{"pk":1620,"title":"Limbless Warriors and Foaming Liberals: The Allure of Post-Heroism in Far-Right Memes","subtitle":null,"abstract":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;\">In light of the so-called Great Meme War, a meme-based propaganda campaign waged in favor of Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy, this article identifies a type of disembodied far-right “meme warrior” that ironically denies longings for heroism. This ambivalent stance toward heroic masculine ideals, which characterizes the meme warriors’ (self-)portraits, stands in stark contrast to more serious traditional far-right heroic imaginaries. This phenomenon is discussed in relation to the notion of the post-heroic, a concept used in military studies to describe the shrinking willingness and (perceived) need to sacrifice one’s life in combat. The second part of the article explores the construction of a ludic collective heroism in the alt-right’s responses to Shia LaBeouf’s “He Will Not Divide Us” (HWNDU) project, which was conceived as a participatory video work in public space inviting people to repeat those words while gazing into a camera. The article employs a psychoanalytic depth-hermeneutic method; it asks how “post-heroic” identities created collectively online by the far right might be found alluring on a wider scale. </p>","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Meme War"},{"word":"meme warrior"},{"word":"alt-right"},{"word":"Post-Heroism"},{"word":"Masculinity"},{"word":"far-right irony"},{"word":"Donald Trump"}],"section":"Research Article","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4051d761","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Johanna","middle_name":"Maj","last_name":"Schmidt","name_suffix":"","institution":"Else-Frenkel-Brunswik-Institute for Democracy Research in Saxony","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2023-08-14T14:24:15.676000Z","date_accepted":"2025-01-18T22:33:12.363000Z","date_published":"2025-01-18T22:38:59.039000Z","render_galley":{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jrws/article/1620/galley/31342/download/"},"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jrws/article/1620/galley/31342/download/"}]}