52 new york | december 23, 2019–january 5, 2020likewise, using Breaking News Texas. But in terms of scale and
audacity, nobody came close to Fletcher.
A few weeks after the midterm elections, the New York Times
and the Washington Post published stories about the “Russian
style” tactics in Alabama. Several people involved had their Face-
book accounts removed. Hoffman apologized, although Investing
in Us has clarified that his own money didn’t fund the prohibition-
ist false flag. Fletcher’s project, which had far greater reach, didn’t
violate any Facebook rules. “There is a substantive moral difference
in disseminating misinformation versus creating misleading IDs
and disseminating facts,” a Fletcher backer told me, echoing a
common sentiment in Hoffman’s political orbit. Still though, fol-
lowing some unwanted PR around a misogynistic Facebook page
aimed at “Keg Bros,” News for Democracy all but ceased publishing
in the wake of the election. Hoffman, meanwhile, has ramped up
his giving to the Democratic National Committee, cutting checks
at the legal maximum.
David Goldstein’s career as a digital ratfucker didn’t last long
either. After Doug Jones pulled off the upset, Goldstein signed on
to create Alabama-style Facebook ads for Andrew Gillum’s Florida
gubernatorial bid. But when Gillum’s people saw the ads—some
voters were served a big-headed, orange-faced caricature of
Trump—they freaked out and yanked them. The last time I spoke
with him, Goldstein was advising a couple of guys from a labor
union in New Zealand.But the presidential race brought new pressure
to create alternatives to paid media—not unlike
what Fletcher, Goldstein, and Hougland had been
at tempting to do. In September, President Trump’s
reelection campaign released a false ad on Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter that repeated one of the sev-
eral dubious Ukraine-Biden conspiracy theories at
the heart of the Republican impeachment defense.
Facebook, per its policy, refused to remove it. Google, however,
has since decided to restrict targeted political ads, and Twitter
has banned political ads altogether.
“With less ability to target with our advertising online, we will
not be able to be as granular,” says Betsy Hoover, who ran digital
organizing at Obama for America and is the other co-founder of
Higher Ground Labs. “We’ll have to rely even more on rapid and
authentic content creation.”
But nobody on the official left seems very good at “rapid and
authentic” at the moment. In October, an MIT graduate and Silicon
Valley veteran named Misha Leybovich created something called
the Warren Meme Team, news of which broke in the Times. No
memorable pro-Warren memes have resulted; instead, the Reddit
page r/WarrensMemeTeam immediately became populated with
anti-Warren memes. Meanwhile, top Democratic advocacy group
Priorities USA began experimenting with a new tactic to comple-
ment its massive battleground-state media buys: populating social-
media pages in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin
with locally focused content. As of press time, its four Facebook
pages have accumulated a total of 289 likes. (A Priorities spokesper-
son said the numbers were low because the pages were mainly
meant to reach journalists. “We’re not trying to organically get our
content in front of voters. We pay to do that.”)
With the exception of Andrew Yang’s #yanggang and some ironic
Marianne Williamson love on Twitter, the candidates themselves
have mostly failed to channel the internet Zeitgeist. Cory Booker
hired a “millennial and influencer engagement” director, but Book-
er’s girlfriend, Rosario Dawson, has probably had more success in
that department simply by appearing with the candidate on-camera.
The Pete Buttigieg campaign’s brand bible of shareable logos and
typefaces—so fans can create their own official-looking content—areas uncool as they sound. Would-be digital pioneer Beto O’Rourke
just wound up livestreaming his campaign’s demise.
One of the Higher Ground investments is in a company called
Wethos, which aims to match campaigns with creatives. I men-
tioned to Wethos’ marketing director, Anjelica Triola, that I wasn’t
seeing much edgy content coming from the Democratic Party. “Do
you know why?,” she asked me. “No one will commission it.”
“We say this all the time,” she continued. “When the fuck is
somebody going to let us build, like, a Glossier model of paid
influencers? But nobody on the Democratic side gets it yet. And
it’s wild but true that it benefits them to quote-unquote let go or
lose control of the message.”T
ucked away on page 46 of a Senate Select Commit-
tee on Intelligence–requested report concerning Rus-
sian disinformation in the 2016 presidential election
is a fascinating detail. Almost every piece of political
content that Russia’s Internet Research Agency
shared via shady accounts on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter was created in-house—except, the report
concluded, for memes created by Turning Point USA,
a conservative campus organization. Not only did the IRA distrib-
ute these widely but they branded them as their own.
