If the remaining #BernieOrBusters want to convince the world that they are something other than “ridiculous” — as the far more grounded Bernie fan Sarah Silverman so aptly characterized them at the DNC last week — the Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash on Facebook isn’t exactly helping.

Bernie himself has bowed to political realities, endorsing Hillary and lending his support for her fight against Trump. Not so Bernie’s Dank Memers. The anti-Trump memes there are surprisingly few and far between. Far more common are memes supporting the Green party’s Jill Stein. And far more common than those are memes attacking Hillary and her supporters with all the subtlety of a channer who’s just mastered MSPaint.

While the anti-Hillary sentiment isn’t that much of a surprise, what is surprising, even a little shocking, is how utterly backwards many of the memes are, echoing classic misogynistic tropes and tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories, and in a few cases, even more bizarrely, repurposing antisemitic propaganda popular amongst GamerGaters and Internet Nazis.

Why would the supporters of a Jewish socialist repeatedly post pictures of Hillary Clinton as the “Happy Merchant?” You’ll have to ask them.

Let’s take a look at some of the more, well, colorful memes.

There’s this lovely reworking of an old sexist joke:

And this slightly more original offering.

Here’s Hillary as a beauty pageant winner.

And as a porn star:

Here’s a meme inspired, I guess, by Pokemon Go?

This one manages to add transphobia to the mix:

This meme links Hillary with a woman who was famously not convicted of murdering her daughter. At least in a court of law; in the court of public opinion she was considered guilty, guilty, guilty. Apparently in the mind of the mememaker, Hillary not being indicted for deleting emails is the literal equivalent of Casey Anthony getting away with murder?

There are memes that echo Trump’s, er, “critique” of Hillary:

This one, while directed at disgraced DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, offers an apologia of sorts for Melania Trump’s plagiarism.

And here’s one promoting a hashtag that originated with far-right attack dog — and fervent Trump fan — Mike Cernovich.

And no, I have no idea what’s really going on with her tongue.

There are some memes that reek of conspiracy theory, though it’s a little hard to tell how many Bernie fans take these seriously.

There are a surprising number of memes depicting Hillary as a reptilian space alien. I’m going to assume they’re all meant as jokes, because it’s too depressing to contemplate otherwise.

Naturally, there are more than a few memes attacking Sarah Silverman for her “ridiculous” remark, with many of the mememakers assuming she was paid to make it.

But it’s the “Happy Merchant” memes that truly baffle.

Here’s a typical “Happy Merchant” meme, using the now-infamous cartoon that originally appeared in a neo-Nazi newsletter.

And here’s Hillary in the same role, from the Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash:

The most depressing thing? This isn’t just some random Facebook page. The Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash page has more than 438,000 members. I can only hope most of them are less backwards than those posting memes on the page today.

H/T — r/againstmensrights

Like Loading...