We have reached a point where the debate over whether or not the Trump administration colluded with Russia is over and it is merely a matter of how much. Many are quick to—and already were quick to every time each new tidbit comes out—condemn Glenn Greenwald, for his prior outspoken demands for more proof with the accusations of Russian collusion. Some take it further and imply an involvement. However, Greenwald was right to do so all along and many of the points he brings up are important to consider.
There is something subtle in the moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf that is often missed. In this case, the boy was lying, but ultimately, whether or not he was lying or mistaken, the same thing would result: the townspeople would not pay attention when the threat was clear and present. The single most helpful thing Trump has gotten in this scandal is continued press attention for months. The Trump-Russia connection transformed from more of a scandal to a meme.
We are at a point as a society where the virality of a meme is far more powerful than rational assessments of a situation. More and more, people get their perspectives from social media over the traditional news, which means the ideas that get shared the most get seen the most and, inevitably, get adopted the most. Whether an idea is actually good is important. But the ideas need to be packaged in ways that can be organically spread.
Though the Trump-Russia scandal is over accusations orders of power worse more than the contents of the Clinton email scandal, it represents a similar memeification of a political scandal that enabled Trump. In this case, by the time the full details of the investigation were released, the Left was largely reduced to the meme you still occasionally today, “But her emails…” Of course, her emails were nothing compared to all of the reasons why Trump should not be president. But by reducing the Left’s perspective on the issue to a meme that is so dismissive, it ensured that the meme—as viral as it was—would actively work against winning over hearts and minds.
This effect is especially important to consider as scandals evolve. Greenwald mounted much of his skepticism during the time when most of the focus was on the hacking of the DNC servers. Article after article talked about the Russian connection to the hacking and the distribution of the documents to WikiLeaks. As Greenwald himself said at the time: it’s a plausible narrative. But it is one that is risky to make without proof.
Had the Left not mounted such a strong offense in response to the Russian hacking accusations, then the information coming out now would resonate more strongly—the scandal would be less memeified in a way that works against new information from resonating with people. Much like with semantic satiation—where repeating the same word over and over makes it feel like nonsense—we experience memetic satiation, where ideas we are exposed to over and over in a short period fail to resonate with us.
Many have said that we live in a “post-truth” era and have talked about the various consequences of it. The reality was we were never in a “truth” era at all, and the process of selling ideas is ultimately only tangential to the quality of the ideas themselves. However, for much of human history, selling “truth” was easy. The conglomeration of mass media happened because people trusted large news organizations. However, that bubble burst. What we are seeing now is better thought of a post-authority era.
This is reflected in the fact that, across the board, we’re seeing a surge of success for candidates on both the Left and Right that are populist and anti-status quo. Though Sanders and Corbyn are politically antithetical to Trump, this unites them, and both they and their supporters have used memes to their advantage. “Make America Great Again!” may be an empty promise versus a Labour’s more accurate “For Many, Not the Few,” but they are both passionate, easily digestible statements that excite people to learn more.
Though many question Greenwald’s political or even national—with some people quick to point out that Greenwald worked with Snowden, as a last resort, wound up in Russia—allegiances, his open-minded, cautious skepticism is exactly what the Left needed. Greenwald was trying to save us from ourselves, and more people should have listened. We are no longer in an era where the establishment can save us from ourselves. We must be the ones to learn how to effectively win the war of ideas.