Agitprop in the 21st Century: Memes as transgressive art, education & political weapons (en)

Edmund Schluessel, David Redelberger Socialist Meme Caucus (SMC) was founded in 2011 by Trotskyists and has since become one of the preeminent multi-tendency left meme pages on Facebook, boasting 55,000 members and inspiring countless other pages. SMC prides itself on combining inclusivess and education with political & intellectual clarity from an explicitly revolutionary socialist perspective. While founded for comic purposes, SMC-launched campaigns have received worldwide coverage and disrupted the work of UKIP, the United Kingdom's right-populist party, and discussions by SMC have led to left networking & recruitment around the world. In this discussion, two content creators for SMC talk about their artistic inspirations and connections to the artistic history of the radical left, about the educational possibilities and limitations of social media, and about how to balance the line between humor and political consciousnes.