The youngest woman ever elected to U.S. Congress has launched a fight against memes as one of her first orders of business on the Hill. The left has been slow to adopt the use of memes , but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a millennial and is proving to not only be an expert in building community on social media platforms , but also political memes. Ocasio-Cortez appears to understand the threat that they pose and the need to defend herself and others from online misinformation and attack memes.

In one recent example, Ocasio-Cortez called out a meme on Twitter that promoted misinformation about another newly elected congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, who just happens to be the first hijab-wearing, Somali-American, Muslim refugee elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and a new favorite target of the right. The meme asserts that Omar’s agenda is to enslave all white men because they refuse to submit to Islam. However, these claims have been proven to be false by third-party fact checkers, and Ocasio-Cortez clapped back on Twitter to announce as much.

That the right is mobilizing fake quotes, conspiracies + outright hatred, particularly on Congresswomen of color, shows how vapid they are on actual issues. The racism allowed towards Ilhan + others is completely unacceptable. @Facebook has clearly lost control of their product. https://t.co/vqRaM3iAjX — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 19, 2018

Research shows that female candidates face more harassment and vitriolic attacks on social media than their male counterparts. The right often targets women and various minority groups with hateful memes that are anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT, and anti-Semitic. However, it’s time that we look at a memetic framework that ties the right together: patriotism.

If you examine the accounts promoting the meme that attacks Omar, you’ll see patriotic imagery such as American flags and rhetoric such as, “Land of the free, home of the brave.”

Who said facts mattered? ????????‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/LMomzRrLZj — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 19, 2018

Unlike during World War II, when patriotism unified the country, it has become toxic and polarizing as it has been co-opted by the right, along with the meme format itself. The president’s supporters often exhibit hyper-patriotism, while Donald Trump himself leverages its memetic framework in his campaign marketing and presidential platform. For example, the president has shown interest in having military parades outside of wartime.