Founded in 2012, TPUSA has found its footing in the Trump era
as a de facto youth wing of the administration. And what started
as a campus-organizing vehicle has diversified into a gigantic con-
tent creator devoted to churning out viral pro-Trump memes and
videos. In July, TPUSA held its second annual Teen Student Action
Summit at a hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. On the day I
attended, the president himself was delivering a speech, which
meant hordes of preppy teenagers in red baseball caps had camped
out overnight in the lobby to secure good seats. maga internet
personalities were in abundance. Waiting for the president, the
crowd hailed the arrival of @fleccas, a.k.a. Austen Fletcher, who
interviews people on YouTube with a spoon taped to his micro-
phone and has around 275,000 Instagram followers. Mobbed, he
was forced to take endless selfies.
For me, the draw was Benny Johnson. Johnson’s journalism
career, at BuzzFeed and elsewhere, had been marred by plagiarism
scandals, which hadn’t prevented him from attaining his current
job as chief creative officer of Turning Point USA, where he is paid
to make memes. Dressed in a sharp blue suit and a teal necktie,
Johnson assumed the stage at 9 a.m. to EDM beats and revival-
tent pandemonium. “This is amazing!,” he yells. “Preach! Who
wants to go to a church? Who wants to go to a meme church?”
Johnson played a clip of former White House press secretary
Sarah Huckabee Sanders mocking a CNN reporter. “What sav-
agery! We’re living in a savage environment,” he said. “We are living
in a new world. The world of my dreams. A savage world where
politics and meme culture have become one.”
The bulk of Johnson’s presentation, called “How Conserva-
tives Are Winning the Meme Wars,” focused on a meme he had
created of Senator Lindsey Graham during Brett Kavanaugh’s
Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The image may be famil-
iar even to those who don’t follow @ TPUSA: It shows Graham
smiling and coolly adjusting his tie as a female protester yells in
the background. Johnson had been filming Graham as he walked
from the Capitol to his SUV; later, at his desk, Johnson froze the
video and saw internet gold. The image—self-assured Republi-
can owns hysterical lib—went viral, and the meme became
known as “Based Lindsey Graham.” Based Lindsey Graham then
turned into a fad called “Grahaming,” in which conservatives
adjust their ties for the camera. Graham now can’t go anywhere
without someone wanting to Graham with him. Inevitably, peo-
ple starting setting the video clip to music: “Ring of Fire,” “I WillAlwaWAbeen hayou want. Orwhen a conserTRANSMITTED TRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC2619FEA_OppositionResearch_lay [Print]_36426188.indd 52 12/18/19 4:41 PM52 new york | december 23, 2019–january 5, 2020likewise, using Breaking News Texas. But in terms of scale and
audacity, nobody came close to Fletcher.
A few weeks after the midterm elections, the New York Times
and the Washington Post published stories about the “Russian
style” tactics in Alabama. Several people involved had their Face-
book accounts removed. Hoffman apologized, although Investing
in Us has clarified that his own money didn’t fund the prohibition-
ist false flag. Fletcher’s project, which had far greater reach, didn’t
violate any Facebook rules. “There is a substantive moral difference
in disseminating misinformation versus creating misleading IDs
and disseminating facts,” a Fletcher backer told me, echoing a
common sentiment in Hoffman’s political orbit. Still though, fol-
lowing some unwanted PR around a misogynistic Facebook page
aimed at “Keg Bros,” News for Democracy all but ceased publishing
in the wake of the election. Hoffman, meanwhile, has ramped up
his giving to the Democratic National Committee, cutting checks
at the legal maximum.
David Goldstein’s career as a digital ratfucker didn’t last long
either. After Doug Jones pulled off the upset, Goldstein signed on
to create Alabama-style Facebook ads for Andrew Gillum’s Florida
gubernatorial bid. But when Gillum’s people saw the ads—some
voters were served a big-headed, orange-faced caricature of
Trump—they freaked out and yanked them. The last time I spoke
with him, Goldstein was advising a couple of guys from a labor
union in New Zealand.B
ut the presidential race brought new pressure
to create alternatives to paid media—not unlike
what Fletcher, Goldstein, and Hougland hadbeen
at tempting to do. In September, President Trump’s
reelection campaign released a false ad on Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter that repeated one of thesev-
eral dubious Ukraine-Biden conspiracy theoriesat
the heart of the Republican impeachment defense.
Facebook, per its policy, refused to remove it. Google, however,
has since decided to restrict targeted political ads, and Twitter
has banned political ads altogether.
“With less ability to target with our advertising online, we will
not be able to be as granular,” says Betsy Hoover, who ran digital
organizing at Obama for America and is the other co-founder of
Higher Ground Labs. “We’ll have to rely even more on rapid and
authentic content creation.”
