trolling and organized online attacks with clear political goals. For example, in “Project Chanology,” Anonymous organized protests against the Church of Scientology; in “Operation Avenge Assange” they performed massive DDoS attacks on banks and other financial companies that froze donations from citizens to WikiLeaks; during the Tunisian Revolution in 2011, they attacked various governmental websites.
During this time, /pol/ was created to host the more frequent and intense politically incorrect and extremist discussions that arose on 4chan. Its minimal moderation results in the board being filled with violent, hateful, racist, antisemitic, and fascist content. It soon became the most popular board on 4chan and the hub for the alt-right. The community adopted trolling and political activism as tools of “redpilling”—a gradual radicalization process intended to convert outsiders by revealing “how the world really works.” Within the 4chan discourse, the collective actions that are developed and conducted by board members are known as “operations” and, even though they have been the focus of scientific research, they lacked a thorough and nuanced analysis.
Going deeper into /pol/ “operations”
Therefore, to get a deeper understanding of both the way that /pol/’s actions were organized and what its users’ views on politics, democracy, and society were, we conducted a qualitative study focusing on threads about collective actions searching for common themes in users’ discussions. We randomly selected 3 threads from each year in the 2014-2020 period, ending with over 7,000 posts in the analysis. Regarding worldview, we identified an overarching anti-liberal and anti-democratic narrative. Users that engaged in collective political actions viewed the Western world as dying, caught in a broad cultural and racial war in which white people are attacked by liberals and various minorities (particularly Jews, Muslims, and black people). They perceived an existential threat, an ongoing “white genocide,” and envisioned their political task as changing the worldview of the “normies,” who will then join the fight and create a white ethno-state.
Here are some of the examples of posts:
IT’S ALWAYS THE JEWS, WTF!! (Operation Jane Doe, 2016)
This has NOTHING to do with partisan politics and EVERYTHING to do with taking back our infinite power (which is both collective AND individual) so that we can use that infinite power of ours righteously and responsibly, you dipshit (Operation Frog in The White House, 2019)
[4chan users] organized various political actions with seemingly various short-term goals, but that were always embedded within the long-term mission of “redpilling” the general (white) population.
To do so, they organized various political actions with seemingly various short-term goals, but that were always embedded within the long-term mission of “redpilling” the general (white) population. For example, the goal of “Operation No name” was to donate money to a group that aimed to empower women in the gaming industry; however, the underlying subversive goal was to position /pol/ as a seeming champion of feminism which would, in effect, discredit critiques from the left about /pol/’s anti-feminist chauvinist stance. In addition, it was hoped that this would sow chaos among “the Liberals,” since they would not be able to discern between trolling and actual political positions. The goal of operation “Support Officer Wilson” was to collect donations for police officer Darren Wilson, who shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. By raising more money than what was raised for Brown’s family, users hoped to create outrage among the “social justice warriors” of the internet:
Our goal should be that liberals would not be able to tell between their own party fringe and our trolling. (Operation Subversion, 2016)
uh it doesnt matter, this is about making n****** and feminists mad (Operation Support Officer Wilson, 2014)
Discussions of the goals of political actions were brief compared to those regarding tactics. User proposals ranged from propaganda, monetary donations, doxxing, trolling, and, crucially, humorous memes. Meme development was a collaborative effort, with a flurry of revisions, comments, ideas, and suggestions emerging in a short period of time, ending with a “perfect” meme. The evolution of memes was so particular that there were major discussions on the type of font, picture, contrast level, or composition that should be used. Below we can see examples of posts developing the details of campaign content:
Looking good, text on the bottom could be a little bigger, maybe all of it could be a little bigger. (Operation Jew-Infestation, 2014)
The phrasing “Sponsored by” Is for the most part an abstraction for much of the masses. Wouldn’t phrasing like “brought to you by” have a greater psychological impact on the left end of the bell? The branding is already imprinted and entrenched, whether they know it or not. The bridging thought would seem to me to be key in this being effective. Then again, there may be greater merit in utilizing ONLY brands linked with images (Operation Sponsored By, 2020)
Once the content was settled upon, the discussion moved toward dissemination and the long-term strategy for keeping the “operation” ongoing, for example, by developing follow-up memes that could be pushed after the virality of the original ones fades away or by developing responses to the mainstream media reactions to the “operation”. Both strategies aimed to keep their action alive and relevant in the public.
