By Scott DeJong
About and origin
Over the course of the 2019 Federal Election campaign, multiple memes presented Justin Trudeau as a sexual predator. Someone who groped, or made inappropriate sexual advances on young women. Different meme templates were used across different (mostly conservative) political meme pages.
The meme recontextualizes the image of Trudeau in blackface into allegations of him as a groper. The original image is from an ‘Arabian Nights’ party that Trudeau attended when teaching at a private school in 2001 (Kambhampaty et al., 2019). Using an arrow, the meme highlights Trudeau’s hands, using a text below to insinuate his actions as inappropriate. The meme does not make any direct allegations against Trudeau, but plays into recent attempts to create a sex scandal around him. The image originated on Twitter under the hashtag #blackfacescandal. It was proliferated across other social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit), and was consistently shared among groups and individuals.
Context and circulation
After Trudeau’s blackface scandal brought his past into public light, the story probed further investigation into Trudeau’s previous role as a teacher, and subsequently provoked suspicion that another scandal was about to break (Ling, 2019). Rumours emerged on the Buffalo Chronicle on October 7, 2019 that suggested Trudeau was suppressing “an explosive sex scandal” (Buffalo Chronicle, 2019). On the same day, the Conservative Party posted an article on their website titled, “Why did Justin Trudeau leave his teaching job at West Point Grey Academy?”. This led to a cascade of rumours which proliferated without extensive proof. Building from this, a 2018 article from The Guardian resurfaced which discussed Trudeau apologizing to a reporter whom he had allegedly groped, stating that he was “confident he did not act inappropriately” (Kassam, 2018). While no official story came out, rumours were successful in transitioning the blackface meme towards framing Trudeau as a ‘groper’. Eventually, the allegations were debunked, but memes and other conspirists continued to push the narrative (McIntosh, 2019).
Analysis
The meme insinuates that Trudeau is a sexual predator who mistreats women, a claim for which little factual evidence was presented while the rumor was spreading online.
There are parallels between the use of these “groping memes” and conspiracy theories which establish convoluted backstories of alleged (moral) corruption of political leaders through unsubstantiated claims. The relationship between politics and conspiracy has a long history, however the meme format can function as an effective new way to transition fact to myth. In The Paranoid Style of American Politics, Richard J. Hofstadter argues that the modern American Right uses conspiracy to “embrace betrayal at home” (Hofstadter 1964 p. 24). He suggests that conspiracy is effectively used to discredit power figures, where the facts are extrapolated to present a narrative of corruption. While Hofstadter’s analysis of the modern Right refers to the 1960s, his arguments about their use of conspiracy still apply to today’s context.
The transition from Trudeau as racist to Trudeau as groper emulates Hofstadter’s argument. He states:
[T]he sexual freedom often attributed to the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and express unacknowledgeable aspects of their own psychological concerns. Catholics and Mormons–later, Negroes and Jews–have lent themselves to a preoccupation with illicit sex. Very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sado-masochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments. (p. 85)
As Hofstadter argues, conspiracists commonly apply their own moral sexual concerns onto a target, which we see in the case of Trudeau. The attack on Trudeau’s character emulates the projection of illicit sexual actions.
Memes help perform this action. By de-contextualizing images, removing them from their initial context and using text to re-contextualize and present a new message, the narrative of Trudeau as a groper is proliferated. Critical for the rumour about Trudeau to succeed was the consistent discussion of the narrative and discrediting of sources that prove the conspiracy as wrong (Oved, 2019). Memes help facilitate these processes. By making statements without proof, memes can discredit other claims while propagating the conspiracy theory further. In the context of conspiracy, memes help establish a link in thinking, where a known news story such as the blackface scandal can be attuned to paranoid, unfounded thought. Meme makers placed Trudeau into a new context, framing his character under different points of critique. The consistent imagery of this framing makes it challenging for audiences to decipher fact from fiction without doing personal fact checking. As these examples highlight, political memes exist on a fine line between propaganda and satire, where ideas, facts and jokes coalesce in partisan accessible formats.
References
Conservative Party of Canada. (2019). Why did Justin Trudeau leave his teaching job at West Point Grey Academy? Conservative.ca. https://www.conservative.ca/why-did-justin-trudeau-leave-his-teaching-job-at-west-point-grey-academy/
Hofstadter, R. (1964). The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Harvard University Press. United States. Paperback 1996.
Kambhampaty, A., Carlisle, M., & Chan, M. (2019). Justin Trudeau Wore Brownface at 2001 ‘Arabian Nights’ Party While He Taught at a Private School. Time. https://time.com/5680759/justin-trudeau-brownface-photo/
Kassam, A. (2018, July 6). Trudeau: I apologised to reporter behind groping claim. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/06/trudeau-i-apologised-at-once-to-reporter-behind-groping-claim-canada-2000-music-festival
Ling, J. (2019). Rumours Of A Suppressed Globe Story About Justin Trudeau Are Bullshit. CanadaLandshow.com. https://www.canadalandshow.com/rumours-of-suppressed-trudeau-affair-story-are-bullshit/
McIntosh, E. (2019, October 10). A fake Justin Trudeau sex scandal went viral. Canada’s election-integrity law can’t stop it. National Observer. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/10/10/news/fake-justin-trudeau-sex-scandal-went-viral-canadas-election-integrity-law-cant-stop
Oved, M. C. (2019, October 10). Anatomy of a manufactured election scandal. The Hamilton Spectator. https://www.thespec.com/news-story/9638902-anatomy-of-a-manufactured-election-scandal/