![]() ![]() ![]() The Gadsden is now associated with the right, but its first iteration was created by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 as a call to unite the colonies during the French and Indian War. And memes like the Gadsden flag, that coiled timber rattlesnake on a yellow background, itself one of the oldest memes in American history, born to express the spirit of insurgency. Along with memes like “1776!,” which people had been sharing as hashtags and chanting at rallies to indicate that this January day in 2021 was, as Elizabeth had said, a revolution. And it was memes like MAGA that helped bring Elizabeth to D.C. She herself was clearly a member of a meme group, as her flag made clear: the MAGA tribe. Elizabeth, in the memes, was an ally or an enemy, depending on where you stood. Yet even when they are popular and accessible, they contain a point of view and announce the positioning of the sharer. Sometimes they are such an inside joke that they are inscrutable to people on the outside. These memes made clear what group the sharer was in, which is a key aspect of memes. People who thought the insurrection was a terrifying breach of democracy shared memes celebrating her macing or mocking her impotent rage. That’s the definition of a meme, first coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 text “The Selfish Gene.” Supporters of the insurrection shared internet memes that focused on how Elizabeth had been treated badly by the police. The video clip of her was recontextualized, remixed, and redistributed, carrying all sorts of meaning. No longer a person with a real identity, now Elizabeth from Knoxville was a character, a memorable piece of media that resonated with people for different reasons. Maybe Elizabeth was a liar who hadn’t really been maced, and perhaps the whole insurrection had been planned (it was, but not in the way these conspiracists meant) or was a hoax (it wasn’t).Įlizabeth from Knoxville had been memed. Sleuths spun conspiracies when they noticed that she held a towel with something white and round in it that she rubbed on her red eyes. A very real and coordinated attempt to thwart the democratic process of America was also a surreal media spectacle, and Elizabeth was one of the minor characters.įrom Twitter to TikTok, Elizabeth became fodder for internet jokes. Millions watched the chaos happen in real time - on broadcast TV, social media, and video streams that the rioters themselves dutifully posted. People watching the insurrection unfold live shared video of her with glee. Her melodic, plaintive tone, her earnest insistence that she was part of a revolution, even her strange piano-design scarf and flag cape made her memorable. As she cried into the camera, her fellow rioters walked into the frame carrying American flags, MAGA flags, Trump flags, and the familiar yellow flag with the coiled rattlesnake hissing the warning, “Don’t Tread on Me.”Īs soon as this video of Elizabeth hit Twitter, it went viral. As soon as she entered the Capitol, she tearfully related, police maced her in the face. She had a blue Trump flag slung across her neck like a cape. “We’re storming the Capitol! It’s a revolution!” Elizabeth from Knoxville, Tennessee, told a reporter outside the U.S. Excerpted from “Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America” by Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, and Emily Dreyfuss, senior managing editor, and Brian Friedberg, senior researcher, both at Technology and Social Change Project, Shorenstein Center. ![]()
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