“What is especially surreal is seeing niche memes pressed into the service of the most controversial and violent aspects of President Trump’s agenda. A few months ago, it was the ‘Ghiblification’ of the kidnapping and detention of American residents. Now it is a picture of Master Chief and a recruitment pitch to join ICE and ‘Destroy the Flood,’ Emerson T Brooking, the director of strategy at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, told 404 Media.
“In many ways, Trump administration officials are trying to use these online motifs to smuggle concepts that would otherwise be too extreme for the American people. Most Americans do not want to ‘destroy’ legal asylum seekers. And referring to this group of people as a ‘flood’ is the sort of thing that was once the domain of white-nationalist manifestos. But tie these things together with an image of Master Chief and a Halo Warthog, and the inconceivable becomes a casual joke,” Brooking said.
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