One of many coin collector’s most coveted treasures is an Historic Roman denarius minted round 45 BCE, that includes a laurel-wreathed profile of the statesman Julius Caesar. The four-gram coin comprises greater than 90% silver, however treasured metals aren’t what make the denarii invaluable. Neither is it the rarity of mint situation examples that drives the worth of the coin to upwards of $1,000. Fairly, it’s the historic significance: The denarius is the primary coin that commemorated a residing Roman chief, minted because the republic slid into empire. Earlier than Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he emblazoned his visage on the very cash that Romans carried of their purses, a potent reminder in what was ostensibly nonetheless a republic of the place all energy originated and terminated. Classicist Mary Beard explains how Caesar was a tyrant in love together with his personal picture, writing in Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Historic Roman World (2023) that “he set about flooding the city and wider world with portraits, in numbers never seen before: hundreds, if not thousands were planned.” Within the final days of regulation’s rule, the Roman historian Suetonius reported {that a} statue of the statesman was graffitied with the easy statement that “Caesar is our king today.” Greater than two millennia later, within the American republic that has lengthy imagined itself as a brand new Rome, we would commiserate with that nameless vandal.
Copy of an Historic Roman denarius with a portrait of Julius Caesar (undated) (photograph by Sussex Archaeological Society, Laura Burnett; photograph public area through Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0; edit Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
Drafts for a potential $1 Trump coin (publish by Steve Visitor through X, screenshot Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
Trump has most definitely by no means heard of the Caesar denarii, and certain is aware of little of the aspiring emperor’s political beliefs. But lots of the creepy oddballs and second-rate teachers who populate the ranks of think-tanks, offering impetus for the persevering with authoritarian creep (extra of a dash today), are extra intimately acquainted. Michael Anton, director of Coverage Planning for the Trump administration, Fellow in American Politics on the right-wing Claremont Institute, and secret clothes-horse, has admiringly pined for “a form of one-man rule” in his 2020 ebook The Stakes: America on the Level of No Return, a system he phrases “Red Caesarism.” Little that’s stunning or new right here. In terms of authoritarianism, Beard writes that Caesar was “cast in this founding role,” in order that his correct title not solely grew to become the Roman title for an emperor, but additionally trickled by historical past within the titles for the rulers of different nations as nicely, from the “Kaisar” to the “Czar.”
Past monarchism, Roman aesthetics had been appropriated wholesale by Twentieth-century (and now Twenty first-century) fascists as nicely, from Benito Mussolini’s neoclassical-inspired Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana to the imperial eagle utilized by the Nazis. In any case, the very phrase “fascism” is derived from the Roman fasces, an emblem designating energy composed of an axe surrounded by a bundle of sticks. But when Trump’s tin-pot dictator act follows the identical Caesar-fantasy script as previous authoritarians, there’s a new which means to his proposed coin as nicely. Flip the Trump greenback over, and what you’ll see is one other picture of the president (acceptable that they’ve steered minting a cheater’s trick coin). This one is an motion shot of the then-candidate following the tried assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, when he was on the marketing campaign path, his tie akimbo and his bouffant tussled, a tiny fist held aloft and the phrases “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” changing the motto of liberty. Maybe this evokes the standard visible logic of fascism, however it’s additionally the iconography of a brand new type — the meme.
A current meme President Trump posted declaring the Democrats “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN” (@realDonaldTrump through Reality Social, screenshot Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
Meme logic is much less a departure from conventional fascist aesthetics than its logical conclusion. Whereas Walter Benjamin argues that “Mankind in the time of Homer” was “a spectacle for the Olympian gods,” it has now “become one for itself.” And so fascist discourse, which relies within the aestheticization of politics, frequently updates itself to the medium of a given age. Simply as almost a century in the past fascists deployed radio and movie, so do their ideological descendants use memes, social media, and above all, synthetic intelligence. The place Mussolini broadcast Ezra Pound and Adolf Hitler championed the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, Trump depends on the impersonal energy of the algorithm. Because the now positively archaic days of bot farms and Cambridge Analytica, Trump has graduated to extra subtle digital manipulation predicated on the surreal nightmare logic of AI slop. Photos of cruelty proliferate, such because the official White Home X feed sharing a Studio Ghibli-style cartoon depicting the arrest of a crying immigrant; a current meme that declared the Democrats “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN”; or the AI-generated video promulgating the conspiracy idea that there are so-called “med-beds” able to reversing sickness — a type of sadism seemingly directed to his personal supporters in that it makes guarantees to those that are determined and imagine his lies.
