“Make America Great Again”, “America #1”, “Build the Wall and Crime will Fall” – these are all phrases that Donald Trump deployed to win votes in his political campaigns. Even those who have little sympathy for the departing American president have often engaged in conversations that are similar in tone: “I don’t like him but I have to admit, he is very good at creating these catchphrases that everyone remembers”. Indeed, who can recall Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan or even that of Joe Biden? A similar example constitutes the Brexit referendum, which was all under the motto “Take back control”, whereas the Remain camp fundamentally lacked a distinct slogan. This article seeks to illustrate why the ideas of populist leaders were able to spread so effectively in the hearts and minds of millions and will continue to do so unless opposing political forces pay closer attention to the factors that influence the viral spread of culture.
In fact, the study of political campaigns has paid comparatively little attention to what determines whether or not a particular slogan becomes popular in the first place – beyond the particular political and social circumstances in which it is created. As such, a novel and deep understanding can be gained if the campaign mottos are not merely conceptualised as political slogans, but as viral memes. Today, memes are often associated with funny image creations on the internet, yet the term is originally rooted in the field of evolutionary anthropology (memetics). In short, the term meme describes a unit of condensed ideas which spreads culture through imitation. To date, research on memes has been largely confined to the fields of anthropology and popular culture, and even in these fields it has received comparatively little attention. Moreover, the use of memes as tools for political campaigning is largely unexplored even though it provides a powerful analytical prism.
Donald Trump, the Brexiteers and other populist movements were able to change the political landscape in the US and in Europe largely because of their effective employment of memetic techniques. This gives reason for concern, however, as the political ideas such groups propagate are often marked by intolerance, xenophobia and autocratic tendencies in an effort to achieve short-term political success. The creation of much-needed policies with long-term positive effects is thus at risk and, more importantly, the functioning of democratic systems themselves could be at stake. To think that Donald Trump’s election defeat has banished this danger would clearly be short-sighted. In order to protect long-fought and established freedoms, democratic minds need to be able to produce and spread sustainable ideas more effectively in today’s world. The use of memetic techniques could become crucial in the implementation of policies that will pay off over time, for example in the long-term struggle for environmental protection. Hence, we should brush the dust off traditional meme theory and modify it so that it can be applied to modern-day political campaigning in the age of digital transformation. Yet before addressing how populists have successfully mastered communication through memes and how such efforts can be countered, central memetic concepts shall first be established.
Memetic Evolution
The term ‘meme’ was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’ (1976). Dawkins argued that the spread of culture, in essence “the transfer of ideas and behaviours from mind to mind”, is governed by a similar logic as genetic evolution. Memes, just like their biological counterpart (genes), replicate via human beings who copy, refine, modify or even combine them with other ideas to create new memes. In this way, memes can change over time in myriad ways. In fact, it is vital for memes to adapt as they are exposed to selective pressure in a Darwinist sense – survival of the fittest. Memes are therefore “cultural units with a mimicked theme” that evolve through natural selection. One of their central characteristics is that they are reductive: Memes condense a large number of ideas and notions into small units that can easily be spread. Today, these replication and selection processes happen largely (but not exclusively) via online social media networks. Consequently, in order to thwart populist efforts, it is necessary to understand, first, what it means to be successful in this environment and second, how memes can be created that effectively propagate sustainable ideas.
As a baseline, memetic success is achieved when ideas spread and evolve in the minds of the people and thereby manage not to become extinct. In most simple terms they can be described as a “virus of the mind”. The question of how successful memes are constructed is in many ways the Gretchen Question of our times. Admittedly, the socio-economic situation, chance as well as other uncontrollable external factors always play a role in determining a meme’s success. However, the seeming contingency of memetic success can be reduced substantially when taking into account the underlying laws that govern the cultural production of ideas. A suchlike approach may considerably increase the predictability of success of a given political campaign.