/pol/ users understood the importance of social networks and mainstream media and adapted their messages to each of these.
Here we identified a deep and nuanced view of the modern digital informational environment. /pol/ users understood the importance of social networks and mainstream media and adapted their messages to each of these. Most importantly, they created many fake accounts that were “groomed” to be believable, well before the specific political action started. For example, they would create accounts pretending to be white liberal middle-class feminists who would then post (fake) outraged commentaries on social networks regarding the initial /pol/ memes. This would give traction and increase the virality of the content, reaching mainstream media and the broader public and hiding the fact that the content was actually a part of an orchestrated political action. Here are example posts talking about the dissemination of content:
Tumblr and FB are better targets. FB might catch on a little quicker but this shit will spread like wildfire on tumblr (Operation Subversion, 2016)
They are fake accounts, constructed to seem legit and established. Even leftists won’t fall for some obvious troll account made 45 min ago (Operation Spark, 2017)
Twitter is a good place for that. It helps if you have multiple accounts that have been “aged” like fine wine. To do this right you should have multiple accounts with multiple personalties. One black, one jew, one feminist, one gay.. (Operation Spark, 2017)
Furthermore, user discussions considered what the next steps in content creation and dissemination after the first wave of responses by the media and the public:
DO NOT BE RACIST OR USE SLURS IN PICS, LETS MAKE SJWS COME UP WITH A REAL RESPONSE OTHER THAN HURR DURR 4CHAN BE RAYCISS (Operation Black Privilege, 2015)
/pol/’s immediate impact on the mainstream can be seen in the formal explainer on the “Pepe the Frog” meme that was issued by the Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Slowly boiling the “liberalism frog”
Today, 4chan and /pol/ are widely known, limiting their subversiveness, but this has not challenged their ability to organize collective actions. /pol/’s ultimate goal was to bring about a racial war and a white supremacist ethno-state while, in the process, dismantling liberal institutions and the underpinnings of liberal democracy. It seems that a part of their work is done—they have, in their own view, “memed the president into the White House.” Furthermore, /pol/ has (in)directly impacted and shaped the viewpoints of a whole generation of young people, as well as mass shooters, new far-right pundits, such as Nick Fuentes, and tech billionaires, like Elon Musk. Slowly, but steadily, we have witnessed the mainstreaming of far-right ideas and voices on social networks, in the media, and finally, the U.S. political establishment.
/pol/ has (in)directly impacted and shaped the viewpoints of a whole generation of young people […]. Slowly, but steadily, we have witnessed the mainstreaming of far-right ideas and voices on social networks, in the media, and finally, the U.S. political establishment.
Importantly, this change toward anti-liberalism was not spontaneous but slowly and strategically developed. Even though we cannot know the exact numbers, the political actions that we analyzed were not created and undertaken by large communities or big groups coming together to impact politics and society; rather, they were created by only a handful of anonymous individuals from various locations, mostly in the US, but also abroad, in the ephemeral context of 4chan, using basic photoshop skills and exploiting the logic of social networks and mainstream media to push their own narrative and worldview onto a vast number of citizens. The users were aware, even in their early activities, that the digital sphere was crucial for contemporary politics, and the best way to bring about political and societal change, however gradual it may be, was through the internet.
In addition to 4chan, there are many other online communities or actors that can organize themselves this way. Today, with the rise and availability of AI models and AI agents, individuals can easily create and maintain multiple fake personas which can be weaponized for political purposes. For example, the fake reactions and misinformation around the killing of Charlie Kirk were created extremely quickly and spread almost immediately following the act. The main issue is how hard it is to combat. In addition to the difficulty of spotting fake personas and AI-generated content, the speed with which information is spread on social networks is too fast for the media, debunkers, and even social networks themselves, to respond.
Kosta Bovan is an associate professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb. In his work he focuses most broadly on citizens’ political behaviour, and has published studies on trust, political knowledge and voting preferences, as well as polarisation, cultural wars, online political behaviour and digital communities. He led several scientific projects and co-edited a handbook on 30 years of voting behaviour in Croatia.
