"It shows how online this administration is and how how shaped they are by this, you know, this the performative nature of online communication. It's all about memes and, you know, loud language and vulgarities and how do you shock people and how do you stun people and how do you scare people with with language?:
~ Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum on the Trump regime's memeification of war:
"It's this performance online culture designed for, I don't know, teenage boys and and their grown-up equivalents. But it also has a purpose. It makes people say, you know, this war is unserious. All of this will make people feel disengaged and it may work. I mean, you know, how can you focus on a serious war when you're being told the story of it through comic strips and videos."
As people in the US and Middle East have been mourning their dead,
"The White House had begun posting snuff videos. Footage of actual US missile strikes hitting their targets in Iran are spliced together with scenes from Braveheart and Gladiator and Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat. Explosions that have killed innocent civilians are timed to the crack of a baseball bat or an NFL tackle."
~ Jon Favreau
"It shows how online this administration is and how how shaped they are by this, you know, this the performative nature of online communication. It's all about memes and, you know, loud language and vulgarities and how do you shock people and how do you stun people and how do you scare people with with language?:
~ Anne Applebaum
"It does seem like a concerted strategy on the part of the government and the administration to put out these videos that not only minimize the seriousness of war, but sort of promote this nihilism. This sort of dehumanization, this like don't worry about what's going on, everything's a game."
~ Jon Favreau
