The Politics of Anti-Discourse: Copypasta, the Alt-Right, and the Rhetoric of Form

This essay examines the reactionary turn in digital culture through the copypasta, a meaningless block of text shared on message boards and recognizable only to the already-initiated. Although rarely studied, the copypasta is an archetype of contemporary digital culture. As a form, it refuses representational content and coordinates affect, holding a position against the stream of digital content. I argue that digital form—rather than representational content—carries potent ideological and affective charge. Building on an analysis of the copypastas on 4chan’s infamous /pol/ board, I suggest scholars resuscitate the rhetorical canon of dispositio, or arrangement, for the computational age.