Owning the libs

{{Short description|Political strategy of American conservatives}}

File:Fuck your Feelings & God, Guns and Trump button (48555430526).jpg

Owning the libs is a rhetorical device that transgresses political correctness and emphasizes culture war issues to provoke a reaction in others, not unlike trolling.{{cite magazine |last=Coppins |first=McKay |date=May 28, 2018 |title=Trump's Right-Hand Troll |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/stephen-miller-trump-adviser/561317/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109043708/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/stephen-miller-trump-adviser/561317/ |archive-date=November 9, 2020 |access-date=November 10, 2020 |magazine=The Atlantic |quote="Inside the White House, Miller has emerged as a staunch ideologue and an immigration hawk championing an agenda of right-wing nationalism. But people who have known him at different points in his life say his political worldview is also rooted in a deep-seated instinct for trolling. Miller represents a rising generation of conservatives for whom “melting the snowflakes” and “triggering the libs” are first principles. You can find them on college campuses, holding “affirmative action bake sales” or hosting rallies for alt-right figures in the name of free speech. You can see them in the new conservative media, churning out incendiary headlines for Breitbart News or picking bad-faith fights on Twitter. Raised on talk radio, radicalized on the web, they are a movement in open revolt against the dogmas of “political correctness”—and their tactics could shape the culture wars for years to come."}} It has become a common trope among conservatives in the United States to mock American liberals and mobilize its reactionary base.{{cite news |last1=Robertson |first1=Derek |title=How 'Owning the Libs' Became the GOP's Core Belief |url=https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/21/owning-the-libs-history-trump-politics-pop-culture-477203 |work=POLITICO |date=21 March 2021 |quote=Owning the libs offers bread and circuses for the pro-Trump right while Republicans quietly pursue a traditional program of deregulation and tax cuts at the policy level. }}

Terminology

The phrase "own the libs" comes from a slang usage of the word "own", meaning "to dominate," "to defeat," or, "to humiliate."{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://catb.org/jargon/html/O/owned.html |title=owned |encyclopedia=The Jargon File, version 4.4.8 |date=October 1, 2004 |publisher=Eric S. Raymond |access-date=November 20, 2020 |archive-date=September 27, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927235319/http://catb.org/jargon//html/O/owned.html |url-status=live }} Variant phrases such as "triggering the libs" and "melting snowflakes" are also used to refer to the strategy. The phrase was coined and popularized by critics of the strategy, including politician Nikki Haley, who increased the prominence of the phrase in a 2018 speech in which she criticized the strategy as unpersuasive. It is also used by some who practice the strategy, such as Dan Bongino.{{cite news |last=Fabbri |first=Thomas |date=November 2, 2020 |title=US election 2020: The people behind the political memes you share |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54748453 |work=BBC News |access-date=November 14, 2020 |archive-date=April 6, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406121908/https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54748453 |url-status=live }} The phrase dates back to at least 2015.

The "trigger" variants of the phrase come from the idea of trauma triggers and "trigger warnings" intended to avoid them.{{cite web |url=https://ncac.org/resource/ncac-report-whats-all-this-about-trigger-warnings |title=What's All This About Trigger Warnings? |author= |date=December 2015 |website=National Coalition Against Censorship |access-date=November 20, 2020 |archive-date=November 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126143501/https://ncac.org/resource/ncac-report-whats-all-this-about-trigger-warnings/ |url-status=live }} In his 2019 book Triggered, Donald Trump Jr. says that the purpose of triggering liberals is to oppose political correctness.{{cite book |last1=Trump Jr |first1=Donald |title=Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us |date=2019 |publisher=Hachette Nashville |isbn=978-1-5460-8602-4 }}{{pn|date=April 2025}}{{psc|date=April 2025}} The strategy is associated with confrontational political slogans such as "fuck your feelings,"{{cite magazine |last=Waldman |first=Paul |date=June 24, 2018 |title=Should Trump Staffers Be Shamed and Protested Wherever They Go? |url=https://prospect.org/power/trump-staffers-shamed-protested-wherever-go/ |magazine=The American Prospect |access-date=November 10, 2020 |archive-date=November 13, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201113235209/https://prospect.org/power/trump-staffers-shamed-protested-wherever-go/ |url-status=live }} and "make liberals cry again."{{cite magazine |last=Berkowitz |first=Joe |date=November 7, 2020 |title=Donald Trump is a loser |url=https://www.fastcompany.com/90573062/donald-trump-is-a-loser |magazine=Fast Company |access-date=November 10, 2020 |archive-date=November 9, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109144827/https://www.fastcompany.com/90573062/donald-trump-is-a-loser |url-status=live }}