Long-Term Memetic Success
The first memetic theorists in the 1980s established three criteria memes have to fulfil in order to spread and survive, similar to a gene’s struggle for survival. While different scholars have now expanded this set of criteria, the original concepts outlined by Dawkins (1976) are sufficient to explain memetic success in political campaigns. Yet, they have to be altered and adapted to the contemporary communicative environment of the internet. First and foremost, memes need to display fidelity, meaning they must be easily recognisable. Especially on the internet, time is crucial. Based on Facebook data, a meme’s core idea has to be recognisable by the target audience within less than 2.5 seconds. It is thus vital for a meme to be intertextual, i.e. to refer to other known popular texts in order to facilitate recognition. Entirely new creations without obvious links to existing content possess less potential to stimulate audio-visual engagement online. The second property a meme needs to have is fecundity – it must be easily replicable. In a multi-platform world, this means that meme transfer to different online platforms must be possible and require little technological know-how. Finally, memetic success depends on longevity, meaning how long a meme can survive and evolve. A meme whose core idea is too tied to a specific historical or cultural context will eventually die out. Specifically with regard to online memes, it is beneficial to already think of spin-offs when advocating sustainable ideas aimed to go viral.
The advent of the internet constituted a shift in the cultural production of memes and required the establishment of new parameters. At least since the introduction of Web 2.0, the Internet is characterised by two important factors, namely visuality and interactivity. A study by AOL/Nielsen in 2012 showed that 27 million pieces of content were exchanged every day; in 2019, 3.2 billion images alone were exchanged daily. This staggering figure shows that our reality is becoming absorbed in images, pictures and memes which are `prosumed´ by people around the world. In such a muddle of images, how can we get people not only to consume a meme, but to align themselves with its idea and spread it?
As a general rule, behaviour that speaks to the emotions receives more attention than predominately cognitive stimuli. Here, it might be possible to learn from babies – arguably the best human attention seekers. When a child feels it does not get enough attention from its primary caretakers, it often seeks to illicit emotions by crying or misbehaving. Likewise, on the internet, it is vital to be affective in order to be effective. Successful memes therefore have to stimulate emotional excitation, e.g., through humour, as Knobel & Lankshear (2007) highlight in their comprehensive study of internet memes.
Secondly, the internet fosters a heightened sense of individualism – a sort of ‘me, myself and I’ dynamic which makes people want to associate themselves with content that reflects positively on them. There is even an evolutionary incentive for this kind of self-broadcasting. Susan Blackmore (2000) argues that just as humans are sexually stimulated by physical features that relate to good genes, there is also a sense of attraction coming from potent meme producers. Hence, a good online meme has to allow consumers to inject themselves into the meme, so that they can appropriate it and thereby boost their social status. This kind of personalisation goes beyond self-identification and can be termed memetic appropriation.
Populist Success Explained Memetically
Donald Trump’s meme “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) possesses all of the abovementioned qualities. Not only because of its simple wording, but also due to the fact that the slogan had already turned into a meme after it was first created in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election campaign. It had proven its longevity throughout its 40-year history and even Bill Clinton made use of it during his presidential campaign in 1992. In that sense, the motto is easily recognisable by most Americans and thus possessed fidelity and intertextuality. The meme’s core strength, moreover, comes from its potential to be modified and applied to different contexts. Altering the meme only requires a play with the words “great” and “America”. By now, there are a number of versions making sports teams, celebrities, companies (…) great (date, rake etc.) again. Most importantly though, the meme is emotionally appealing and easy to appropriate. It plays on people’s anti-establishment sentiments, their frustration with the political class and evokes a sense of a positive future, albeit never defined or elaborated. People had an interest in associating themselves with that sense of social uprising and could easily do so, for instance by dressing in ‘MAGA’ merchandise or by venting their fury under the official hashtag #MAGA, in anticipation of receiving confirmation from likeminded people. In this sense, the meme did not only seduce people with an easy way of getting gratification and self-confirmation, but it also allowed users to embellish their own profiles with a heroic sense of rebellionism. Based on the previous analysis, MAGA displays a high level of memetic fitness and it is thus no surprise that it outperformed competing mottos, such as “Transition to Greatness”, which Trump employed in May 2020 but later dropped. From a memetic point of view, Trump’s 2020 slogan “Keep America Great!” is yet another mutation of the successful MAGA meme. While it did not lead to an electoral victory, it allowed the president to win the second highest popular vote in American history. This also shows that memetic success – fortunately – does not equal political success. Notwithstanding, Trump’s memes are here to stay and a final evaluation of their success has to wait at least until 2024 – when a modified version of Trumpism could return to hack the American electorate.
