patrick.net

Memetic warfare required the Trump campaign to cede a large amount of messaging initiative to the amorphous digital swarm. Whereas the Clinton campaign remained committed to tightly disciplined messaging developed by professional public relations agencies and pushed out through official channels, the Trump campaign had to tolerate an unruly barbarian horde that was not at all above using the symbolism of cartoon NatSoc amphibians to get its point across, generating elaborate mythologies tying Trump to Nikola Tesla’s time machines and Jungian synchronicity (shadilay!), spreading black propaganda suggesting that the Clinton campaign intended to draft women for a war with Russia, or pranking the opposition by telling them to text in their votes. Trump was under no obligation to endorse such uncouth behaviour, and the King in Orange probably did not even realize the scale of it, but he seems to have understood that to disavow it would risk extinguishing the enthusiastic fire of his most motivated online supporters, thereby killing the campaign’s momentum. He therefore adopted for the most part a policy of silence, though of course he was not above frogwhistling with the occasional dank Pepe.

"Shadilay" is a 1986 Italo disco song by the Italian band P.E.P.E., which features an illustration of a green frog holding a magic wand in the album artwork for the single. After it was discovered by users on 4chan's /pol/ board in September 2016, many hailed the song as proof of meme magic and the Prophecy of Kek due to the band's name and frog illustration bearing similarities to Pepe the Frog.