Review: Are Memes Upending Democracy?

In the Trump era, prankster reactionaries went online aiming to perplex and unnerve the olds and normies. In their book Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, a trio of academic and journalistic experts in “disinformation” and “fringe political communities online”—Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg—survey the ideas and techniques of that world, and they do so in a way that does not require already being Extremely Online to follow.

The book provides a decently informed and properly colorful guide to the world of the Chans (4 and 8), absurdist “meme magic,” Pepe the Frog, QAnon, Groypers, red pills, and the racialist obsession with “human biodiversity.” It te