Using Memes to Build Capital for Purpose
In order to prevent cultural patterns from changing for the worse, it is necessary to engage in the memetic struggle more effectively. But how? First, leaders of today and tomorrow must learn to take the “meme’s-eye-view” when constructing political campaigns. In a world dominated by images, which Clifford Geertz already in the 1960s referred to as “the society of the spectacle”, the goal must be to effectively reduce complex issues of our time into comprehensible units that can be easily transmitted, but without distorting truths. It is evident that simplifications of reality will be part of the political life more than ever in a globalised, interwoven world. The consequence, however, does not have to be deceptive policy debates. Emmanuel Macron’s “La République en Marche” may be an example of a campaign which allowed people to emotionally align themselves and thereby beat populists on their home ground without crossing the line into populism as well. Mottos, such as “Unity in Diversity” employed by the EU were arguably dead long before they were born, as they did not fulfil several vital memetic criteria.
Similarly, Joe Biden’s campaign shows a much lower level of memetic fitness than that of Donald Trump. In part this is because he did not employ one single repetitive slogan that would naturally align voters with his political vision. The variety of slogans his team employed, such as “battle for the soul of the nation” or “build back better than ever” are neither short, nor easy to replicate. If any the idea of “build back better” could be considered a mutation of Donald Trump’s nostalgic notion of MAGA. As such Biden’s effort mimics Trump’s rhetoric but it doesn’t subvert the Republican’s narrative, nor does it provide a strong competing meme.
In some ways, this can be seen as a lost opportunity, because memes can be powerful tools to subvert the ideas of political opponents. As such, members of civil society have used memes to expose populists’ simplistic worldviews and their discriminatory assumptions. In response to the Trump administration’s anti-LGBT policies, for instance, the initiative “Make America Gay Again” was called to life and received widespread support. Others posted the Trump slogan in Russian to refer to his ties with Putin, and John Oliver initiated a ‘#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain’ campaign, parodying the Trump rhetoric.
Nevertheless, Trump seems to have been quite resistant to such efforts overall. This may also be due to the fact that he was careful not to create memes in instances where they could be exploited to reinforce negative perceptions. In the context of the impeachment debate, for example, the New York Times found that Trump’s impeachment process will not be historically defined by memorable catchphrases. Unlike for instance Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman”, Trump’s impeachment trial does not display strong memetic qualities, apart from his constant reference to “fake news”. To what extent this is a result of a deliberate strategy on Trump’s side or a failure of the democratic party to make use of the situation for their purposes is hard to tell. In any case, memes can be a very effective tool to expose an opponent’s strategy. This, however, also raises ethical questions that need to be addressed.
In fact, President Trump’s “fake news” meme is an example of a counterstrategy that is morally problematic. Instead of engaging in a constructive dialogue by exposing the shortcomings of the opponent’s political agenda, Trump refers to fake news (and alternative fact) as a way of delegitimising the opponent. The aim is to discredit the actor who makes the statement by evoking a sense of hidden agenda of the established political class for selfish purposes. The goal is thus not to engage with the argument but to bypass deliberative channels by triggering an emotional reaction. Such a use of memetic techniques undermines principles of democratic deliberation. They are particularly dangerous because they can turn constructive political competition into a deceptive battle without rules.
To conclude, memetic theory provides real added-value to policy-makers, NGOs and businesses alike which seek to gain attention and align people with sustainable ideas in the long term. With that said, the protection of democratic institutions and the conservation of an environment worth living in, heavily depend on our ability to master memetic techniques in an effort to promote sustainable ideas that can build political capital for purpose. Nevertheless, due to the reductive tendency of memetics, any strategy to create and disseminate memes must always be accompanied by a deep reflection of the truths communicated in order to avoid public disinformation of a populist nature. Moreover, as a kind of modern folklore, memes are not meant to circumvent deliberative democratic channels, but to complement them in a critical, constructive and playful way.
John Helferich is a Global Editor with the Oxford Political Review. He is a doctoral candidate in International Relations at the St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His research focuses on security and defence cooperation in the European Union.