President Donald Trump’s administration is posting sadistic memes on its social media accounts to prompt the public to cruelly laugh at migrants caught up in his mass deportation obsession. For example, last week, the White House X account exploited a new ChatGPT feature that allows users to transform images “into the style of Studio Ghibli,” the beloved animation studio, and posted a cartoon version of a posted photo of a crying undocumented migrant in handcuffs. The responses to the post were a mix of delight from supporters and horror from critics, and the practice illustrates how Trump knows he must dehumanize migrants to justify his aggressive and increasingly extralegal efforts to deport them.
Trump couches his messages in seemingly unserious or “comical” aesthetics online to downplay how sinister they are. As I’ve written in the past, Trump uses humor as a weapon, in part by dressing up his violations of norms and degradation of his opponents as a joke.
The White House chose an unsympathetic subject for its Studio Ghibli-style meme — a migrant who reportedly had been deported in the past after pleading guilty to attempted possession with intent to distribute fentanyl. But regardless of what that person did or where one stands on this particular deportation or deportations in general — brandishing people’s pain as a political message is not a defense of policy. Trump’s propaganda reveals that he delights in the pain of others, and he encourages the public to laugh with him.
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