The “Troll Style” in American Politics

Elmo and his dad, Louie (Sesame Workshop)

Senator Ted Cruz is angry again. Seems he’s outraged that Sesame Street star Elmo wants his grade-school fans to get a COVID-19 shot. He claims that Elmo’s assertion that getting your shot protects the whole neighborhood has “ZERO scientific evidence,” a claim he bolsters by linking to his official Senate website. The public pushback on social media was predictable, as thousands of Americans hastily tweeted their ripostes.

I understand the impulse to correct, quarrel with, and shame Senator Cruz. For people whose ideal of political engagement includes being in command of the facts, his mind-numbingly stupid tweet violates one of their first principles. But the more I read, the more I can’t take things at face value anymore. Having read Sienkiewicz and Marx, I realize Senator Cruz isn’t a politician. He’s the lowest form of internet comedian: the Troll.

That’s a loaded statement, because different people have different definitions of trolls. As Mick Hume writes, “trolls” are often anybody doing anything online that others disagree with. But Sienkiewicz and Marx have a very specific definition of trolldom in mind, starting with that elite minority who actively identify themselves as trolls. They specifically highlight Michael Malice, who has turned trolldom into a lucrative career, appearing on others’ shows and publishing books.

To Malice, and therefore Sienkiewicz and Marx, trolldom is a domain of performance art. His goal (and it’s usually a self-identified male) doesn’t have a point to prove; the troll’s only goal is to reduce all respondents to the worst versions of themselves. Trolls make others angry, causing them to act in ways contrary to their own stated moral code. The troll doesn’t win debates by upholding key values or demonstrating some truth, the troll wins by making you look bad.

Trolls are hollow beings, absent of a moral core. Trolls don’t enter (or, more often, kick-start) debates to make the world better, advance causes, or increase anybody’s well-being, health, or mental clarity. The troll only wants to reduce others to the worst possible versions of themselves. In so doing, trolls make ordinary people into objects of ridicule, then invites audiences to join in pointing and laughing. Literally their only goal is to humiliate others.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

That’s what we’re witnessing in contemporary politics. When progressives complain that conservatives, like Cruz, appear inconsistent, or that they fail to see their own moral and logical inconsistencies, we presume that Cruz and other trolls have core principles. We assume they participate in arguments from a good-faith position of wanting to convince others. We presuppose that they argue from a position of deeply held conviction. We are deceived.

Rather than logical argument, perhaps let’s consider trolling like street theatre. The artist wants to create a spectacle, which doesn’t make the audience feel good or think deeply, but rather makes part of the audience feel vindicated at another part’s expense. Consider comedians whose core routine is cutting down hecklers, or stage hypnotists who strip volunteers of their inhibitions. Like trolls, these performers encourage us to laugh at other audience members.

When Ted Cruz or Michael Malice sneer at basic attempts to make people care or act responsibly, they don’t want anything. They don’t expect to persuade. They only expect to reduce the other side to screaming incoherence, then claim victory. Trolls win, not when others are convinced, but when others lose their composure. Look, the troll says, the other side secretly has no moral core! This is, of course, no knock on the troll, who never pretended to have a core.

That’s what Cruz wants when one throwaway statement makes dozens, even hundreds, of other tweeters to lose their composure. He wants to make progressives fail to live up to their own standards. The troll’s ultimate invitation isn’t to understand more deeply, it’s to feel superior to those who, pressed into a corner, relinquish their core values and get angry. Trolls don’t argue in bad faith; they argue in no faith.

Now, trolls aren’t necessarily conservative. Sienkiewicz and Marx describe Michael Malice targeting his performance art at right-wingers too, reducing them similarly to screaming puddles of outraged goo. However, trolls frequently work best from a conservative launchpad, because progressives tend to have complex, nuanced, and strongly held moral cores. American conservatives today have loose cores founded on advantage rather than morality.

Without any moral foundation, trolls have no need to make sense. Trolls can believe in both libertarianism and authoritarianism simultaneously. They can “support” kids’ freedom, while abjuring any duty to ensure children reach adulthood. Ordinary people seek morality, consistency, and standards; but to the troll, nothing matters. They don’t win by persuading anybody, they win by making you lose. And you lose whenever you engage them.