During a post-race interview with Nascar driver Brandon Brown in October 2021, news anchor Kelly Stavast believed the crowd behind him. I was. Joe Biden” – was instead cheering him on with “Let’s go, Brandon.”
"Let's go, Brandon," or even just "Brandon," has quickly become an abbreviation for the American right, giving the president the middle finger and saying, "T his shirt, his bumper sticker, his yard sign, etc." broadcast a rallying cry pasted on the the internet.
The term was later widely adopted to criticize the regime and express disappointment with the president.
Enter the age of "Dark Brandon".
After a string of "good news" on the Biden agenda,White House officials pulled the meme out of the doomsday darkness online, calling for a tired, gaffe-prone president's It revived the ironic image. looks like a demigod.
The meme overheated after the FBI raided Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and soon after the former president and his Republican supporters The search is a work of political blow and an attack on the American public. This event marked a defining moment for Dark his Brandon, who ascended to power with glowing red eyes on the Throne of Swords.
How Joe Biden Became a Meme
Joe Biden has existed as a meme in one form or another for nearly two decades.
There was a 1981 Pontiac, his Firebird, an occasional ponytailed Dokken at the wheel of his Trans Am, and Biden as his fan Diamond, his Joe. Vice President, or "Vice President": "Biden quietly sings Pearl Jam's 'Even Flow' during security briefing", "Biden arrives early to set up federal fog machine", "Biden is on top Line up a sweet summer gig to set up in the "Ground Swimming Pool".
That persona, a ridiculous combination with Barack Obama's straight man, retired during the 2019 presidential election. However, the"onionBiden" came to dominate the image of then-Vice President Biden's pop culture. His caricature of one of the world's most powerful officials was more convincing than reality.
Dirk Brandon's meme initially faces the threat of a series of devastating U.S. Supreme Court rulings on far-right violence, voter suppression, the growing climate crisis, abortion rights and the environment, and gun violence. and leaned into leftist despair. And a firewall between church and state.
But the administration has won a string of recent victories, among other Democratic 'wins', from major climate change, tax reform, and health care bills to Senate passage, to news of subdued and declining inflation. After his death, the meme was reborn among his supporters. Gas prices, and the US killing of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri.
Dark Brandon's image not only reclaimed the "Brandon" label, but also subverted the overtly fascist aesthetic of the "Dark Maga", turning liberals at the tail end of years of meme wars. Give ammunition. Participate.
With Dark Brandon, the 78-year-old Biden undergoes an ironic transformation as a bearded, eye-patched Metal Gear Solid figure or anime character with laser eyes. increase.
In 2020, a Chinese artist named Yang Quan portrayed President Biden on a throne inspired by Game of Thronesand a riff from Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. Dark Knight and Dark Knight His Rising. These images have been revived in recent weeks.
Earlier this year, a sarcastic viral image depicting a "branded" era president went viral. The caption, "Biden's Public Execution," is accompanied by images of more than 20 white supremacists arrested near his event at Pride of Idaho. Another post contrasted Biden's sunglasses-wearing head with lists beginning with "Shinzo Abe: Disabled" and "ANTIFA: Fully Armed."
The Dark Brandon meme crystallized as an ironic reversal of the Dark MAGA trend by August. Biden has carried out his “plan” with ruthless precision, from authorizing attacks on Al-Zawahiri while infected with Covid-19 to saving money. My favorite chocolate taco dessert.
Reddit's r/darkbrandon channel exploded with memes. Biden with Thanos snapping his fingers and melting Soy Jack in the Make America Great Again hat. Biden shooting on Covid-19. Biden becomes a Super Saiyan.
Recently, members of the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers began sharing Dark His Brandon memes, showing how the meme has gone mainstream.
But experts warn that there are risks in accepting this kind of political iconography.
"You don't want to take trends caused by fascists and Nazis and sort them into your arsenal. A definitive report on dark MAGA trends in far-right online networks is published by Hamptons. Extremism researcher Danielle Glover, who co-authored with Stoll, saysit provides a kind of platform for it to take root in the popular media.”
On the other hand, far-right The person accuses liberal Democrats of using memes generated from within their own circles as a means of accelerating the United States toward fascism. Republicans and Fox News officials have claimed that "Dark Brandon" is a campaign coordinated with the Chinese government and accused the White House of using "Nazi eagle images." ing. Radical researchers say these claims don't hold up.
Following the FBI's manhunt for his Mar-a-Lago, far-right extremists are stepping up their overt calls for political violence. Accelerators are taking advantage of the moment to capitalize on Republican officials' demands for retaliation.
When they are normalized by influencers and elected officials, flattened, forgotten elsewhere, covered in layers upon layers of cynical separation, and perhaps substantively After becoming meaningless, Dirk Brandon's meme may have rendered some of that image toothless. But the trajectory of a mimetic universe is not necessarily controllable or predictable and does not fit within a narrow ideological box.
From Dark MAGA to Dark Brandon
Right-wing figures pride themselves on memes as a political tool, and their platforms are Full of memes. From serious and hastily Photoshopped images of Trump as the "Great MAGA King" to laser eyes to QAnon-inspired "fashwave" images.
Dark MAGA's aesthetic tapped into grudges and radicalized an already violent and reactionary movement, with the image of the former president as a godlike figure on the path of war against his political opponents.
"These organisms, when introduced into an ecosystem, begin a kind of unique life," Glover told The Independent.
Orange to Red: An Assessment of the Dark MAGA Trend in Far-Right Online Spaces, Published by Global Network on Extremism & Technology, Chronicling the evolution of dark MAGA from within the alt-right, a throughline from Gamergate to a vengeful, daring and very online move to launder fascism through meme warfare.
According to the author, the Dark MAGA meme embodies the idea of "a vengeful president born out of a far-right urge to reclaim what they longed for and lost: power."
“Supporters seek to punish political opponents without heeding political correctness. It's an appeal to embrace the true desires of sectarian Trump supporters and mainstream their sentiments," they wrote.
This aesthetic strips away the guise of well-behaved political optics and centers the Trump movement as driven by violence and the destruction of its rivals.
Beginning in January 2022, images began circulating sharing what has become a familiar template. A red and black image of the former president, often depicted with red laser eyes, often accompanied by Nazi symbols and American iconography. Or a reference to a video of his game that captivated white supermassists his fans.
This aesthetic received little advocacy among more mainstream circles, but was adopted and remixed on several large platforms among far-right influencers.
On April's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Arizona's Far Right Congressman Paul Gosar shared an edited clip of last year's anime Attack on Titanand Congressman Alexandria Ocasio. He described himself killing Cortez. – posted a red and black image of himself on his Twitter.
"Remember when our government sent a plane to Afghanistan and in less than a week he brought over 100,000 Afghans with him," he said in an accompanying post. Said. "There are up to 40 million illegal immigrants in our country. They can be deported by plane, train or bus. We could have easily deported 6 million each year." 103}
Users shared the post with the hashtag #darkmaga and commented, praising the use of the figure of 6 million, which roughly matches the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.His campaign denied the mention, the post was deleted from Gosar's account, and a new version of the tweet was shared without the number six million and the accompanying red and black image.
In May, far-right Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also used her hashtag "ultramaga" to post an image of herself in red and black with laser eyes on Congress. shared on their official Twitter account.
Meanwhile, the gap between the online information ecosystem emerging from the conspiracy theory-driven hardened extremist space and the right-wing mainstream continues to shrink.
Despite its many layers of "cynicism" and "trolling," "that rhetoric itself has been platformed," he said. If you're creating content that steers you in a certain direction, it can come in so many different ways. You are responsible for those actions. And you can't hide behind it.
