Meme logic is less a departure from traditional fascist aesthetics than its logical conclusion. Mussolini used Ezra Pound to shape his voice and Hitler had Leni Riefenstahl to shape his image; Trump, by contrast, depends on the impersonal power of the algorithm. Images of cruelty proliferate, such as the official White House X feed sharing a Studio Ghibli-style cartoon depicting the arrest of a crying immigrant; a recent meme that declared the Democrats “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN”; or the AI-generated video promulgating the conspiracy theory that there are so-called “med-beds” capable of reversing illness. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff writes that, true to the analogy of memes being a virus, they serve to “bypass the neocortex — the thinking, feeling part of the brain — and go straight to the more primal brain stem beneath.” That’s equally the intent for those who love Trump and those of us who hate him, argues the writer and editor Ed Simon. “The White House sharing AI sl...