They Don't Want Victory, They Don't Want Power, They Want To Endlessly "Critique" Power

Submission 4,262

Part of a series on ContraPoints. [View Related Entries]

About

They Don't Want Victory, They Don't Want Power, They Want To Endlessly "Critique" Power is a quote from YouTuber ContraPoints (aka Contra) about resentment politics from a 2021 video. In the clip, Contra's seen with blonde hair, doing her makeup and speaking to the viewer. A two-panel image of the quote became a reaction image and exploitable meme template in 2024. Internet users on Twitter / X and Reddit (among other sites) used the image and its quote to memetically criticize radical politics for attacking establishments but not providing reasonable solutions. During the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election cycle, the image was frequently used in liberal in-fighting on Twitter / X, resulting in heated discourse and ironic iterations that recaptioned the quotes, using the phrasal template, They Don't Want X, They Don't Want Y, They Want To Z.

Origin

On August 7th, 2021, YouTuber^[1] ContraPoints uploaded a roughly one-hour-and-48-minute-long video called "Envy," receiving over 5.9 million views in three years. At the video's 1:27:25 mark (shown below), Contra is speaking about "resentment politics" and says, "They don't want victory. They don't want power. They want to endlessly 'critique' power."

On February 29th, 2024, X^[2] user @maxdubler tweeted a two-panel image of the abovementioned ContraPoints quote (shown below) to criticize "housing academics" in London for performing a "fundamentally literary exercise" and having no interest in "figuring out what kind of policies work to actually house people." The tweet received over 480 likes in six months and is currently the first known use of the image.

Spread

On April 26th, 2024, X^[3] user @constans quoted another who wrote, "you actually cannot be a member of the US gov’t and be pro-palestine hope that helps ❤️." The quote attached the ContraPoints They Don't Want Victory image, captioned, "They’re never beating the accusations," receiving over 22,000 likes in four months (shown below, left).

The X user's use of the ContraPoints image was also criticized in viral quotes. For instance, on April 26th, X^[4] user @PunishedGramsci said, "God I hate Contrapoints and I really fucking hate you and all the moron liberals like you who think Power rests as winning an election," gaining over 4,600 likes in four months (shown below, right).

Going into mid-2024, internet users began recaptioning and exploiting the image, such as X^[5] user @calebgamman on July 1st, 2024, who quoted a post referencing Hillary Clinton's Pokémon GO to the Polls quote with a version reading, "they want to endlessly relitigate 2016," receiving over 8,800 likes in a month (shown below, left).

On July 23rd, X^[6] user @ImSmilingRn posted an ironic recaption referencing SpongeBob SquarePants characters, receiving roughly 1,600 likes in a month (shown below, right).

During the same timeframe, the meme was shared on subreddits like /r/Enough_Sanders_Spam^[7] and /r/redscarepod. ^[8] Viral iterations and applications of the meme persisted on X^[9] in August 2024.