History

Beginning in the 1980s, conservative talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh eschewed the intellectualism of earlier conservatives like William F. Buckley, instead using a more aggressive and confrontational rhetorical style that frequently employed ad hominems, taunting and hyperbole to attack liberal ideas.{{cite news |last1=Sykes |first1=Charles |title=Rush Limbaugh: The Radio Voice Who Owned the Libs Long Before Trump |url=https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/27/2021-obituary-rush-limbaugh-520597|work=Politico|date=December 27, 2021|access-date=November 16, 2024}}

Conservative student activist groups like Turning Point USA and remixes of campus speakers like Ben Shapiro played a key role in developing the strategy during the 2000s and 2010s. The 2008 vice presidential campaign of Sarah Palin was a precursor to the owning the libs method, according to former Republican strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson.{{cite news |last=Wilson |first=Rick |date=March 18, 2022 |title=Opinion: The GOP is about to come after Biden on Ukraine |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/18/ukraine-biden-gop-trump/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=July 17, 2022 |archive-date=July 7, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220707181755/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/18/ukraine-biden-gop-trump/ |url-status=live }} Palin marked a merger between politics and entertainment, causing an anxiety among educated elites that her voters found thrilling.{{cite magazine |last=Welch |first=Matt |date=August 27, 2018 |title=Is the GOP Worth Saving? Rick Wilson's Not Sure, But He's Staying Anyway |url=https://reason.com/2018/08/27/is-the-gop-worth-saving-rick-wilsons-not/ |magazine=Reason |access-date=November 12, 2020 |archive-date=November 9, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109031546/https://reason.com/2018/08/27/is-the-gop-worth-saving-rick-wilsons-not/ |url-status=live }} Wilson says owning the libs assuages insecurities of people on the American political right, and has become central to the Republican Party because of its success at this. More recently, the strategy is associated with President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr.{{cite news |last1=Peyser |first1=Eve |title=The Summer's Hottest Trend Is Owning the Libs |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/own-the-libs-meaning-703845/ |accessdate=1 November 2020 |magazine=Rolling Stone |date=26 July 2018 |archive-date=November 2, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201102010503/https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/own-the-libs-meaning-703845/ |url-status=live }}{{cite news |last1=Perticone |first1=Joe |title=How 'owning the libs' became the ethos of the right |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/how-owning-the-libs-became-the-ethos-of-the-right-2018-7 |work=Business Insider |date=28 July 2018 }}{{cite news |last1=Smith |first1=David |title='Owning the libs': how Donald Trump Jr became the unlikely political heir apparent |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/21/donald-trump-jr-became-fathers-unlikely-political-heir-apparent |accessdate=1 November 2020 |work=The Guardian |date=21 October 2020 |archive-date=November 1, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201101081214/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/21/donald-trump-jr-became-fathers-unlikely-political-heir-apparent |url-status=live }} The method was adopted by the alt-right and alt-lite as a form of trolling and antagonism in the mid/late 2010s.{{cite web |url=https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/18/ok-sign-white-power-symbol-or-just-right-wing-troll |title=Is that an OK sign? A white power symbol? Or just a right-wing troll? |last=Neiwert |first=David |date=September 19, 2018 |website=Southern Poverty Law Center |access-date=November 27, 2020 |archive-date=June 12, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220612205025/https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/18/ok-sign-white-power-symbol-or-just-right-wing-troll |url-status=live }}

Goals

Far-right conspiracy theorist Jacob Wohl has stated that the goal in owning the libs is to evoke in people "the type of unhinged emotional response that you would expect out of somebody who is suffering a serious mental episode." The strategy uses trolling to portray political opponents as weak, biased, or overtly emotional, and to portray oneself as superior because of a lack of emotion.{{cite journal |last1=Lieback |first1=Hedwig |title=Truth-Telling and Trolls: Trolling, Political Rhetoric in the Twenty-First Century, and the Objectivity Norm |journal=Aspeers |date=2019 |volume=12 |pages=9–36 |doi=10.54465/aspeers.12-03 |doi-access=free }} Users of the strategy sometimes seek to be deplatformed in order to gain notoriety.

Rutgers University media scholar Khadijah White says the strategy serves to excuse corruption from one's political allies by portraying one's opponents as equally corrupt. Shared enjoyment of owning the libs maintains group cohesion among a conservative voting bloc, according to Nicole Hemmer of Columbia University. Hemmer views the strategy as a substitute for the cohesive conservative ideology that existed during the Cold War.{{cite news |last=Peters |first=Jeremy W. |date=August 3, 2020 |title=These Conservatives Have a Laser Focus: 'Owning the Libs' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/us/politics/the-federalist-trump-liberals.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=November 1, 2020 |archive-date=August 3, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803161740/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/us/politics/the-federalist-trump-liberals.html |url-status=live }}

