THE CRUELTY IS THE POST

The government memes designed to mainstream sadopopulism

- ANNA MERLAN

LAST MARCH, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a woman they accused of drug trafficking and entering the country illegally.

As she stood in a parking lot, they photographed her, weeping, eyes half-closed in anguish, her arms cuffed behind her back. And then—in a cruel innovation specific to the Trump administration—the White House’s official X account used an AI tool to make a cartoon illustration of her crying and shackled, in the style of the beloved Japanese animators at Studio Ghibli. The tweet was viewed 51 million times within a day, while garnering 133,000 likes and a mix of outraged and delighted reactions. Many X users posted positive responses declaring that the image was exactly what they had voted for.

Since then, the jokes, memes, and AI-generated images shared by the Trump administration have only gotten worse, and the fascist dog whistles and gloating embedded within them more blatant. In August, Border Patrol posted a hype video of its agents trawling the desert with the soundtrack of an overtly antisemitic clip from Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us.” Jackson apologized and reworked the song not long after its 1995 release, but Border Patrol shared the original, blaring “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me, kick me, kike me.”