Why the trendy Republican joke has white nationalist roots, or why Ted Cruz is Schrödinger's Douchebag
You know who else chants "Let's Go Brandon"?
Welcome to all the new subscribers! Sorry this week’s edition is a little late. I got caught up reading an advance copy of Sarah Bird’s new novel, Last Dance on the Sunlight Pier. People, that book is so engrossing that at one point I forgot I had a Q-Tip in my right ear. Pre-order it here.
This week in The Experiment, we’re puzzling over the “Let’s Go Brandon!” meme and Republican humor in general that follows this basic equation: unfunny, cruel observation + pretense of irony = humor? Yeah, I don’t get it either, where we start. But we end up in a dark place.
As always, we’ve got new things to do (pre-order Last Dance at the Sunlight Pier), read (am I recommending a David Brooks column? Yes, I am, I really am.), watch (Netflix’s Passing), and listen to (Makaya McRaven’s new sample-heavy jazz album). And if you need some gift ideas, we’ve got a big sale at our merch table in the back. Nothing says “Office White Elephant Gift Exchange” like my cartoon face on a T-shirt.)
But first, Google “Let’s go Brandon wrapping paper.” Or better yet, don’t.
Some of you—maybe our reader in India or the few of you in Canada—might not know about the “Let’s Go Brandon!” craze. Let me start from the top.
As soon as conservative white people started gathering in large numbers this year, they started chanting “F*** Joe Biden,” except they had to say the whole swear word. I don’t like to generalize, but white conservatives in this country usually lack any training in modern dance and are thus unable to express punctuation with movement. Gleefully, they chanted it at college football games, anti-vaccine protests, golf tournaments, a Megadeath concert, country music concerts, and, on October 2, at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama where Brandon Brown had just won his first Xfinity Series.
As he was was being interviewed live on television, the crowd behind him started chanting “Fuck Joe Biden.” You could hear it watching the broadcast, but it was unclear whether NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast, who was wearing a headset, could make out the words. She was either guessing or covering for the vulgarity on live television when she told Brown, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, 'Let's go, Brandon!’”
The misunderstanding yielded a Trumpian catchphrase for the latest Republican joke: They’re saying “Let’s Go Brandon,” but they’re really saying, “F*** Joe Biden.”
The temptation for the intelligentsia is to regard a “joke” as dumb and unfunny as “Let’s Go Brandon” as unworthy of notice, but the catchphrase has spread like a virus through our culture. All the crowds who used to chant “F*** Joe Biden” are now proudly and loudly nattering on about Brandon. A Southwest pilot got in hot water for signing off a greeting to his passengers with “Let’s Go Brandon.” On Oct. 21, a Florida congressman concluded a House floor speech with a jaunty fist pump and the Brandon phrase, which probably marked its C-SPAN debut. Last week a South Carolina congressman wore a “Let’s Go Brandon” face mask on the House floor, and Ted Cruz, the very junior Senator from Texas, had his picture taken with a “Let’s Go Brandon” sign at the World Series.
Ted Cruz doing Ted Cruz things.
That “Let’s Go Brandon” is inarguably rude and ruinous of civil discourse is obvious, but what makes me curious is what it is. Is it a joke? Is it a meme? Is it meant to be funny? Truth is I’ve been puzzling over the latest wave of Republican humor for a while, either it’s Florida Man Matt Gaetz joking, sort of about blowing up metal detectors in the capitol or Cruz joking, sort of about Big Bird’s pro-vaccination message being government propaganda for 5-year-olds, or Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joking, sort of about clubbing Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the noggin when she hands him the gavel after losing the majority in 2022.
These “jokes” buzzed around in my head, but Paul Gosar’s joke stung when he tweeted the opening sequences of an anime series Attack on Titan except with his face superimposed over the hero’s as he decapitated an enemy edited to look like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “The creativity of my team is off the charts,” tweeted Gosar.
People reacted predictably.
