Liberal Avengersposting

About

Liberal Avengersposting refers to the tendency among some liberal political commentators online to compare prominent Democratic Party figures to superheroes in Marvel's The Avengers. The comparisons often mocked as cringeworthy and childish by onlookers, drawing comparisons to liberals making analogies between politics and Harry Potter (which inspired the Read Another Book meme).

Origin

Comparisons between The Avengers and politics began appearing with regularity on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2020 United States Presidential Election. Mel Magazine^[1] cites a @YupScruffy tweet^[2] posted November 5th, 2020 as the moment people realized that The Avengers would become a popular point of comparison in political discourse in the wake of Harry Potter.

Precursor

Prior to The Avengers becoming a common point of political comparison, some liberals commonly used comparisons to Harry Potter. This led to the rise of the Read Another Book meme. "Read Another Book" is an expression used to criticize the overreliance on comparisons to Harry Potter in mainstream politics, particularly by Resistance Twitter users. It can also be used similarly as a catchphrase intended to criticize people who use the Harry Potter series to compare real-world events to that of the books, frequently appearing as a hashtag in such posts across a number of social media platforms online, often by members of the Anti-Harry Potter crowd.

Spread

On November 6th, as Biden appeared poised to win the election, Twitter user @JohnHPiette posted a video that compared multiple prominent Democratic politicians to superheroes at the end of Avengers: Endgame, gaining over 34 million views, 27,000 retweets, and 103,000 likes (shown below).

While many praised the video, many others found it cringeworthy^[3][4] (examples shown below). In MEL Magazine, Miles Klee wrote, "Truly, the Avengers comparisons should have ended there, because nobody will top this viral video in its maniacal effort to find every politician a suitable place in the comic book pantheon. The clip transcended its corniness, becoming beautiful -- if unintentional -- comedy."

Avengers comparisons continued over the following few months, particularly in the runup to Georgia's Senatorial run-off elections. For example, Twitter user @MikeMcHargue posted a tweet in which he tearfully compared Georgia to Wakanda. The tweet was deleted, but a repost by @TheEpicDept^[5] gained over 4,000 retweets and 55,000 likes (shown below, left). Liberals also commonly used Avengers comparisons to describe Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, whose Get Out The Vote effort helped Democrats win both races and take control of the Senate. This was parodied in a tweet by @civicflora,^[6] who posted pictures of the parents from Get Out saying "Stacey Abrams needs her own Marvel movie" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References