'Dark Brandon' Memes from White House Staffer Provoke Nazi, China Claims

A White House staffer sharing "Dark Brandon" memes on social media has sparked claims that the memes promote Chinese propaganda and Nazi-inspired images.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates has shared multiple Dark Brandon memes to his Twitter account since Sunday. Dark Brandon is a pro-President Joe Biden rebuke of two memes popular among supporters of former President Donald Trump—"Let's Go Brandon," which has become conservative shorthand for "f**k Joe Biden," and the authoritarian pro-Trump "Dark MAGA" meme.

Commentators were quick to point out that cartoon images showing Biden with glowing eyes, which have been used in multiple Dark Brandon memes, appear to have been first taken from an image that was created by a pro-China propagandist and posted to the Chinese social media site Weibo in November 2020. Other memes include doctored photos of the president, sometimes with glowing, laser-like eyes.

One Dark Brandon meme that does not follow the formula, shared by Bates on Sunday, features a doctored photo of an eyepatch-wearing Biden alongside the message "the malarkey will end" and "the Dark Brandon Rises November 8." The image is a take on The Dark Knight Rises movie poster and also includes what appears to be a fiery eagle image behind the president.

Although the creator of the meme has reportedly denied any connection, some claimed that the eagle in the image was intended to be the reichsadler, an imperial eagle motif used by Nazi Germany, and accused Bates of sharing a "Nazi meme."

"The Biden White House's cringey 'Dark Brandon' memes don't just contain Nazi Reich imagery, they are also based on Chinese Communist propaganda," Raheem Kassam, editor of the far-right website The National Pulse, tweeted on Monday. "SURPRISE!"

"So Biden's Deputy White House Press Secretary, @Andrewjbates46, is posting literal Nazi memes on Twitter and our corrupt media is completely silent about it," tweeted Donald Trump Jr., the former president's son.

"I'm sure that if this was a Trump WH staffer, the media would treat it the exact same way and totally ignore it," he added, sarcastically.

Trump's tweet was a reply from far-right commentator Jack Posobiec, who shared the "Dark Brandon Rises" image and claimed that Bates had "copied a meme off of 4chan with a Reich Eagle in the background."

However, the image appears to have been first shared on Twitter by meme creator Tobin Stone, who has also tweeted several other memes from the so-called "Dark Brandon Cinematic Universe."

Stone told The Daily Dot that the Dark Brandon Rises poster was not intended to include any Nazi iconography, pointing out that eagle images have been common in multiple countries during many different eras.

"The eagle is not, and was never intended to be the reichsadler—it was just intended to be a representation of America's national bird, the bald eagle, and any reasonable person would interpret it as such," Stone told the outlet.

In addition, although the original cartoon image used in the memes do appear to have been taken from Chinese propaganda, the illustration was anything but an attempt to promote Biden.

The series of Chinese propaganda images, first shared on the day of the 2020 presidential election, is titled "The Sleeping King ascends the Throne" and is meant to depict Biden as "the new King of Hell who sits atop a throne of US AR-15 and M-16 assault rifles," according to a Reddit thread.

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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