Biden embraces his ‘Dark Brandon’ alter ego in 2024 campaign
Dark Brandon #DarkBrandon
President Biden’s sinister, glowing-eyed alter ego, “Dark Brandon,” became an official part of his reelection campaign this week, which marks either the high point or the low point for one of the most politically polarized memes of the 2020s. We’re not totally sure. It’s been a journey, either way.
A stylized image of a grinning Biden with red laser beams shooting out of his eyes graces $32 T-shirts and “Dark Roast” coffee mugs (get it?) available on the Biden campaign web store, which launched Tuesday to coincide with the president’s announcement that he will run for a second term in 2024. There’s even a Dark Brandon Easter egg for visitors to the site who accidentally find themselves on a nonexistent webpage.
“You’re lost, Jack. Let’s get you back on the rails,” reads the 404 page, which in itself is a callback to Biden’s adoration for Amtrak.
But why Brandon? What’s with the eyes? Why is he grinning so very darkly? If you’re not familiar with the meme, you might think you’ve stumbled onto a superhero merchandise outlet, so allow us to explain Dark Brandon’s origin story. It has no destroyed planets, radioactive spiders or super-soldier serums. It’s about an 80-year-old man from Scranton, Pa., who learned to harness the powers of the internet.
The origin story of ‘Dark Brandon’
“Dark Brandon” would not exist if not for its greatest foe, “Let’s go Brandon!”
The latter slogan began showing up on conservative bumper stickers, T-shirts and flags in late 2021. It was inspired by a news broadcast from Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway, where an NBC Sports reporter happened to be interviewing driver Brandon Brown as an angry crowd chanted “F— Joe Biden” in the background.
“You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’” the reporter said to viewers — either in jest or in error.
Trump supporters found this either hilarious or an outrageous example of media censorship (or both). Some started using “Brandon” as a code word to mock, demean or hurl expletives at Biden in public. The phrase became a meme.
Biden seemed unaware of the phenomenon at first. “Merry Christmas, and let’s go, Brandon,” a man told him during a public call-in session for NORAD’s Santa tracker on Christmas Eve.
“Let’s go, Brandon, I agree,” the president responded.
This, too, seemed hilarious to conservatives, who felt like they had discovered a sort of digital kryptonite to wield against the president.
But then the meme was turned against them.
‘Dark Brandon’ arrives
The memetic universe, much like the Marvel Cinematic one, is full of crossovers. Dark Brandon is the antithesis of several memes deployed against the president.
Midway through Biden’s first term, supporters of Donald Trump popularized a series of memes depicting the former president as a domineering, Thanos-like figure with blue laser eyes — out to take revenge on his liberal enemies. “Dark MAGA,” the meme was called.
Separately, the illustrator Yang Quan had created imagery of a demonic-looking Biden “atop an Iron Throne-esque chair made up of automatic weapons as a hellish blaze surrounds him,” as Politico documented the meme.
It’s unclear who combined the Dark MAGA meme with the Brandon memes and Yang’s demonic Biden memes to create the first instance of Dark Brandon. But once the alchemy had been performed, there was no turning back.
Variations of Dark Brandon started proliferating online in spring 2022. Biden often had red laser beam eyes to counter Trump’s blue. He usually retained the sinister qualities from Yang’s images — sometimes backdropped by a nuclear explosion or a horde of zombies. But he was … good?
Democrats thought so, anyway.
What started as a fringe offshoot of several conservative memes soon soared in popularity. Democrats and left-leaning internet users embraced Dark Brandon, flooding the internet with it to celebrate the president’s victories and — maybe — counter Republican attack lines that painted the president as a mush-headed softy.
Dark Brandon saw a huge spike in popularity after the U.S. military killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in late 2022. “The new liberal-driven meme is meant to depict Biden as having superpowers, able to smite an al-Qaeda leader and pass legislation through Congress with ease,” The Washington Post’s Matt Viser wrote in August 2022.
Biden’s team quickly caught wind of the meme and embraced it, too. White House staffers and Democratic politicians started using it.
“Lasers shooting out of Joe Biden’s eyes is an official Statement of Administration Policy,” White House staff secretary Neera Tanden tweeted in August. “This is an official position.”
The White House’s director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, said he tweeted the meme from an official government account so it would have to be recorded in the historical archives.
And now it’s part of Biden’s political legacy too. The campaign didn’t immediately have figures on how much Dark Brandon merchandise it has sold in the last day, but an official speaking on background said the meme “has been energizing.”
Zap zap.