Memes, munitions, and collective copia: The durability of the perpetual peace weapons snowclone

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the commonplace argument that particular weapons have the power to end war forever. I argue that the basic form of the durable memetic phrasal pattern that emerges from the commonplace’s many iterations is Weapon X makes war impossible. I call this meme the perpetual peace weapons snowclone. Snowclones are formulaic communication patterns that enable users to swap out words, phrases, or images for one another without breaking the original pattern. To understand how and why the perpetual peace weapons snowclone remains cogent for weapons advocacy, I connect Erasmus’s concept of copia to the contemporary concept of snowclones. Taken together, collective copia and snowclones demonstrate how simultaneous linguistic flexibility and rigidity help memes and other rhetorical commonplaces to replicate. I then trace the perpetual peace weapons snowclone’s replication with a historical survey of the oft-repeated commonplace through the development of the atomic bomb, at which point the perpetual peace weapons snowclone transformed into an ideological principle that warranted Cold War nuclear deterrence theory and the Atoms for Peace campaign. The case study demonstrates how, in general, all kinds of commonplaces, memes, clichés, stereotypes, archetypes, and proverbs get reproduced across time and space when collective copia and snowclones interact.