I was born and raised in a liberal southern Wisconsin community.
While posting on Twitter.com I came upon a post satirizing the state of politics and the media in the United States. After a few weeks of following and retweeting I ended up befriending a group of Bernie Sanders supporters.
My new friends denied the legitimacy of our political system and media. I was well acquainted with the evisceration of Republican obstructionism and the ‘Faux’ News Channel by titans of political comedy like Andy Borowitz and John Oliver, but as our ‘political revolution’ took shape we increasingly made fun of Democrats and writers for outlets like the Washington Post. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I was exhilarated.
One night I was followed by an account I had never seen before called ‘Woke Nasrallah,’ and he invited me into a group chat. Alongside about 30 other low level accounts, I was told about something called the ‘Chapo Trap House.’
He called us Irony bros, and said right now we were like a militia without a commander. Our tactic of calling centrist pundits ‘neoliberal hacks’ wouldn’t cut it, and our political revolution would end in failure, unless we developed an organized movement.
Woke Nasrallah said that we would eventually become the colonels and generals of the Chapo Org.
At one point in the meeting there was as denouncement of the foreign policy of Barack Obama which caused me to speak up. Was the Iran nuclear deal not a step in the right direction? Had he not treated the Palestinians fairly? This caused great anger in the group and I was called a lib bitch and kicked out of the chat.
Over following months Woke Nasrallah and I became close comrades, and we would often laugh about that night.
My parents were old-fashioned liberals. They were public employees, union members, and voted a straight Democratic ticket in each election.
At night my brother and I would sit cross-legged on the floor at our mother’s feet and watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann. We booed the worst person in the world and laughed at the latest gaffe from The Shrub.
When Obama announced he was running for president we supported him immediately. He was handsome and well-spoken, and if he became president we could be proud of our country again. Nate Silver’s projections made us confident on election night, and when the returns came in my mother’s eyes welled up with tears. The legacy of American racism was behind us, and peace and prosperity lie ahead.
This is the ‘unbearable’ liberalism that Chapo Trap House wants to save us from.
Then out of nowhere the Tea Party appeared. These bitter old racists attacked health care reform and fiscal stimulus, despite the fact that many of these gun-toting rednecks qualified for a variety of means-tested non-refundable tax credits. I began to question my faith in the system when the Democrats lost the House.
In college I was taught that Bill Clinton had very little to do with the economic boom of the 90s. My Marxist professors told me that Clinton’s deregulation of investment banking played a significant role in the economic collapse, and his welfare reforms increased poverty.
I have no doubt that my decision to study liberal arts softened my resistance to Irony. After flunking out of school, I moved back in with my parents and began to spend more of my free time online.
A week after Woke Nasrallah began following me on Twitter, I was invited to join Chapo Org.
I pledged my loyalty to the group, and also $5 a month to its Patreon. I promised to never stop trolling until the United States Government was overthrown and each member of the mainstream press was humiliated.
I was given a new Twitter account, and told to delete my old one, so that my activities could never be traced back to me. My avatar was a 30-something black man. I was told it was vital to inflate the appearance of PoC in our ranks in order to disorient the good allies among our enemies.
I was told that I did not have to give up reading Vox and the New York Times. All they asked was that I began reading Jacobin magazine and Carl Diggler as well. However, a high ranking Chapo Org official would later tell me that all those who did not fully denounce liberalism would die alongside the quants and wonks after the revolution.
“Chapistic Thought, and Incrementalism don’t mix,” he said. “Anyone with liberal mores will eventually be a threat to us.”
“What about the columnists who retweet our jokes and sympathize with our movement?”
“These liberal chameleons are of great value at present, but once our goal is reached, they will either have to change their belief, or pay the price with their heads along with the rest,” he replied.
Our movement was presented as an updated Americanism. Our leaders Biederman, Christman, and Menaker were built up as the Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt of our day. It was common for members of Chapo Org to share photos of Felix doing a set of squats with Thomas Paine spotting him. Matt was Paul Bunyan, and Will was Johnny Appleseed, and we were told that through hard work and evangelism our movement was destined to succeed.
I was assigned to the Special Operations branch where I hid my affiliation to Chapo, and infiltrated neutral and hostile media outlets. I was trained to undermine the discourse, and also subtly spread out propaganda. I knew we had members in all of the presidential campaigns and on the editorial staff of most of the major publications, but I could never be sure who was compromised
Chapo Org consists of a series of clandestine cells which mostly operate independently from one another. In the event that different branches need to work together efforts are made to keep member’s identities secret from one another. Communication takes place via dead drop sites on Yahoo News comment sections and long defunct body building forums.
Reference is sometimes made to the modest number of downloads to the Chapo Trap House podcast. Chapo Org does not allow its power to be known through the iTunes charts. It sees the podcast as merely another channel to disseminate propaganda to outsiders. Chapo Org members are given strategic and ideological direction each week through a hidden RSS feed which is not available to the public.
Today there are more members of Chapo Org than there were Young Turks in 1908 Constantinople, or Hezbollah members in 1983 Beirut. Ever since Bernie Sanders was ‘mathematically eliminated’ from winning the Democratic nomination, membership in Chapo Org has only increased by leaps and bounds.
Following my induction into Chapo Org I was relocated to the Eugene V. Debs School of Online Harassment in Brooklyn. This was one of many Chapo training centers located across the United States. Each school is a vast reservoir of spite and vitriol, into which new recruits are submerged until their lungs fill up. Those who manage ascend back to the surface are forever changed.
We are taught that 95% of politics is sexual pathology. At the Debs School I was taught how to dig deep, within myself and my enemy, in order to humiliate and truly own them. I was sat in front of a cardboard cutout of Matthew Yglesias and told to hurl insults at it for an hour. A hooded figure smacked my back with a switch each time I faltered.
Chapo Org has mapped out The Discourse, and is planning its attack on each individual participant.
Respected legislators will be subjected to bizarre struggle sessions over support for ‘taking money from defense contractors,’ ‘trying to privatize the Grand Canyon,’ ‘re-instituting debtors prison,’ and any other innovative efforts at reform that don’t pass the Chapo purity test. Women and PoC will be cyber-bullied to within an inch of their lives. Loving husbands and fathers will find themselves trapped in elevators, fast food restaurant bathrooms and subway cars. Vicious lies will be spread about Her through plants in the media until the public is on the brink of revolt.
Chapo Org is working around the clock to hollow out the discourse from the inside, and when the moment is right they will rise up and seize power.
That is, unless patriotic Americans stop them. In order to defeat this threat, Americans need to be informed. I will continue my efforts to unravel this conspiracy until Chapo Org is defeated, or I am struck down.
Coming up in Part II: The beginning of my work, and the beginning of my disillusionment with Chapo Org.
Chapo Trap House Truth 