(MEME LIBRARY) A Free Archive of the Very Best Pro-Democracy Election Memes

More than any U.S. election since 1860, the November 8th election is one in which public perception matters. As public perception is tied to mass media, memes can matter. This meme bank explores that.

Oct 31, 2022

{Note: All meme images have a number beneath them, so you can direct other social media users to the images you believe are most effective and keep a tally yourself of which you like to use. To use a meme, either retweet any Twitter video/GIF here or right-click to download images. Most important of all, make sure you and everyone you know votes on November 8!}

Introduction

Elections don’t hinge on memes. But they can influence public perception of how an election is unfolding—and that, in turn, can alter the appetite voters have for one side of a ballot battle or another.

Memes can even—at the margins—change undecided voters’ hearts and minds.

At this point in the 2022 national election cycle, the Republican Party has done a great job of spreading five key lies about the choice now before American voters:

The GOP says it has a plan to aid the economy, but it does not.
The GOP says our democracy is under threat from Democrats, but it is under threat from the Republicans whose election lies sparked a violent insurrection.
The GOP says crime is rising because of Joe Biden, but crime has been rising for seven years now—including during the Trump presidency.
The GOP says Trump won the 2022 presidential election, but he lost by seven million votes in the most secure election in American history.
The GOP says that it will govern responsibly, but privately leading Republicans confess that the only reason they want power is to seek vengeance against their enemies.

Polling suggests that Republicans have made great strides in battleground states by spreading not just an irrational fear of crime but misattributed blame over rising crime, positioning Democrats as supporting policies they do not—like the defund-the-police mantra spread only by the most radical 1% of Democrats, even as a near-majority of Republicans say secession should be on the table, a civil war is coming, and political violence is acceptable.

The result of Republican lies is that they have turned what is manifestly a “democracy election”—an election in which the continued existence of a democracy is at stake—into an “economy election”, in which Republicans get votes by pretending to care about aiding the already-improving U.S. economy when in fact the collapse of our democracy would damage our economy more than anything that either party could ever do with respect to economic policy. Worse still, there is significant evidence suggesting that the Republican Party wants the U.S. economy to continue to struggle, as it believes a middling American economy improves their odds in the 2024 election they hope would-be autocrat Donald Trump will win.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the Republicans are backing the “independent state legislature” doctrine encapsulated by the Moore v. Harper case now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court; if Republicans win that case, the 2024 presidential election will be decided by GOP-led state legislatures—not voters—which is what the Republican Party ultimately wants: for Americans voters to become obsolete.

In short, the Republican Party has decided it is done with voters. Which is one of many reasons that voters should not make clear that they are done with the GOP.

With this in mind, Proof has built this archive of the best pro-democracy memes.

Is this meme library or meme bank merely a lark? Absolutely not. The idea here is that these memes are very powerful pro-democracy, anti-GOP messaging which, taken in sum, can transform public perception by correctly positioning the 2022 national election as a “democracy election.”

It is never a bad thing—if you love freedom and want the very best for America—to spread pro-democracy memes on social media. So hopefully Proof readers will feel moved to use the memes catalogued below often and enthusiastically. These memes can be particularly effective right now, in the week before the November 8th election.

Needless to say, this meme library does not intend to elevate memes over get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts and on-the-ground organizing. But given that we live in the digital age, and given how effective an illegal cyberwar waged on the United States—waged by the Republican Party’s allies in Russia—was at putting Donald Trump in power the first time, it would be foolish for pro-democracy forces not to wage a legal campaign of meme warfare to ensure that Trump and his lying, sycophantic, election-denying allies remain out of power in D.C.

How Proof Comes to the Idea of Meme Warfare

As many Proof readers know, I have taught digital culture, including memes, at both University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of New Hampshire, in addition to for years authoring an IndieWire column (“Metamericana”) that dealt in part with memes. I have also written three national bestsellers that deal significantly with the recent history of Russia and Ukraine—Proof of Collusion (Simon & Schuster, 2018); Proof of Conspiracy (Macmillan, 2019); and Proof of Corruption (Macmillan, 2020)—which includes significant consideration and analysis of how Russia won a cyberwar against America. So all in all I’ve also spent a great deal of time thinking, writing, and teaching about a sometimes-controversial emerging concept known as “meme magic”.

Meme magic is simply the idea that memes have sufficient authority, influence, and currency in digital culture that they can indirectly effectuate changes in “meatspace” and even—this being the controversial part—mainstream and reify notions that are at present just ideational, theoretical, or even fantastical. As with anything, meme magic can be used responsibly or abused; it can be instrumentalized by the unscrupulous or the just. There can be no doubt that the cause of American democracy is a just one (howsoever there will be some malfeasance in any democracy) and that has certainly ever been the position of Proof.

All of this is to say that the archive below has been carefully curated by a journalist and professor and cultural theorist with substantial experience with memes. While many of the memes below are necessarily NSFW, no memes will appear here that gratuitously celebrate specific instances of bloodshed, make light of the horrors of violence, or seek dehumanize (in the literal sense of the term) a person or group of people.

The Pro-Democracy Election Meme Library

Part I: Images
- Use: right-click on these to download them, then post them anywhere on social media.
Part II: GIFs
- Use: click on these to open the tweet in question, which can then be retweeted.

Feel free to share any of the memes below wherever you are able to share them. And keep in mind that these memes will always be more effective when used alongside trending hashtags and topics.