What the Bernie Memes Mean for Political Engagement

Memes are the surplus of culture. Online memes exist in a state of constant creation, flowing outward from communities, pages, accounts, and memelords, ready to be amplified by influencers, referenced by your family, or shared by your friends. However, political memes act more like the exhaust from a factory — more appear when the systems are working harder.

Four years ago, Trump’s rise to prominence was amplified by a simple meme message, a piece of nostalgic reductionism to be worn as headwear or printed on stickers. The meme was so efficient, it was adapted directly into conservative culture and deployed in dozens of digital arenas. Like an airborne toxic event, the memes in support of Trump spread shamelessly, filling many spaces of online life. In 2016, memes played primary role in electing Donald Trump — no other Republican candidate had an online community as creatively robust as Trump’s.

Trump’s fandom has relied on the vagary of his meme slogan, applying the dogwhistle nostalgia to whatever ends their community felt it would fit. However, the vague, apply-to-whatever method was doomed by time. The longer Trump is in office, the less the meme battles need to be fought. To add to that, nostalgia exists like the memory of a flavor, only accessible in the fictional realism of the mind. Nostalgia has no material value in the present and therefore, without a longitudinal plan, it mutates (see any number of conspiracy theories and grifts). As a result, over the course of the last several years…