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They are funny, provocative and sometimes tasteless. But memes are also powerful political tool, shaping our perception — usually without us noticing.

At the beginning of this year, a "nihilistic penguin" went viral. The short clip shows a penguin on the ice leaving its colony and waddling off alone into a seemingly endless frozen expanse — behavior that is highly atypical from a biological standpoint. The scene presents a tragicomic allegory open to multiple interpretations. The footage comes from a 2007 documentary by filmmaker Werner Herzog.

Memes are now a permanent fixture of online culture that's here to stay. They also play a growing role in political discourse — shaping people's perceptions and even opinions. This trend is particularly visible in the US, where an ever-expanding flood of memes has influenced elections since at least 2016 and permeated everyday life. 

This is an alarming development, says cultural scientist Wolfgang Ullrich, author of "Memokratie."

"Extreme, aggressive, often offensive social media content, especially memes," frequently impact political discourse, he explains — resulting in people arguing with each other less and less. 

"Every side tries to mobilize its own followers using funny, often cynical, spiteful images and comments," Ullrich tells DW. Politics are also beginning to resemble memes, he says, "meaning they're tailored to be as shrill and triggering as possible — as though the goal was simply to deliver punchlines instead of presenting arguments."

US president Donald Trump is particularly adept at capturing people's attention. He follows the logic of social media, where the most extreme or provocative posts tend to draw the most attention.

Trump's so-called "meme warriors" are more than happy to lend him a hand. These supporters churn out AI-generated images and memes every day to promote his political agenda. "And of course, everyone hopes their idol [Trump] will like them enough to repost their content," says Ullrich — like in mid-April, when the US president posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as a Jesus-like savior after a dispute with the pope. He quickly deleted it after criticism from fellow conservatives.

This type of polarizing communication is detrimental to democracy, says Ullrich. Discussions end up becoming so emotionally charged "that meaningful debate is no longer possible." A robust democracy requires such sorts of discussions — presenting arguments instead of hurling insults and provocations.

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An image portraying Donald Trump as a saint-like figure could have been a caricature by one of Trump's opponents, aiming to ridicule the president's self-glorification. Then the impact would have been different, Ullrich explains, because "images only take on meaning through the context in which they are used," says Ullrich.

Like traditional caricatures, memes can serve to criticize ruling elites and question social structures. But when they become a primary tool for the head of a global superpower to ridicule political opponents or mock those with less clout, that pushes them out of the realm of satire, says Ullrich. "That's an exact perversion of everything satire and caricatures traditionally stand for."

What's more, serious topics are increasingly treated with inappropriate flippancy. To take one example, Ullrich points to a June 2025 post by the US Department of Homeland Security on X. It showed an AI-generated image of a planned immigration detention facility nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Florida Everglades. In front of the fence stood a row of alligators wearing ICE caps. The caption read: "Coming soon!"

"Such memes are a complete distraction from the fact we're talking about human lives, as well as procedures that are questionable at best under the rule of law." While the post sparked criticism and debate about whether the depiction was acceptable or not, that only served to shift public attention, Ullrich explains, "and the actual crux of the matter — the people — falls out of view."

At the end of the day, the memification of political communication plays into the hands of those with authoritarian tendencies, says Ullrich. It creates space for ambiguity, since users can always claim it was all just a joke.

The most crucial way to avoid being manipulated by memes is to understand the functioning of social media and to observe our own and others' reactions, explains Ullrich.

"We're used to authoritarian rulers coming with something insanely grandiose and intimidating and annihilating us with violent imagery — like Leni Riefenstahl did." [Editor's note: Riefenstahl shot propaganda films for the Nazis.]

Memes, by contrast, are small and seemingly harmless: "That's the new approach, through the aestheticization of politics, which is very manipulative, very populist, very suggestive," adds Ullrich. "And I think we have to raise much greater awareness about this."

This article was originally written in German.