A new online movement is calling for former President Donald Trump to return to power and take revenge against his enemies.
A fringe campaign posting threatening meme on social media is gaining traction among prominent Trump supporters.
Experts warn that the movement, which often features white nationalist and neo-Nazi imagery, could be the latest example of the far-right online Laundering into the Mainstream using meme warfare.
The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) says that the post-alt-right online aesthetic movement is called Dark MAGA.
Trump is often depicted in black and red-tinted images with laser beams shooting out of his eyes.
A big part of the aesthetic is the meme of a God-like, authoritarian Trump getting revenge on perceived opponents.
The movement is centered around the idea of a return to power. They are embracing the role of the villain and stripping away any facade of decency or political correctness.
Although not endorsed by Donald Trump, the movement appears to be gaining more mainstream support.
—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 7, 2022
Prominent far-right activists have shared similar images of themselves, helping to bring a previously fringe movement into the mainstream.
The first documented use of the #DarkMAGA was on January 21, according to GNET, but it started to spread across social media platforms in March.
There is a picture of Trump carrying weapons, calling for the death penalty, and a picture of the Trump Tower in a dramatic scene.
—Wendell Willkie (@enjoyer_liberty) May 12, 2022
—The Patriot Hammer (@patriot_hammer) May 12, 2022
Tim Squirrell, head of communications and editorial at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said that the movement is deeply entrenched inmeme warfare and internet troll techniques.
Squirrell told Insider that meme warfare is a propaganda war that many people believe they are fighting.
One of the movement's goals appears to be to unite disparate groups of right-wing extremists, which largely fractured after the Unite the Right rally in Virginia, where white supremacists were observed chanting.
At the same rally, James Alex Fields Jr., an avowed white supremacist, drove his car into a group of anti-racism protesters, killing Heather Heyer.
Squirrell said that the goal is to expose more mainstream Trump-supporting conservatives to the most extreme narratives, icons, imagery and people.
Nazi sun wheels, swastikas, and wolfsangels are far-right symbols that threaten violence or revenge, according to the Global Network on Extremism and Technology.
Within a subset of 100 memes, GNET found 38 portrayals of Donald Trump, 12 overt Nazi symbols, 9 US flags, and four references to Qanon.
The so-called skull mask network is one of the things that inspired the Dark MAGA aesthetic.
With Marjorie Taylor Greene, an elected congresswoman, and other prominent Trump supporters engaging with and amplifying Dark MAGA, it is bringing a previously fringe movement into the mainstream.
I guess the technical term for it is "shitposting", saying really provocative stuff as a mechanism for gaining attention for riling up the libs.
When asked by Insider if she endorsed the Dark MAGA movement, her spokesman said she was a Blue Anon conspiracy theorist.
Squirrell noted that this type of movement is typically covered in about five layers of irony.
If you point it out, you run the risk of people saying, "Well, that's not what I'm doing, you shouldn't take this seriously." There are serious people behind it. It has a lot of money.
Over 50,000 likes and nearly 20,000 replies have been given to the image of Greene.
Outrage generation is a tactic used by the online far-right, who often use over-the-top rhetoric designed to provoke a backlash, which creates high engagement and increases their content.
Anthony Scarramucci, the former White House communications director, had a picture of himself with lasers coming out of his eyes as his profile picture on the social media site.
In a phone call with Insider, Scaramucci said that he uploaded the photo a year ago as part of a joke with people in the community.
He said he removed the image on May 7th because of the right-wing fascists who posted similar photos.
Squirrell said that whether or not Dark MAGA is a cause for concern will depend on how successful it is at gaining mainstream support.
The worry is that it will further radicalize an already radical movement.
It's dangerous to try to say that Trump should take no prisoners and that he should be engaging in quite Machiavellian action.
The movement was created by Trump supporters who were angry over perceived injustices, such as the myth that the 2020 election was stolen to fears about the changing demographic of the US population.
She said that the Dark MAGA revenge narrative underscores the dangers of the continued propagation of the stolen election myth by Trump and much of the Republican Party.
The movement indicates that they have no intentions to play by the rules, so we should expect more events like January 6.
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