Jobs Not Mobs

Submission 10,175

Part of a series on 2018 United States Midterm Elections. [View Related Entries]

About

Jobs Not Mobs is a right-wing political slogan in the United States of America used to encourage support for Republican candidates in the 2018 Midterm Elections. The slogan depicts the Democratic party as an angry mob and Republican party as beneficial to the national economy.

Origin

On October 10th, 2018, Twitter ^[1] user @trmcolorado retweeted a video from CNN of pundits discussing a series of incidents in which protestors interrupted the dinners of various Republican law makers and administration officials. They commented in the retweet, "Jobs not mobs! Results vs Resist! Rule of Law vs Chaos!" The tweet is the earliest known usage of the phrase (shown below).

Spread

That day, the official GOP Twitter account shared a video of rally for United States President Donald Trump in which the president calls the Democrats the "party of crime" and the Republican party "the party of jobs, jobs, jobs." Twitter user @luluhall13 commented on the video "Jobs NOT Mobs" (shown below).^[2]

The following day, on October 11th, Twitter user @AndrewJKugle tweeted a "SUPERcut of reporters telling people to not use the 'mob' word cut with video of the mob." The supercut included a clip from the video retweeted by @trmcolordao. The tweet received more than 16,000 retweets, 29,000 likes and 1.7 million views (shown below).

On October 12th, Twitter^[3] user @The_Trump_Train repsonded to a tweet by President Trump with the comment "JOBS NOT MOBS!" The post received more than 690 retweets and 2,100 likes in one month (shown below, left).

That day, Twitter user @MarkSimoneNY tweeted,^[4] "Now that Democrats are angry mobs screaming in restaurants and in the streets, egged on by Holder, Hillary and Maxine Waters, while the President created the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, how about the slogan “Vote for Jobs, not Mobs” #maga." The tweet received more tahn 1,800 retweets and 5,500 likes in one month (shown below, center).

The following day, Redditor ^[5] iltdiTX posted a screenshot of a tweet^[11] by Dilbert-creator and cartoonist Scott Adams in the /r/The_Donald subreddit. The post reads, "'Mobs' by itself doesn't work. But 'Jobs Not Mobs' is brain glue plus framing and contrast. Science says the brain interprets rhymes as persuasive." The post received more than 5,000 points (97% upvoted) and 70 comments (shown below, right). They titled the post "You heard him boys, let's spread JOBS NOT MOBS far and wide!"

On October 13th, Redditor^[6] BryanVision posted an image depicting factory workers and fire, supposedly started by protestors. The post received more than 11,000 points (92% upvoted) and 200 comments.

Five days later, President Trump tweeted,^[7] "#JobsNotMobs!" The tweet received more than 29,000 retweets and 99,000 likes in less than one month (shown below, left).

Days later, on October 22nd, President Trump tweeted^[8] an image from a campaign rally with the caption, "At stake in this Election is whether we continue the extraordinary prosperity we have achieved – or whether we let the Radical Democrat Mob take a giant wrecking ball to our Country and our Economy! #JobsNotMobs" The tweet received more than 18,000 retweets and 62,000 likes in less than three weeks (shown below, right).

On November 4th, The New York Times^[9]^[10] posted a timeline of the of the meme's spread. They wrote in an article about the spread, "After Mr. Trump tweeted the 'jobs, not mobs' meme, the creator of the image -- a Reddit user who goes by the online pen name 'Bryan Machiavelli' and who declined to be interviewed unless The New York Times paid him $200 an hour for his 'memetic warfare consulting' services -- wrote on Reddit that attention from the president was its own reward."