The phrase "the cruelty is the point" was coined from the title of Adam Serwer's 2018 article in The Atlantic about Trump supporters building community together by delighting in the suffering of those they consider outsiders.{{cite magazine |last=Serwer |first=Adam |date=October 3, 2018 |title=The Cruelty Is the Point |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/ |magazine=The Atlantic |publisher=The Atlantic Monthly Group |access-date=November 20, 2020 |archive-date=June 30, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190630202834/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/ |url-status=live }} The phrase and the observation about shared joy in cruelty have been written about in the media as the purpose of owning the libs.{{cite news |last=Bunch |first=Will |date=January 2, 2020 |title=Trump's looming cruel war on homeless people is America's next big human-rights crisis |url=https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/trump-homeless-policy-california-new-czar-marbut-cruelty-20200102.html |work=The Philadelphia Inquirer |access-date=November 20, 2020 |archive-date=November 27, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201127112023/https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/trump-homeless-policy-california-new-czar-marbut-cruelty-20200102.html |url-status=live }}{{cite magazine |last=Magary |first=Drew |date=June 21, 2019 |title=Is All This Misery Worth It? |url=https://www.gq.com/story/what-is-misery-worth |magazine=GQ |publisher=Condé Nast |access-date=November 20, 2020 |archive-date=November 29, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129011213/https://www.gq.com/story/what-is-misery-worth |url-status=live }}

Art critic Ben Davis has written that the painter Jon McNaughton's stated goal of creating work that "triggers the left" undersells the sincerity of his work. McNaughton's paintings communicate a "real and popular viewpoint" sincerely held by conservative or reactionary consumers of art, even as the paintings also function as memes intended to upset perceived political enemies.{{cite news |first=Ben |last=Davis |title=What Painter Jon McNaughton's New Patriotic-Religious Fantasia of Donald Trump Actually Means |date=July 29, 2020 |url=https://news.artnet.com/opinion/jon-mcnaughton-legacy-of-hope-1897650 |work=Artnet News |access-date=October 23, 2022 |archive-date=January 26, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126053900/https://news.artnet.com/opinion/jon-mcnaughton-legacy-of-hope-1897650 |url-status=live }}

Criticism

File:F-450 coal rolling Monster.jpg "rolling coal"]]

The strategy of owning the libs has been criticized by both liberal and conservative observers as an unsuccessful strategy, or as leading only to counterproductive Pyrrhic victory.

At a 2018 Turning Point USA event, Republican Nikki Haley remarked:

{{Blockquote

|text=Raise your hand if you've ever posted anything online to quote-unquote own the libs. I know that it's fun and that it can feel good, but step back and think about what you're accomplishing when you do this. Are you persuading anyone? Who are you persuading? We've all been guilty of it at some point or another, but this kind of speech isn't leadership. It's the exact opposite.

}}

In her book Troll Nation, Amanda Marcotte argues that owning the libs is so central to the political right that any effort to show care and concern for the well-being of others, or even for oneself, is viewed as suspiciously liberal. She gives the example of rolling coal, the practice of illegally modifying a diesel pickup truck to produce clouds of black smoke.{{cite web | url=https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/07/epa-rolling-coal-is-verboten-according-to-clean-air-act/ | title=EPA: Rolling Coal is Verboten According to Clean Air Act | date=July 9, 2014 | access-date=September 5, 2023 | archive-date=September 5, 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230905193824/https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/07/epa-rolling-coal-is-verboten-according-to-clean-air-act/ | url-status=live }}{{Cite web |url=https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/air-enforcement |title=Air Enforcement |date=May 3, 2013 |access-date=September 5, 2023 |archive-date=September 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230904072957/https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/air-enforcement |url-status=live }} Exhaust from rolling coal is sometimes directed at drivers of fuel-efficient cars and cyclists, in order to offend their presumed liberal environmentalist values. Marcotte argues that rolling coal has no value outside of trolling liberals. It costs the coal-roller money, increases fuel consumption, can void the warranty of their vehicle, and may violate air-pollution laws. Hence, Marcotte argues, rolling coal is an expensive and counterproductive way to misconstrue environmentalism as an identity marker instead of a policy matter.{{cite book |last=Marcotte |first=Amanda |author-link=Amanda Marcotte |date=2018 |title=Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself |publisher=Hot Books Press |page=60 |isbn=978-1-5107-3745-7 }}

In 2020, Paul Waldman wrote that "hatred of liberals is all that's left of conservatism." He argues that owning the libs has pushed aside all policy goals previously central to Republicans, such as small government and lower taxes, as well as Republican commitment to democracy and patriotism. Waldman gives the example of the Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit and the physical violence threatened against Republicans who refused to join the suit.{{cite news |last=Waldman |first=Paul |date=December 11, 2020 |title=Hatred of liberals is all that's left of conservatism |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/hatred-liberals-is-all-thats-left-conservatism/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=December 14, 2020 |archive-date=December 13, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201213143956/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/hatred-liberals-is-all-thats-left-conservatism/ |url-status=live }}

Owning the libs

Terminology

History

Goals

Criticism

See also

References

Further reading