At some point in the next four years Ireland will become the target of a culture or meme war attack from Donald Trump’s “alt right” allies. The pressure will feel immense but we cannot afford to take the bait.
In his first electoral victory and presidency, Trump relied on the religious right to build and maintain his winning coalition, appointing ultraconservative Mike Pence as his vice-president and committing to promote anti-abortion supreme court justices. Promises made, promises kept.
This time around he shifted his core alliances, moving from the religious right to the “alt right”, from the puritans to the memelords. Again this is embodied by his vice-president pick, the “extremely online” JD Vance, and his lucrative strategic partnership with provocateur Elon Musk. Both Vance and Musk have demonstrated their ability to weaponise internet culture and humour to rally a younger, digitally engaged base, reshaping conservative politics.
Trump bringing them into the fold helped to cement his win, but it also now positions them as architects of a strategy that ratchets up culture wars and viral spectacle as a cover for extractive policymaking. We see this in the naming of a new body Musk will lead to slash government spending as D.O.G.E., a name synonymous with an internet meme about a dog.
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Both Trump administrations will equally rely on theatrics, provocations and manufactured crises that distract from the core aims of those governing the US, and there are already some indications that foreign policy will be a key arena for this new era of ramped up government-by-sh*tposting.
Over the Christmas break, Trump asserted on his own social media site that the US should purchase Greenland, “for purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World”. Eric Trump, the president elect’s son, followed up by posting a meme of an Amazon shopping cart that included Greenland in the basket.
This is just one of many comments on US imperial expansion, with the president elect also making various statements about seizing the Panama Canal and annexing Mexico and Canada. Governments are forced to respond, news outlets cover the story and opinion pieces proliferate. The New York Times declared that the comments about Canada have a “trolling jocularity”, while those about Greenland and Panama are “not a joke”, though they add an important qualifier: “this time”.
Our business model of foreign direct investment has served us extraordinarily well over the past 30 years but it has become golden handcuffs chaining our national stability and economic wellbeing to the whims of tax and trade policymakers, and ultimately to the vagrancies of oligarchs
These types of statements are sent out into the world as trial balloons of Hindenburg proportions – tossed like grenades that will either cause real world devastation, or explode in a Jackass-style farce of silly string, leaving braying bullies to LOL at your humiliation. The blurring of online jokes and declarations of intent by the world’s most powerful man is deeply destabilising, and our turn is coming.
What Greenland and Panama have in common is that they are seen as posing strategic impediments to the “America First” project, Greenland with its underexploited rare-earth resources, and both with their role in shipping and commerce. Many within the new Trump administration’s appointees also see Ireland as a problem. Trump’s trade tsar Robert Lighthizer has said “Ireland gets a substantial part of the tax revenue that would normally be due to the US government” and this is a “transfer of wealth from us to them”. Howard Lutnick, nominee to head the US commerce department, said “it’s nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense ... When we end this nonsense, America will be a truly great country again.”
Add to this the fact that Ireland has already found itself in the crosshairs of US culture wars, notably in the recent hate speech Bill debates. Musk, Trump jnr and Vance all engaged in online discourse criticising that Bill. Musk in particular has been engaged in a long-term feud with the Irish State, which perfectly blends his “anti-woke” politics with his business interests. He was formerly doing this as the world’s richest man and owner of X. He is now doing it as both of these things and as a senior representative of a Trump administration that has its eyes on Ireland’s economy.
It will be tempting, and probably smart politics, for Ireland to keep its head down. But anyone who has dealt with online bullies knows that this is not a long-term strategy; the edgelords will come for us at some point, whether we sit on our hands or not. What we need now is to work out how we will react when the spotlight inevitably comes on us, how to integrate the art of avoiding online baiting into the craft of diplomacy and the politics of statecraft. And we need to start planning for the risk of weaponisation of our presidential election later this year.
The extra layer of challenge we face is that the trolls have real tools to threaten our economic stability. Our business model of foreign direct investment has served us extraordinarily well over the past 30 years but it has become golden handcuffs chaining our national stability and economic wellbeing to the whims of tax and trade policymakers, and ultimately to the vagrancies of oligarchs.
The best way to beat trolls is to defang them of any real ability to hurt you. In this new year, with a new government with a fresh mandate, it is finally time to build a real alternative vision of Ireland’s economy without our extraordinary reliance on mobile capital. Failing to do so will leave us with no leverage and could end up threatening our economic sovereignty.
Liz Carolan works on democracy and technology issues, and writes at TheBriefing.ie
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