Who would have expected the AI metaphorical tidal wave to have an influence on the Presidential election? Memes are a breeze to make using artificial intelligence, and while I got heartily sick of my Facebook friends bombarding me with political ones, I have to admit that the technology has the silver lining of taking blunt and biased punditry out of the political cartoonist monopoly and letting some very witty people make satirical political statements.
So far, at least, it appears that conservatives have mastered meming before the Left has, and in this race for President, that is having impact, though how much and how significant is impossible to tell. However, it is clear that the Kamala-Harris-as-a-Communist memes are getting under the skin of some Democrats—one of my Trump-Deranged relatives was complaining about those just yesterday—and so now there are calls for “something to be done” about anti-Harris memes. On MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” NPR’s Maria Hinojosa was very upset about AI images of Harris presented in Maoist uniforms:
Of course, she works for NPR, so its understandable that she’s on the lookout for any free speech that might interfere with the network’s role as a state-sponsored indoctrination organ. A little over a month ago, five House Democrats implored the Federal Election Committee to shut down the Twitter/”X” AI meme-whiz Grok-2 during the campaign:
I give those five Democrats credit for being alert, because the meme assault on Harris has escalated since their complaint. I also thank them for making the meme-makers’ point. Of course wacky-Left California rushed to become the first state to make AI “deep fake” imagery a crime.
Harris isn’t a Communist, of course, but socialists like her always risk that label, and she is the Presidential candidate of a party that has been acting like “1984” is its official policy manual for quite a while now. Harris was selected as a replacement for Joe Biden Soviet-style, no public input or democratic institutions involved, and Biden himself was the first U.S. President whose administration resembled late USSR regimes headed by antediluvian figureheads while faceless bureaucrats actually ran–well, sort of ran—the government. Harris also picked self-described “knucklehead” Tim Walz as her President-in-waiting (Remember, Kamala: Live by the coup, die by the coup!), and he just loves what used to be called “Red China,” home of government censorship, slave labor and U.S.-wrecking viruses: it’s his favorite vacation spot. (Now me, I would rather vacation in Uganda than spend another night in China.) Harris has advocated price controls, a Commie favorite, and Walz wants to make “hate speech”—maybe like this post, if his party had the power to define it—illegal.
Sure, the Communist imagery is hyperbole, exactly like Washington Post propagandist Herb Block drawing Republican members of Congress as cave men when Reagan was President. (They weren’t really cave men…)
Do Axis members like Maria Hinojosa think Americans are so stupid that they believe Harris dresses up as a Chinese Communist in public? Admittedly, they think the public is stupid or they wouldn’t be trying to sell Harris as brilliant, experienced, exciting, and somehow completely without responsibility for the Biden Administration mess. But surely not that stupid.
Moreover, if Harris weren’t trying to win the Presidency with a “Guess what she really will do” campaign, pretending to be moderate only to get elected (as Bernie Sanders explained) and avoiding clear policy positions, it wouldn’t be so easy for her opponents to define her with memes.
Finally, complaints by Democrats about Harris being unfairly characterized as a Communist in memes go right into the Ethics Alarms Ethics Estoppel Hall of Fame. This is a party that has been calling Donald Trump a Nazi and the equivalent of Hitler for years.
But no one who isn’t Trump Deranged believes that, so those memes come across as just silly and hysterical. Trump was already President for four years, and he didn’t even try to put his political adversaries in prison.
Ethics Alarms 
I have two words for the Democrats:
Kathy. Griffin.
It isn’t unfair to use “Communism” and “Kamala Harris” in the same sentence. Some of her policy ideas appear to be straight from the communist playbook.
President Trump is not eugenicist, he’s not a racist, and he doesn’t desire the eradication of whole people groups that don’t fit his idea of a master race. He does not instigate war to gain living space, then take the people living in those spaces, gas them, and cook them in ovens. Yet he is constantly characterized as the dictator who was (and did) those things, so it’s not surprising that, like Hitler, people are trying to kill Donald Trump.
Memes about Kamala Harris are not unfair. They are “balance”, and in some instances, they are less “misinformative” than what we are told by the media.
Great post. The only thing I’d disagree about is the assertion that Harris is not a Communist. I’d say she is. Every bit as much as Bernie Sanders. Her father is a famous Marxist economist at Stanford. Pete Buttigieg’s father was a famous Communist historian at, of all places, Notre Dame. As is Bernie, these people are Red Diaper Babies. They want single party rule. They want to nationalize the economy. They want to redistribute wealth. They want a single government to rule the entire world. Remember “We shall bury you?”
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. “Socialist” is mask Commies wear.
Well, that isn’t necessarily true. The only 2 forms of Socialist government I have been able to find are Communist and Fascist. With her and the Democratic Party’s emphasis on using corporations to suppress speech and behavior that don’t toe the party line, I think there is a good argument to be made that they are Corporatist (Fascist).
That’s an interesting analysis, Michael. The left are famous for projecting their behavior onto the GOP. There’s been a lot of discussion about corporations actually being in favor of what the Dems are doing. So maybe this is a fascist movement. But my guess is at some point the lefties will turn on the corporatist elites and stop treating them like the useful idiots they are. They’ll jail the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Balmer on some trumped-up charges. They’ll send the venture capitalists off to reeducation camps and the politicians will move into their homes and party on their yachts in Monaco. These people are ruthless.
But again, isn’t that how you expect a Fascist regime to evolve?
Memes are supposed to be funny/witty/pithy. The Left does not have a sense of humor.
The Left has mastered highjacking words and with ubiquitous repetion dictionaries alter the definitions to suit the Left’s new meaning.
When the Right is pushing policies that are merely commong sense, meme making to mock such policies is difficult at best.
The left can’t have a sense of humor because they have an illogical ideology. There is no way to rationally know if you are allowed to laugh at something. Humor doesn’t work if everyone has to look around to see if they are allowed to laugh at it. On the left, if you make a meme, you run the risk that you will offend someone. You can’t know before you post it if that will happen, however, So every meme risks you getting cancelled. The only ‘memes’ that are safe are ones that post walls of text that parrot the current ideology.
This reminds me of as much of a Doris Lessing book as I could stomach reading. The Commies have these little cells that are dominated by a guy. Everything a member of the cell thinks or does or says has to be acceptable to the guy in charge. Although there’s the basic Marxist catechism, the guy in charge’s interpretation rules the roost. And his interpretation can change on a dime. It’s about power. It keeps the peons on their toes and afraid and the guy in power in power. (Until someone else knocks him off.)
Microsoft Image Creator won’t allow using “Kamala Harris” or “eating a cat” to generate an image. It will allow things like this (stealing form your post a few days ago).
I think you have to have X premium to use Grok2.