AOC called him a “wet toothpick,” which is where they should have left it because whoever follows her is going to have to pick up the mic off the floor where she dropped it.
But Congressional Democrats insisted upon the right to take understandable offense, demanded an apology that no one expected, invited Republicans to condemn what they clearly agreed with, censured Gosar to exactly no effect, and called it a day with a good “harumph.”
“The left doesn’t get meme culture. They have no joy. They are not the future. It’s a cartoon,” said Gosar’s digital director.
I definitely don’t get meme culture, but my sons do. Apparently this kind of thing goes on all the time in meme culture, though they allowed that perhaps a member of congress faced a different level of accountability than an angry little middle school boy.
“If they have more accountability as national leaders,” I asked, “is it disingenuous to say, ‘Hey, it’s just a meme!’”
“Yeah,” said my younger son. “It’s like this thing I saw.”
And then he texted the this:
Let the word go forth: Ted Cruz is Schrödinger’s Douchebag. I defy you to find a better descriptor of the man.
But hiding behind comedy’s privilege doesn’t fully explain the appeal of “Let’s Go Brandon,” which functions less as an excuse (as in “hey, I was just kidding”) than a coded signal that contains an element of the excuse. We all know what it means, but the encoded joke (“Let’s Go Brandon”) allows the aggressive vulgarity (“F*** Joe Biden”) to be chanted on live national television. There is no attempt to conceal, merely to claim public acceptance.
This isn’t breaking taboos to tell the truth but a perversion of that comedic tradition. This is the façade of comedy that encourages “this new kind of lifestyle approach of alpha maleness,” as Marc Maron put it in a recent interview of A. O. Scott, a culture critic at The New York Times that is well worth your time. “They’re uncancellable because there’s enough of them to sustain their universe. They don’t have to answer to cultural appropriateness or even be sensitive or sympathetic to people.”
I turned to my friend F for a historical precedent, and he noted that there’s a bit of the Know Nothings in “Let’s Go Brandon.” That 19th century nativist movement began as a secret organization. When members were asked if they were involved, they were told to say, “I know nothing.” People started making fun of them by calling them the Know Nothings, and the name stuck. But there is no attempt to conceal with “Let’s Go Brandon.”
We get a bit closer to the mark with the Boogaloo movement, a far-right, anti-government extremist movement in the United States. Stay with me a second, because this gets weird. The 1984 breakdancing sequel, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, sucked so bad that it gave rise to a template for sequels by adding “2: Electric Boogaloo” to the end. If I ever shut down this newsletter and start up a new one, I could call it The Experiment 2: Electric Boogaloo. And the Boogaloo boys want a second civil war, so they use the name.
Their name sounds silly, but they are up to serious stuff. They were the ones who were planning to kidnap the governor of Michigan and are often seen at anti-government rallies wearing tactical gear… and Hawaiian shirts and sometimes plastic leis. That’s how they can tell who their fellow Boogalooers are in a crowd full of anti-government extremists carrying AR-15s. Worn in this context, the Hawaiian shirt shares the textually non-threatening nature of “Let’s Go Brandon” but lacks its hutzpah. Part of the appeal of “Let’s Go Brandon,” I suspect, is that it drives Democrats nuts.
What, we’re just saying “Let’s Go Brandon,” they say. “You can’t take a joke.”
It wasn’t until I read the latest from the trial of the white supremacists in Charlottesville that “Let’s Go Brandon” finally made sense to me. Backed by Integrity First for America, a group led by my friend and hero Amy Spitalnick, plaintiffs are suing the neo-Nazis who organized the Unite the Right Rally that resulted in violence and the death of one protestor.
They brought in an expert to explain to the jury how they make themselves sound and look safe in public using code. They dress conservatively, cover tattoos, and generally try to appear as inoffensive and unremarkable as a clerk in a strip call mobile phone store. Also, they use sound-alike phrases to get away with saying the worst thing possible.
Instead of “Sieg Heil!” they ask each other upon greeting, “Did you see Kyle?”
