slopulism
the emerging politics of our time
Like all new media, every new political movement emerges unformed.
Per usual, the insights of Marshall McLuhan are relevant here:
"We impose the form of the old on the content of the new."
Yesterday, I predicted that democratic socialism and America First nativism were in the process of skinsuiting the Democratic and Republican parties respectively.
It’s worth noting that while both present themselves as coherent ideologies, it remains up for grabs what either actually means. According to the BBC, democratic socialism "has no clear definition, but essentially means giving a voice to workers, not corporations." Others—often critics—dismiss it as communism with a Corporate Memphis rebrand.
As the term slop implies, meaning is slippery.
Slopulism is a form of politics at its most atavistic. The reorganization of political coalitions happens via billions of micro-interactions: interpersonal conflicts, targeted media, moral dilemmas, messaging discipline, life-altering tragedies, memes.
If the final shape of the coalition seems rational, it’s only because hindsight is twenty-twenty. We can see the historical forces bringing about new political coalitions retrospectively, but struggle to identify them when we are in the midst of a shake-up.
The process is noisy. Coherent images take time to render.
Again like all new media, the emergence of slopulism is accompanied by moral panics. Though these moral panics may be more well-founded. New ideologies only emerge in response to new problems. Slopulism is the groping attempt to figure out what those responses might be…