A Studio Ghibli-style AI-generated picture of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, a girl arrested by ICE, tweeted out by the official White Home account (@WhiteHouse through X; screenshot Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, who as soon as championed the countercultural prospects of the web, writes in his Substack that, true to the unique analogy of memes being a virus, they serve to “bypass the neocortex — the thinking, feeling part of the brain — and go straight to the more primal brain stem beneath.” That’s equally the intent for many who love Trump and people of us who hate him. The White Home sharing AI slop of Workplace of Administration and Price range Director Russell Vought because the Grim Reaper concentrating on cartoon infants in sombreros — simply take into consideration that for a second — each titillates and terrifies. That this materials will be produced virtually instantaneously by an unthinking program and pushed to granularly outlined populations makes it stronger than something previous authoritarians might have dreamt of. AI slop demonstrates not simply the technological flexibility of Trump’s fascist aesthetics — it’s the final instance of it, the end result of the hateful dream of eliminating the human completely.
A nadir of Trump’s memes, up to now, was his promulgation of an AI slop video of himself as a fighter pilot in a king’s crown who, regardless of incorrectly carrying his oxygen masks, is ready to dump tons of noxious, brown liquid shit from his aircraft as he flies above a bunch of No Kings protestors in Occasions Sq.. Stunning as it might be to check an American president fantasizing not nearly flinging excrement at Americans exercising their First Modification rights, but additionally doing it with a weapon of struggle, nothing about Trump’s juvenile video ought to truly be stunning contemplating his character. Additionally unsurprising is the craven boot-licking by Republican politicians that makes Trump’s reign attainable — see, for example, Speaker of the Home Mike Johnson (an evangelical Christian) claiming that the video was merely “using satire to make a point.”
A now-deleted publish by President Donald Trump of an AI-generated video selling the conspiracy idea that there are so-called “med-beds” able to reversing sickness (@realDonaldTrump through Reality Social, screenshot Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
This administration has lengthy exemplified the usage of media and mediums which have a juvenile forged to them; their rhetoric was cast in kinds like shock jock discuss radio and stand-up, and now memes and AI. The macho profanity may be very a lot a function. In Black Tablet: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Web Come to Life, Poison Society and Seize American Politics (2024), journalist Elle Reeve argues that the alt-right championed a perception that “any joke was permitted,” at the same time as such noxiousness reworked them into mainly a “herd of brain-washed swastika-posting sheep.” Herein is the issue with Johnson’s protection of Trump’s video — what’s it presupposed to satirize? The declare itself is unnecessary. Comprehensibility and consistency have by no means been virtues of the MAGA motion, however it’s notable how even the illusion of a relationship between reference and referent has all however vanished. They’ve gotten lazy with even the efficiency of being real. Herein truly lies a sure sort of hope, for if the feces video demonstrates something, it’s that Trump himself was rattled by the huge No Kings rallies. Practically seven million individuals — almost 2% of the inhabitants — marched within the protests. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth has written that the variety of protestors required to peacefully topple an authoritarian regime is 3.5%. As resistance to Trump grows, the toothlessness of his meme energy additionally turns into more and more clear.
That this can be a type of governance by spectacle ought to be apparent by now — it’s merely memes all the best way down. As such, Trump’s coin isn’t literal; it’s expressed by the forex of the algorithm, showcasing not simply neoclassical triumphalism but additionally the patently Instagrammable — content material made for Reels, TikTok, and YouTube shorts. Much more novel, nevertheless, is that Trump himself is essentially an AI-generated meme; his is the algorithmic presidency. Caesar was a embellished common, however Trump is simply the efficiency of a strongman, a simulacrum of himself — signifier with out signified, referent with no actuality. Many pundits harp on his so-called erraticism, however Trump is definitely supremely predictable. Reward pleases him, criticism is condemned, all the things is “tremendous,” “beautiful,” or “great.” The person is all input-and-output, a easy machine. A cult of character with no character, no interiority or reflection — a husk, a void, an empty vessel. All that issues is the ever-churning of harmful and damaging content material, as symbolically devalued because the quickly declining greenback that his handlers need to slap his face on.
