[...] There is a reason right-wing trolling is more effective than its left-wing equivalent: trolling that harnesses the power of taboo—the most ancient, retrograde, collectively unconscious stuff of sex, the family, the species—is more effective than trolling toward enlightenment. And to indulge a taboo thought can be exhilarating. It mimics the emotional response we have to the accepted forms of political awakening: having the scales fall from your eyes or your consciousness raised. Hence the pervasiveness of the red-pill metaphor. The red pill, from the Matrix films, has come to represent a kind of political choice: to “awaken” to the far-right vision of reality, and refuse to sleep in a liberal, blue-pill, sham reality. The seduction of the red pill is, in many cases, the seduction of taboo.

But trolls also make a mistake: they believe there is truth in taboo thoughts because they appear taboo. When they see that their statements are seen as dangerous—that black people are stupid, bad, or unworthy, or that men are more persecuted than women—they confuse liberal society’s attempts to suppress such thoughts with evidence of their truth. [...]

Having cast himself as an outsider and underdog during the campaign, Trump struggles with this new reality. He still tweets about the legitimacy of his election and about being attacked by a malicious press. Long after no woman in this country can get an abortion and the coastlines are flooded and the forests burned to the ground, the trolls will be online, hunting for women to call feminazis and for tree huggers and snowflakes to make fun of, because the trolls couldn’t face the fact that power was on their side.