With this lie escalating to violent threats against the Haitian community, we perhaps need to put a pause on joking about this insidious hoax. They are trying to start a race war, and memes likely aren’t helping.

  • enkers
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    88
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    3 months ago

    Right? I don’t think satire pointing out how utterly fucking ridiculous the cat eating allegations are is being part of the problem. This almost seems like “won’t someone appease the racists by not making fun of them?”

    • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      3 months ago

      The point of the post is that if Trump had said that he wanted to kill every immigrant at gun point, there wouldn’t be any jokes or memes about it, because it’s a dangerous statement that would be taken seriously by anyone.

      By making memes about him saying immigrants are eating dogs and cats, then we are “signaling” that what he said isn’t terrifyingly dangerous, we’re taking it as ridiculous and funny and not to be worried about. And that plays a role in normalizing all the stupid shit he has been saying.

      As a disclaimer, Trump is a piece of shit and I am DEFINITELY NOT saying both sides are bad (I fucking hate that argument). But the argument in the post is a valid one. Of course there are also some upsides to the memes. First they are funny but they also cause those words to reach out to more people which hopefully has an effect in terms of voting against him

      • Clent@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 months ago

        Making fun of what Trump says signals that what he says it stupid and anyone who acts on it is even stupider.