The Memes You Need, Vol. 12: Time to Fight Back Against Fascism

As MSNBC reports, “There’s a serious strategy behind Trump resistance jokes. From memes to pranks, the fight against the second Trump administration is much looser and funnier than in his first term.”

Mar 02, 2025

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Introduction

Anyone who tells you that the fight against fascism in America will be waged in just one way is lying to you. Is it useful to amplify breaking news stories on social media that reveal the nefarious intentions of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their minions?

Of course.

But no one claims doing so comprises even 2% of the fight ahead.

Just so, as MSNBC declared in a report earlier this week, “Resistance to the second Trump administration appears to be leaning more heavily on humor than it did in his first term. For now, at least, humor may be their most effective tactic. While the ‘resistance’ to the first Trump administration was centered on massive rallies, knitted hats, and threads [by Twitter user Eric Garland] about ‘game theory,’ the current one is more about biting wheatpaste posters and goofy internet humor.”

All this is true, though that “for now” is doing some heavy lifting for MSNBC, here.

Retweets and reposts are useful, but are not an answer. Memes and jokes are useful, but likewise are not an answer. And yes, mass protests, general strikes, nationwide civil litigation, market blackouts, boycotts, sit-ins, slowdowns, impeachments, recalls, and various forms of civil disobedience—for instance, it remains to be see if there’ll be a mass tax protest this year—are all useful, as is donating to entities that fight Trumpist totalitarianism and preparing yourself and your family and friends for what certainly looks like a coming massive economic collapse and perhaps even a potential civil war (though it wouldn’t look like the first one, but more like this one).

But no one form of what journalists cynically and scornfully call resistance is enough.

Fighting for democracy in an era of authoritarianism is always going to be an “all of the above” effort, and anyone—including cranks on the left of American politics—who chooses to spend this moment erecting straw men (e.g., by falsely claiming that anyone who memes during Trump and Musk’s hostile takeover of America’s government must implicitly being contending that that’s all one can or should do in this moment) is no friend of democracy.

Either one accepts that an all-of-the-above effort is what’s required now—accepting, too, that certain people will be more expert at and impactful with certain forms of pushback than others are—or one fails to appreciate the enormity of the task before Americans who love democracy, which is the largest we’ve faced as a country since World War II.

Retro is, for all that, not suddenly going to become a political publication. This outlet focuses on music, memes, the visual arts, video games, cultural theory, TV, film, and much more that broadly falls under the Substack categories of History and Culture.

There’s a reason this substack became a Top 40 History publication worldwide, and it’s not because it’s focused on political analyses; that difficult work occurs at its sister publication, Proof. Indeed, what’s been going on in politics in America has made it harder than ever before for Retro to see its way clear to keep publishing on anodyne topics like roller coasters, mobile video games, contemporary music, contemporary television, comic books, sports multimedia, retro homebrews and the dozens of other esoteric but beloved topics that this publication has covered for nearly four years now.

That coverage will continue; those reports are being worked on right now. But it is true that, for the moment, of all the evergreen reporting Retro does on History and Culture, the most relevant subfield it can look at right now is the political meme and the political cartoon, as these are, indeed, key tools for those pushing back on fascism in America.

As most Retro readers know, I’ve written many articles about memes on Substack—e.g., this one over at Proof—and Retro of course has the Memes section you’re reading right now in which I discuss the subject, so this series probably needs little additional introduction. It’s exactly what it says it is: a series of archives of memes from different categories that are eminently usable by anyone who likes to instrumentalize memes as part of their discourse practice.

And candidly, we should all do so: memes are a shorthand for dealing with the many idiosyncratic situations we encounter online—situations which often become, sans memes, far more arduous to navigate. In other words, high-quality memes save time.

In a politically fraught era like this one, memes can also summarize our values and make complex declarations of where we stand on matters of great import seem a less daunting task than they would otherwise be.

And that’s necessary at a time of great exhaustion and deep anxiety over current events.

Info Box: All Past Editions of the Retro Meme Archive

I studied and taught memes when I was a professor at University of New Hampshire—yes, really!—so I curate an archive series like this one very mindfully. The very best memes, whatever their general theme, are ones that have high production values, are easy to read and understand, and make a point that one doesn’t need much or perhaps even any specialized knowledge to empathize with. They act as effective vehicles for trolling and pleasing and commiserating in equal measure, and moreover offer the sort of iconic visual aesthetic that allows them to be instantly recognizable every time they appear anywhere (and, just as importantly, be readily remembered). A meme is far more likely to be used and responded to if it’s one an internet user has seen before (up to a point, of course; the “law of diminishing returns” certainly does also apply here).

With all this in mind, I do hope you the enjoy the piping hot memes compiled below.