"Let's Go Brandon": A test case for the post-Trump American right

[Nevilledog]

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👻Phantom👻 Stall
@HamptonStall
Here's my recent on the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme, how it’s been spread, and how it intersects with some cultural worlds I’ve been following for a while. Linked here and short thread below.

“Let’s Go Brandon”: A test case for the post-Trump American right
Subversion, amplification, and commodification of an anti-Biden meme
hamptonstall.medium.com
2:38 PM · Oct 25, 2021

https://hamptonstall.medium.com/lets-go-brandon-a-test-case-for-the-post-trump-american-right-561a025f1cd7

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The MAGA (Flash) Mob Mentality

In late September, anti-vaccine demonstrators entered a food court in Staten Island, simultaneously engaging in a protest against COVID-19 health measures and receiving the shot of endorphins that comes from a community-driven Two Minutes Hate. Naturally, the social political event would shortly feature the crowd changing “U-S-A!” and “Fuck Joe Biden!”. Even grannies, sitting at tables between shouting Gen X blondes, joined in the chants. And, of course, the event led to the sharing of satire as truth as conservative Facebook pages and conservative Instagram meme pages alike began to share misinformation that it was illegal to shout “Fuck Biden”, likely due to it being shared by a few prominent conservative Twitter accounts originating from far-right activist and ACT for America founder Brigitte Gabriel (none of which have yet to be deleted).

The “Let’s Go Brandon!” mix-up provided the perfect avenue by which to move a chant in stadiums, slogan on flags, and cafeteria protest shout instead towards a meme, thus providing new opportunities for continued reproduction, exploitation, and virality. This is the moment where a chant evolves into a cultural artifact, thereby opening new opportunities in its use. It’s worth also mentioning that a similar “Fuck [president]” chant has existed under most modern presidents, including in sports events (for example, a 2019 soccer chant against Trump).”Let’s Go Brandon” is an evolution from this modality, allowing for greater public use and adaptation by eliminating a ‘naughty word’ and for its ability to create an in- and out-group dynamic in its usage as political code.

The “Let’s Go Brandon” meme is subversive and allows for a digital or spoken ‘wink’, as Geertz described in 1973 as coded communication between an actor and their audience. In this case, the ‘twitch’ of saying “Let’s Go Brandon” is received as a ‘wink’ meaning “Fuck Joe Biden” to those in the know. For example, a uniformed police officer from Texas, shared a video on TikTok ending with “oh yeah — Let’s go Brandon”. Or, perhaps more explicitly, another uniformed police officer using the meme to show the bottom of his coffee cup with the message “Fuck JOE Biden”.


The “Let’s Go Brandon” meme has also been extremely successful at creating a more unified anti-Biden search term and codeword. This is perhaps most obviously shown by the cataclysmic rise in searches for “lets go brandon” on google, which themselves surpassed “fuck joe biden” searches shortly after the NASCAR clip of Brandon Brown aired. This rise (charted below) led to searches for the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme to rise to well over 5x the searches for “fuck joe biden” within a matter of weeks.

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[Walleye]

1. They can't even cuss like grown-ups