In French Elections,Alt-RightMessages and Memes Don’t Translate
The digital call to arms came shortly after the first round of theFrench presidential election.
On an online message board frequented by extremists in the United States, an anonymous user last month urged others to bombard social media sites in France in support of Marine Le Pen, the far-right French candidate, by using memes, hashtags and other digital tricks that they successfully employed during last year’s American presidential election. Within days, the online thread — and similar discussions across the internet — was flooded with hundreds of users in the United States offering to help the digital campaign.
But the American tactics have not translated overseas.
Despite such efforts, the far right in the United States and elsewhere has so far failed to reach much of the French electorate ahead of the country’s vote this weekend, according to a review of social media activity done for The New York Times. The analysis, which was based on a review of millions of Twitter messages related to the election since last summer, showed that more than one-third of posts linked to certain political hashtags originated from the United States, although few went viral in France.
“There’s a big cultural gap that these groups have to jump over to expand their message,” said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, who has studied the far right’s recent efforts in France. “The language and iconography of the alt-right is pretty specific. Most of it just isn’t going to translate well.”
>On an online message board frequented by extremists Wat?
Angel Bell
Of course, this is what everyone with brain realised since the very beginning
This is why the fart right wave failed to wash over the non-English speaking European countries and why another pro-European politician is about to win important elections soon
In 4-5 years Sup Forums will be all but a distant memory
Sebastian Williams
> (OP) (You) >>On an online message board frequented by extremists >Wat? in United States!
Dominic Williams
And you arrogant French were so confident, making fun of /polder/ and all. We memed Baudet into the house, what do you have to show? Now gibe back Rijsel.
Jayden Gonzalez
>But the American tactics have not translated overseas. there's no sea between France and Russia
Liam Perez
kek
Gabriel Long
Language barrier increases the power of local media companies. Even if they speak english most people will rely on native language for information.
On the internet languages form borders more than geographic location.
Henry Roberts
wtf i love oligarchy now
Nathaniel Morales
>Of course, this is what everyone with brain realised since the very beginning
But is it true? In Slovakia, there are several popular Facebook pages, and alt-right memes are doing fine there. Ok, Pepe is virtually unknown here, and they often need to come up with their own meme ideas, but the general approach works similarly.
Gavin Sullivan
I was specifically talking about the language / cultural barrier preventing Sup Forums and the_diarrhea memes from spreading and influencing gullible millenials into making poor political choices.
But if you want to push the discussion that way, Eastern Europeans are more suspectible to home grown nationalism since those societies are conservative and backwards to begin with.
This is not the case in Western Europe, which was progress-minded and anti-religion since the age of Enlightment (if not earlier)
Luke Cruz
>backwards That's good, isn't it. :-) At least I started to appreciate it more and more in the recent years. :-)
Logan Walker
in 4-5 years we will have ww3 with america/anglo countries allied with russia crushing the SJW EU
Camden Clark
I trust the New York Times, their predictions about the American elections were spot on!
Oliver Jenkins
...they're monitoring us.
...they're afraid!
They're afraid of a new evolution in democracy whereby anonymous nationalists from around the world gather their resources and memes to spread nationalism around the world.
They know that an army of anonymous content creators can outmatch their paid shills. They know that there will be literally nothing stopping us once we have perfected our methods across multiple languages.
They are deeply concerned, so concerned in fact that their "think tanks" and journalists now browse Sup Forums and study social media for any hint of our strategy succeeding.
wew, lad
Zachary Wilson
>war underage's t_d memer wet dream
>with Russia in what alternate reality do you live in where Europe is more anti Russia than USA and UK?
Tyler Roberts
>implying EU can accidentally SJW on Sharia Law
Colton Jones
I think you forget how many dutch people find themselves in the american cultural sphere of the internet. Even then A lot of the memes were painfully obviously americans. I can only imagine the French more actively rejected american made memes.
Josiah Parker
Guess who will laugh last should the frogs vote for macron? I give you a hint. Every single person on this planet that warned the frogs not to vote for islamisation.. and can you guess why every person on this planet that warned them will be the next ones laughing? Cause a terror attack just killed frogs again and schadenfreude is the only thing frogs can now expect from the people that warned them. It will be a fun couple of years should they choose to vote for Mr. "lol not my problem you peasants get mass murdered by terror, just eat cake lolol" macron. So if le pen wins we win, if marcon wins we get a couple of years of laughter. Either way we win.
Julian King
Mayo sandwich here gets it. LePen may well lose, but France will be utterly divided over it, and every whisper of terror will chip away at the EU. You'll have nationalism or chaos.
William Garcia
The only thing worse than American memes about European politics is them trying to seriously debate about them
Jackson Diaz
>Xanatos Gambit Absolutely fool-proof. I love it.
Daniel Miller
>leddit spacing >LARPy prose you have to go back, r/the_donald is that way based centipede
Zachary Butler
But not nearly as bad as all those immigrant rapes in Germanistan, Mohammed was a pig fucker and so are you, Ahmed.
Logan Jackson
Let them eat trucks!
Jose Evans
>In 4-5 years Sup Forums will be all but a distant memory In 4-5 years the Overton window will have shifted socially right and the poor health of the global economy will make both left and right wing extremism more tempting and popular. Sup Forums is no going away and non-English speaking counter parts to Sup Forums will continue to sprout up. Side note, are you the only Polish antifa on this board or do you know of others?
Samuel Brown
>polish flag >butthurt kike JIDF commie sounding demoralization post Checks out.
Tyler Scott
The French are eternal normies, they have shit-tier meme and will never get Internet culture.
French Internet is awful anyway, it's filled with nogs and arabs that can't spell. It's a sad place.
