{"id":96768,"date":"2025-07-31T11:30:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T15:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=96768"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:36:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:36:57","slug":"memes-shape-politics-feelings","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/memes-shape-politics-feelings\/","title":{"rendered":"From ‘God Emperor Trump’ to ‘St. Luigi,’ Memes Power the Politics of Feeling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n From 'God Emperor Trump' to 'St. Luigi,' Memes Power the Politics of Feeling\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

This article is republished<\/a> from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. All photos provided by The Conversation<\/a> from various sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuart J. Murray<\/a> is a professor of rhetoric and ethics at Carleton University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why do images of Donald Trump as a galactic emperor or Luigi Mangione<\/a> as a Catholic saint<\/a> resonate so deeply with some people? Memes don’t just entertain \u2014 they shape how we identify with power, grievance and justice in the digital age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A meme is a decontextualized video or image \u2014 often captioned \u2014 that circulates an idea, behaviour or style, primarily through social media. As they spread, memes are adapted, remixed and transformed, helping to solidify the communities around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump, the meme pope<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Days after Pope Francis’s death in April 2025, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself in papal regalia on Truth Social. The White House’s official X account then shared it, amplifying its reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Trump quickly dismissed it<\/a> as a joke, but the image lingered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later, another emerged: Trump as galactic emperor<\/a>, blending Star Wars<\/em> aesthetics with the visual rhetoric of Warhammer 40,000<\/em>, a popular dystopian sci-fi franchise featuring authoritarian rulers, imperial armies and endless war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump memes like these once circulated semi-ironically in social media subcultures like Reddit and 4chan under the banner “God Emperor Trump<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what might previously have seemed like absurdist cosplay now carries the symbolic weight of executive power, blending religious and imperial imagery to project Trump as a mythical figure, not just a politician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In-jokes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As I’ve argued in an article on MAGA and empathy<\/a>, these memes draw on cultural codes not to parody power but to usurp it as instruments of official political communication<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact-checking can’t stop them. We know<\/em> they are factually untrue, but they feel<\/em> true and consolidate a shared sentiment among Trump’s base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meme is not a joke<\/a> \u2014 it’s an in-joke<\/a> only the in-group understands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that’s the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A meme is an accelerant, delivering compressed emotional payloads, short-circuiting debate and reinforcing people’s political identifications. Propelled by algorithms and designed to go viral, memes solicit immediate responses \u2014 outrage, loyalty, disgust, amusement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memes don’t ask what’s true or what’s just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, they curate \u2014 and encode \u2014 emotional alignment, replacing liberalism’s democratic ideal of reasoned public discourse with viral attachment: grievance recoded as identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elon Musk and weaponizing empathy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On Feb. 20, 2025, days after Trump appointed Elon Musk to head his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Tesla founder appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative activists and officials from across the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the conference, Musk brandished a chainsaw, declaring: “I have become the meme!<\/a>.” An image of him holding the chainsaw later actually became a meme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image projects libertarian efficiency and masculine bravado, but it more than just mocks bureaucracy \u2014 it glorifies cutting ties to domestic, global and humanitarian responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Far from being merely a meme, it advances a policy of neglect that intentionally lets others die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts estimate that DOGE’s purge of USAID<\/a> could result in 14 million preventable deaths<\/a> over the next five years, disproportionately affecting marginalized populations whose historical exploitation helped generate the wealth now wielded as power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Individuals vs. the collective<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But we are not meant to feel empathy. In early 2025<\/a>, Musk called empathy “the fundamental weakness of western civilization,” claiming it is “weaponized by the left.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Musk doesn’t reject empathy entirely \u2014 only empathy for individuals, which he said risks “civilizational suicide.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Musk believes we must have empathy for “civilization as a whole.” Such rhetoric \u2014 sacrificing individuals for the collective \u2014 recalls a chilling Nazi-era slogan: Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles<\/em> (“You are nothing, your people are everything”). Musk has also drawn criticism for making public Nazi salutes<\/a> and ethno-nationalist statements advocating for white people<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mangione, the meme martyr<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If Trump and Musk memes stage fantasies of absolute power, Mangione memes reply with fantasies of redemptive rupture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Mangione has been lionized in memes<\/a> that champion vulnerability and social justice, opposing the billionaire class \u2014 figures like Trump and Musk \u2014 who put profits over people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These memes appear to oppose the MAGA meme machine, encoding class struggle as quiet defiance and anti-authoritarianism. Unlike Musk’s chainsaw-wielding bravado, which seems to mask a fragile ego, Mangione memes project a humble, rebellious heartthrob<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, like Trump and Musk, Mangione has become a brand. His face adorns T-shirts and “St. Luigi” prayer candles<\/a>, capitalizing on the popular meme that emerged soon after his arrest. This commodification mirrors right-wing meme economies, even if the message differs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emotional saturation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Mangione memes have helped raise over $1.2 million for his legal defence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They don’t just reflect feeling \u2014 they organize it, channelling it into cultural, political and literal currency, including a Luigi crypto coin<\/a> ($LUIGI) and a musical<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These memes share MAGA meme tactics: relentless repetition and emotional saturation. Instead of encouraging thoughtful debate, they rally communities around shared grievances, acts of defiance and collective faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling our way through the feed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

From MAGA to Mangione, meme-mythologies often function as rationalizations of violence \u2014 whether framed as righteous, purifying or revolutionary. But what unites Trump’s papal cosplay, Musk’s chainsaw and Mangione’s martyrdom isn’t their message but their form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether cloaked in MAGA nostalgia or social justice sentiments, memes that appear to resist power often reproduce the structures that made that power so intoxicating in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve seen how official White House and Department of Homeland Security social media memes have become increasingly cruel, sinister<\/a>, polarizing and even radicalizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, some liberals on the left continue to promote what is known as the “marketplace of ideas<\/a>” \u2014 the belief that truth will prevail if all ideas are allowed to circulate freely. But reason doesn’t always triumph over power. And memes aren’t just ideas: they’re technologies that bypass deliberation to shape our feelings, identities and ways of communicating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consumed by media<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We no longer “consume” media: we’re a function of the algorithms<\/a> and AI<\/a> powering today’s platforms. Like memes, AI tools like large language models can churn out plausible content that is nonetheless hateful, divisive and patently untrue<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk’s “I have become the meme” therefore reveals a paradox: he claims to master the meme, but no one can control its circulation or uptake. Trump and Mangione, too, are less individuals than avatars \u2014 produced by a digital culture that pre-shapes our perceptions of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The violence, however, is very real. If one violent act doesn’t justify counter-violence, it nonetheless structures and occasions it. Each side claims it is just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memes don’t ask: can we intentionally let others die and still be just? Answering this question is nearly impossible in a meme world. The answer will be a meme. And it will be a joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nCarleton Newsroom<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do images of Donald Trump as a galactic emperor or Luigi Mangione as a Catholic saint resonate so deeply with some people? Memes don\u2019t just entertain \u2014 they shape how we identify with power, grievance and justice in the digital age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":96781,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[1623],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-96768","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-expert-perspectives"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/96768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/96768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99188,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/96768\/revisions\/99188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=96768"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=96768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}