Yesterday, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. The image was instantly iconic—the angular form of the immolated vehicle against the hotel’s golden facade, crowned by the giant letters: TRUMP. The spectacle created a semiotic tableau of remarkable density, gesturing at the uneasy alliance between Musk’s technocratic vision and Trump’s gilded populism. With its overt symbolism and sheer visual impact, it was as if the scene had been designed to be memed. Sure enough, the image went viral online, racking up hundreds of millions of views, and spawning jokes and re-interpretations which themselves went viral and amplified the act’s symbolic force.
A few weeks earlier, an equally iconic spectacle unfolded in the perp walk of Luigi Mangione, as choreographed by Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD. The scene was strikingly cinematic: Mangione stood perfectly centered, singled out in his orange jumpsuit against a phalanx of cops clad in black bulletproof vests and wielding rifles. “I wanted to look him in the eye and say you carried out this terroristic act in my city — the city that the people of New York love, and I wanted to be there to show the symbolism of that," said Adams.
Unfortunately for Adams, it appears that this attempt at political theater backfired. As the image circulated through digital networks, its meaning inverted: rather than signifying the triumph of state authority, the visual staging of Mangione's isolated figure against an overwhelming display of force cast him more as a martyr than a murderer, even drawing comparisons to Superman and Jesus.
Yet Adams’ mobilization of the symbolic power of the image reveals a fundamental truth in contemporary political spectacle—the most effective political acts are highly meme-able. On January 1st, the same day as the Cybertruck explosion, two other acts of terror occurred—a truck that plowed through New Orleans’ Bourbon Street killing 14 people, and a shooting at a New York nightclub that injured 10—but none were so widely discussed as the flaming Cybertruck outside the Trump hotel’s entrance. The difference was not the scale of violence but the absence of a singular, iconic image that could catalyze memetic spread.
The efficacy of acts of political violence now lies in their memetic potential rather than their material consequences or immediate newsworthiness. The act takes on a second life across digital networks, where it continues to wage psychic warfare through photos, videos, and memes. As political actors internalize this logic of spectacle, violent acts are increasingly conceived with memetic spread in mind, with aesthetic and symbolic considerations influencing their form and execution.
President Trump, a classically-trained master of spectacle through decades of legacy media experience, showcased his skill with the image in the July 2024 assassination attempt. In a deft maneuver, he transformed the attempt on his life into a powerful piece of political iconography, hijacking and redirecting the power of the act into a viral image that would serve his own ends. The defining photo, which shows Trump bloodied but defiant, fist raised against the backdrop of an American flag, quickly became a symbol of triumph and resilience for his supporters in the months leading up to the election.
The aftermath of the assassination attempt also underscored the recursive interplay between the production of imagery and its reception. In the following days, Trump was photographed with a bandage on his ear, a look that was quickly adopted by his supporters who also donned the white bandages in an act of solidarity. Through this dialectical relationship between the digital and physical worlds, the act’s symbolic impact was not only sustained but amplified, creating a feedback loop in which Trump and his audience mutually reinforced and extended the political narrative.
In an information-saturated world, the function of political violence becomes increasingly semiotic, making its digital afterlife the primary locus of power. The visual economy of digital culture prioritizes images that are immediately legible, symbolically dense, and emotionally resonant—qualities that enable their rapid spread across networked audiences. As a result, acts of political violence are no longer conceived for material impact or to generate immediate reportage, but are designed with their memetic potential in mind, privileging symbolism and aesthetic resonance. These acts of violence now act as raw material for future images meant to be memed and circulated. In the regime of the spectacle, the boundary between political action and aesthetic production dissolves. Meme logic infiltrates the real world.