That’s it right there. That’s “Let’s Go Brandon” for Nazis.
The Daily Stormer, the American neo-Nazi website, even publishes a style guide. “The tone of the site should be light. Most people are not comfortable with material that comes across as vitriolic, raging, nonironic hatred,” it reads. “The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not.”
Not being able to tell whether “Let’s Go Brandon” is a joke is part of the point. Recently, Greg Abbott sent out a fundraising appeal hawking “Let’s Go Brandon” wrapping paper as a way to “join strong patriots across they nation as they criticize Joe Biden’s DISASTROUS liberal policies.”
When people show you who they are, believe them. “Let’s Go Brandon” isn’t a secret password, a clever joke, or a coded message. It’s a rhetorical construct meant to allow people to shout in public what could previously only be said in private. And if you’re outraged and offended that they’ve found a Nazi-authored loophole in the public mores that allows them to gleefully chant “F*** Joe Biden” wherever they damn well please, then congratulations, because you’ve arrived at the point.
The point of “Let’s Go Brandon” is to make you feel useless and confused, because there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. What, you can’t take a joke?
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. He works at the Austin Independent School District as Chief of Communications and Community Engagement, though he would want to point out that these are his personal opinions and his alone, but you already knew that. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
How we’re getting through this
Catching up to grade level
Resisting the “looting” myth
Posthumously writing obituaries
Forgetting the Alamo in Zilker Park
Forgetting the Alamo at my alma mater
Forgetting the Alamo with Michael Caruso
Reporting the solution, not just the problem
Pre-ordering Sarah Bird’s engrossing Last Dance at the Starlight Pier
What I’m reading
David Brooks: “Joe Biden Is Succeeding” - Leave me alone, I don’t feel any better about including DaveBro than you do seeing his name here, but the man makes an excellent observation.
First-term presidents almost always see their party get hammered in the midterm after their inauguration. That’s especially true if the president achieved big things. Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossmann looked at House popular vote trends since 1953. Often when presidents succeeded in passing major legislation — Republicans as well as Democrats — voters swung against the president’s party.
Angie Jabine: “Forget the Alamo: Jason Stanford BA ’92 coauthors a modern reassessment of a legendary Texas battle.” - Got written up in the alumni mag!
Stanford isn’t fazed. “They like to say that politics is ROUGH in Texas, a full-contact sport,” says Stanford. “But there are no tanks being called out to shoot at protesters. And political rivals don’t murder each other like they do in Moscow,” he notes. “Being a Russian studies major, especially in the early ’90s, has helped me put what’s happening in Texas in its proper perspective.”
Kyle Lucia Wu: “Writing an Ordinary Existence” - Jebus, this is a gorgeous piece of writing.
How was I to communicate what it felt like, to have an ordinary day that felt like a seismic war?
Dan Zak: “What was COP26? A slog, a spectacle — and, for one youthful delegation, an opportunity.” - Great model for activism here.
Monterrey “has the capacity to look at the issue from the perspective of a young person with an activist’s mind-set and a negotiator who can sit at the table and pursue pragmatic solutions — and that’s an all-too-rare combination,” says Obama’s former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, who knows Monterrey through the Obama Foundation’s scholars program.
What I’m watching
Soraya Nadia McDonald’s review of Passing will make you not just want to watch the Netflix movie but read whatever she writes.
What I’m listening to
Percussionist and DJ Makaya McRaven is sampled the Blue Note vaults to create a fun jazz album. Read this review to understand what he’s up to.
Thanks to Noom, I lost 40 pounds and have kept it off for more than a year. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works. No, this isn’t an ad. Yes, I really lost all that weight with Noom.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House.
Hey Jason. Is the sky racist when it rains?
Did this guy try to tie racism to the "Let's Go Brandon" chant? Lmao!!! Democrats are so funny. Hey Jason!!! Is a plain hamburger racist bc their isn't any cheese on it? Lol.