Welcome to the Poastocracy
Earlier this month, right-wing writer and influencer John Carter penned a barnburner examining an important phenomenon in today’s political culture: the “poastocracy”—or rule of the “poasters” as they are known in online discourse.
Carter describes how random provocative social media posts (or “poasts”) from anonymous accounts now seem to make their way into official government policy: “Senior admin are at the apex of a long chain of influence that goes from schizo dogwhistle to Raw Egg Nationalist to Jack Posobiec to Erik Prince to Don Trump Jr to Elon Musk (“Interesting”) to the Big Man himself.”
As Carter explains, this marks a shift from the old way of governing, where an administration sourced and enacted positions from mainstream think tanks, lobbyists, experts, and the legacy media—all of which had come to form a powerful network of elite voices. Occasionally, this top-down enforcement of elite opinion is given the veneer of democracy with polls or elections, but even these can, and frequently are, manipulated to support elite opinion.
Now, the whole process has become democratized, with internet users sounding off about issues and having their opinions move up the “chain of influence.” Moreover, the American president and members of his administration are also using social media to speak directly to the people. The middlemen who once propagandized the masses and insulated the leadership are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Carter’s argument was proven nearly in real time by conservative podcaster Matt Walsh. Right as Carter published his essay, Walsh broke the story of a demented child-killer in Kentucky being released from prison after only a decade “for good behavior.” Besides stoking understandable outrage from his audience, Walsh’s reporting also led to concrete action being taken: the murderer was arrested for violating his parole, a state legislator proposed new laws to prevent such injustices from happening again, and millions of people are now aware of a dysfunctional legal system that routinely endangers their safety and wellbeing.
While Walsh is a popular media figure on the right, and as such, he does not exactly exemplify the anonymous “poaster” phenomenon, his ability to break through the old conventions, highlight an issue, instigate reform, and ignite a cultural shift all speak to a sea change in the way media now functions. Besides this latest story of a murderer released on parole, Walsh has had a significant impact on American attitudes regarding transgenderism and DEI through his social media posts, his podcast, and his series of popular documentaries. While most elites largely dismissed Walsh and his audience as a bunch of unenlightened bigots on the fringes of established elite opinion, there were others who took him seriously and did something about the issues he raised. Politicians who followed that path have been rewarded.
In his essay, Carter mentions some other policy changes that originated in the hinterlands of the web and made their way to the hallowed halls of the nation’s capital. To introduce the idea of today’s poastocracy, he discusses an unusual ritual that always seems to happen when white parents speaks about the death of their child who was murdered by black person: they immediately forgive the murderer and ignore all mention of race.
Evidently, there is something called the Community Relations Service (CRS) at the Department of Justice and it was tasked with “pressuring the victims and their families to stick to the this-isn’t-about-race script” in the interest of civic harmony. Because of the surreptitious activity of the CRS, so much dysfunction and violence in the black community consistently goes unaddressed and is largely misunderstood by most Americans. Nevertheless, a couple of poasters began discussing the role of the CRS in these tragedies, leading another poaster to write a book about it, and now the department is being defunded and eliminated.
Carter also brings up Trump’s reforms on H1B visas. During the 2024 Christmas vacation, a debate raged on X about the H1B visas being abused by white-collar employers hiring South Asian immigrants over Americans to save on money. Vivek Ramaswamy weighed in and damaged his own political career by endorsing the H1B visa scam, contrasting stupid and lazy Americans with studious and productive Asians. Elon Musk also eviscerated his public image by insisting on the need for H1B visas and noting his preference for foreign tech workers over American ones. For the MAGA poasters, it was obvious that nearly all the arguments for more Indian programmers were weak and self-interested.
Several months later, someone in the administration heard these concerns, and President Trump responded with changes to the program, including a $100,000 charge to employers for a H1B visa and a guarantee that they will offer a salary of $150,000 or more to these foreign workers, who supposedly fulfill roles that can’t be done by Americans. The poasters strike again.
Of course, while putting psychopaths back in jail, allowing people to speak out against violence, protecting American jobs, and eliminating a corrupt news media apparatus from public discourse are all good things, the poastocracy is no utopia. Carter mentions the ways people can exploit social media platforms by using bots and paying off influencers.
Moreover, the poastocracy may not always be right-wing in its leanings. Having enjoyed cultural preeminence since the dawn of mass media (what Carter calls a “mediacracy”), the left has yet to learn the ways of effective poasting and continues to struggle in this new media environment. At some point, however, they will learn and what seems radical even to leftists today may very well become the platform of most Democrats tomorrow.
Current exemplars of the nascent leftist poastocracy would be Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett as well as New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. They all take their talking points from leftist poasters and, therefore, are too easily dismissed by those on the right as vapid nincompoops. For now, they are held in check by the old (often very old!) guard, who still rely on the traditional institutions of influence and power.
For the time being, however, outside of the country’s deep-blue urban enclaves, the potential for a leftist poastocracy is limited. The rightist poastocracy, on the other hand, is entering a kind of golden age that has the potential to bring about real positive change in American society.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/welcome-to-the-poastocracy