But nobody on the official left seems very good at “rapid and
authentic” at the moment. In October, an MIT graduate and Silicon
Valley veteran named Misha Leybovich created something called
the Warren Meme Team, news of which broke in the Times. No
memorable pro-Warren memes have resulted; instead, the Reddit
page r/WarrensMemeTeam immediately became populated with
anti-Warren memes. Meanwhile, top Democratic advocacy group
Priorities USA began experimenting with a new tactic to comple-
ment its massive battleground-state media buys: populating social-
media pages in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin
with locally focused content. As of press time, its four Facebook
pages have accumulated a total of 289 likes. (A Priorities spokesper-
son said the numbers were low because the pages were mainly
meant to reach journalists. “We’re not trying to organically get our
content in front of voters. We pay to do that.”)
With the exception of Andrew Yang’s #yanggang and some ironic
Marianne Williamson love on Twitter, the candidates themselves
have mostly failed to channel the internet Zeitgeist. Cory Booker
hired a “millennial and influencer engagement” director, but Book-
er’s girlfriend, Rosario Dawson, has probably had more success in
that department simply by appearing with the candidate on-camera.
The Pete Buttigieg campaign’s brand bible of shareable logos and
typefaces—so fans can create their own official-looking content—areas uncool as they sound. Would-be digital pioneer Beto O’Rourke
just wound up livestreaming his campaign’s demise.
One of the Higher Ground investments is in a company called
Wethos, which aims to match campaigns with creatives. I men-
tioned to Wethos’ marketing director, Anjelica Triola, that I wasn’t
seeing much edgy content coming from the Democratic Party. “Do
you know why?,” she asked me. “No one will commission it.”
“We say this all the time,” she continued. “When the fuck is
somebody going to let us build, like, a Glossier model of paid
influencers? But nobody on the Democratic side gets it yet. And
it’s wild but true that it benefits them to quote-unquote let go or
lose control of the message.”ucked away on page 46 of a Senate Select Commit-
tee on Intelligence–requested report concerning Rus-
sian disinformation in the 2016 presidentialelection
is a fascinating detail. Almost every piece of political
content that Russia’s Internet ResearchAgency
shared via shady accounts on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter was created in-house—except, the report
concluded, for memes created by Turning Point USA,
a conservative campus organization. Not only did the IRAdistrib-
ute these widely but they branded them as their own.
Founded in 2012, TPUSA has found its footing in the Trump era
as a de facto youth wing of the administration. And whatstarted
as a campus-organizing vehicle has diversified into a gigantic con-
tent creator devoted to churning out viral pro-Trump memes and
videos. In July, TPUSA held its second annual Teen Student Action
Summit at a hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. On the day I
attended, the president himself was delivering a speech, which
meant hordes of preppy teenagers in red baseball caps hadcamped
out overnight in the lobby to secure good seats. maga internet
personalities were in abundance. Waiting for the president, the
crowd hailed the arrival of @fleccas, a.k.a. Austen Fletcher, who
interviews people on YouTube with a spoon taped to hismicro-
phone and has around 275,000 Instagram followers. Mobbed, he
was forced to take endless selfies.
For me, the draw was Benny Johnson. Johnson’s journalism
career, at BuzzFeed and elsewhere, had been marred by plagiarism
scandals, which hadn’t prevented him from attaining hiscurrent
job as chief creative officer of Turning Point USA, where he is paid
to make memes. Dressed in a sharp blue suit and a tealnecktie,
Johnson assumed the stage at 9 a.m. to EDM beats andrevival-
tent pandemonium. “This is amazing!,” he yells. “Preach! Who
wants to go to a church? Who wants to go to a meme church?”
Johnson played a clip of former White House press secretary
Sarah Huckabee Sanders mocking a CNN reporter. “What sav-
agery! We’re living in a savage environment,” he said. “We are living
in a new world. The world of my dreams. A savage world where
politics and meme culture have become one.”
The bulk of Johnson’s presentation, called “How Conserva-
tives Are Winning the Meme Wars,” focused on a memehe had
created of Senator Lindsey Graham during Brett Kavanaugh’s
Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The image may be famil-
iar even to those who don’t follow @ TPUSA: It shows Graham
smiling and coolly adjusting his tie as a female protesteryells in
the background. Johnson had been filming Graham as hewalked
from the Capitol to his SUV; later, at his desk, Johnson froze the
video and saw internet gold. The image—self-assured Republi-
can owns hysterical lib—went viral, and the meme became
known as “Based Lindsey Graham.” Based Lindsey Graham then
turned into a fad called “Grahaming,” in which conservatives
adjust their ties for the camera. Graham now can’t go anywhere
without someone wanting to Graham with him. Inevitably, peo-
ple starting setting the video clip to music: “Ring of Fire,” “I Will