In Defense of Frivolity
Memes and silly bullshit aren’t hurting our movement.

There’s good reason to be wary of the fixation with in-jokes and memes among acolytes of DSA and other leftist groups. Such a fixation creates two potential problems. One, an outreach problem. A big socialist movement requires a broad mobilization of workers, and many workers don’t possess senses of humor or aesthetic sensibilities that are filtered through labyrinthine coils of absurdist irony.
It also creates a credibility problem. People seem to take us less seriously when they hear our most visible putative mascots referring to John Podesta as a “cum-eating freak,” as Felix Biederman did on Chapo Trap House.
In an article called “More like Marx, Less like Milo,” Freddie deBoer takes issue with the memes, arguing that “if you go too hard on identifying your movement with…references to pop culture most people won’t get, you risk undercutting basic socialist beliefs about how change happens, and you’re potentially costing yourself converts who are simply too far removed from the very specific cultural milieu that this discourse arises from.”
I don’t think that’s really true. Outside of a massive labor organizing campaign, the meme culture associated with DSA is a more accessible conduit to socialist ideals than, say, The Grundrisse. And alongside a massive labor organizing campaign, as is the ideal scenario, I can’t really see how memes and bullshit can hurt us. If anything, they can help. Art, culture and jokes step in to insulate the enormous gaps between rare victories for the left and the nagging tattoo of cruel bullshit spitting forth from the hell planet on which we live.
The meme milieu espoused by DSA types isn’t particularly esoteric. And again, it’s easier to comprehend and relate to than the texts of Marxist theory. Take Da Share Z0ne, for instance. DSZ is a popular meme Twitter whose content is often shared by DSA types. Their memes look like this:


Da Share Z0ne employs a language of distinctly irreverent working class anti-authoritarianism. My guess is that, at the most inchoate stage, more people are effectively radicalized by despising their bosses than by stumbling upon Social Reform or Revolution. Da Share Z0ne satirizes quotidian drudgery in a way that’s genuinely life-affirming and relies minimally, if at all, on referential irony. Leftist theory relies so heavily on reference to abstruse philosophy, obscure history and cumbersome economics that much of it — including Karl Marx — is nearly impossible to comprehend without such extensive background knowledge.
Nobody is sharing a tweet by Da Share Z0ne to their conservative cousin saying, saying “See? Worker control of the economy is the way to go.” But people all the time try to win converts by lending hefty books of theory, and due to the level of inculcation into the theoretical world that such an undertaking already must assume, that method is usually doomed to fail.
Currently, the Democratic Socialists of America is the largest American socialist organization in one hundred years, with 25,000 members. Let’s continue to ratchet that number up. In doing so, we must avert the pitfalls of self-serious sectarianism, acknowledge the absurdity of our society, and nourish the joy of community.
