Woke and Antifa: Archetyping Trolls

The far-right and the right ran a coordinated globally important and significant campaign to archetype anyone who knowingly or unknowingly promoted support for the laws and mores of the post-World War Two legal and social orders as woke: anti-discrimination, pro-equality, respect for the power of words and meanings to affect negatively the moods/intentions/motivations/attitudes of those impacted by them. A similar trick is now being played using the Antifa troll/smear. The ‘woke’ and ‘Antifa’ smears are designed as memes to trigger emotions and negative feelings. In those who are inspired by the amplified media to utilise these epithets, the idea is to Other anyone in favour of Equality, which those who chart high on the Social Dominance psychological inventory scale hate as vampires hate garlic.

Source: Podcast Pensees 119

A powerful applied example of TER/MIMA operating at cultural-political scale. The “woke” and “Antifa” labels are not descriptions but archetyping trolls — memes designed to trigger emotions and negative feelings, Othering anyone who supports post-WWII legal norms. The author introduces a new psychological dimension: the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) scale, noting that those who score high on it “hate Equality as vampires hate garlic.” The simile is memorable, the mechanism precise: these trolls target MIMA to reshape political identity.

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