What Republicans Want You to Think / What Democrats Want You to Think

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About

What Republicans Want You to Think / What Democrats Want You to Think are two catchphrases used in a series of exploitable image macro memes based on an illustration of five former United States presidents surrounded by flames and military jets flying over their heads. In memes, usually split into three panels, the Presidents are presented as good and as evil depending on which U.S. political party narrates the panel, with the last panel revealing "the truth." Spawned by a 4chan meme in 2018, the format saw continuous presence online in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

Origin

On April 4th, 2017, political analyst Darius Shahtahmasebi published an article titled "The Last 5 Presidents In A Row Have Bombed Iraq" on Activist Post^[1] and The Last American Vagabond.^[2] The articles (shown below) used an image of United States presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump superimposed over a fiery background, with military jets flying over their heads (shown below).

On April 17th, 2017, Instagram^[3] user anonymouscalifornia posted the earliest known meme based on the image, creating an image macro based on it (shown below, left) that gained over 1,500 likes in six years. On December 26h, the Facebook^[4] page Thinking Humanity copied the macro, with their post earning over 16,000 reactions and 12,000 shares in the same period. On January 12th, 2018, the Facebook^[5] page People Against the NDAA used the image in another meme that gained over 550 reactions and 2,100 shares in six years (shown below, right).

On April 14th, 2023, an anonymous 4chan^[6] user posted a three-panel meme that divided the image into three parts, one imagining Republican presidents being evil, the other imagining Democrat presidents being evil, and the last, captioned "The Truth," imagining all the presidents evil and implying that they are controlled by the Zionist occupation government, which is a prominent conspiracy theory on /pol/ (shown below).

Spread

In the following days after Instagram user anonymouscalifornia's initial 2018 post of the meme, a version of the image in which the presidents in the bottom panel were replaced with five reptilians achieved virality online. For example, on April 16th, 2018, the Facebook^[7] page Screenshots That May Or May Not Be Taken Out Of Context posted the image, with the post garnering over 1,100 reactions and 860 shares in five years (shown below).

The format saw minimal presence online until October 2020, when it gained popularity on iFunny. On September 5th, 2020, iFunny^[8] user JMAGiK reposted the reptilian version that was featured and received over 10,200 smiles in three years. On October 23rd, iFunny^[9] user GNK_Power_Droid posted a Weezer Blue Album meme that received over 130 smiles in three years (shown below, left).

More versions of the meme were created and shared online in the following years, with users most notably making one president good and the rest of them evil in their edits or replacing the bottom panel of the meme altogether.