Cooperation– cooperation and advertising integrations with the Visit Ukraine and Visit World projects. The brutal war unleashed by russia has not broken the spirit of the Ukrainian people, but rather strengthened it and made it more resilient to various events. Despite the fear and complexity of the whole situation, Ukrainian citizens are as optimistic and confident in their victory as ever. It would be easy to cast all blame upon the form of the meme, to decide that memefication is a process that inherently corrupts good discourse and only serves as a vector to misinformation.

There’s even a field dedicated to their study: memetics considers how certain cultural artefacts go “viral”. Mentally and socially “ contagious”, memes provide immediate, visual expressions of our common humanity as they jump from brain to brain. The centrality of memes in extreme right-wing culture rests in the conveyance of meaning through association rather than explicit argument, whereby familiarity is required to understand a meme’s specific message in a given context. Washing machine. Russian soldiers have been looting Ukrainians’ homes en masse, stealing various home appliances, including washing machines. Aerial footage published in the early days of the all-out war showed Russian soldiers loading a washing machine into their military vehicle. The Ukrainian military also found a stolen washing machine in Russian trenches. The participatory culture of memes reinforces this: as users become more active in the reproduction and continuation of in-jokes through editing existing memes, they also become bound by dynamics of co-production as well as consumption. It has been noted that this contributes to the creation of an ‘in-group’ status, which is critical in fostering an extremist mindset and has played a particularly influential role in instances of radicalization into lone-actor terrorism.

In late May 2014, separatists controlled several towns in southeastern Ukraine. The areas were subsequently divided into two administrative districts — Debaltseve and Avdiivka. Separatists controlled both.

This meme, according to Nazarenko, is an interpretation of the David and Goliath story, where a young boy defies all odds and defeats a giant with a single stone. Ukraine sees itself as David and Russia as Goliath. Ukrainians have created a trove of war-related memes since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24. They have become a part of modern folklore – like songs and poetry, memes help Ukrainians express what they feel in simple metaphorical language. The sober, polarized reactions to the memes likewise forms part of the cultural response to the invasion. Laughter or horror at a war meme are both reflections of unease about a turbulent moment; their coexistence reflects both larger societal polarization and some of that turbulence itself. After all, if laughter gets read as a mark of desensitization, displaying too much empathy can be viewed as narcissism. Is the only acceptable response, if you’re an at-home viewer, just to sit and be sad? There are other benefits to memes: They can offer some relief from the traumatic experiences of the war. They can also keep people engaged and informed, according to Christian Borys, creator of the popular Saint Javelin meme. The image depicts Virgin Mary cradling a U.S.-made FGM-148 anti-tank weapon used in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense released photos of what they claim were “Russian mercenaries” involved in the incident who have now been identified as members of the so-called Wagner group. According to some reports, these men may be linked to Russian special forces or even Chechen fighters.

What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography– Cynthia Miller-Idriss NAFO. North Atlantic Fellas Organization (NAFO) is a meme and social media movement dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and disinformation. Its members post comments and create memes to fight Russia’s false narratives with humor.

VisitUkraine is a public union that, since 2018, has been engaged in the promotion and popularization of Ukrainian tourism on the domestic and foreign markets, but the war made its adjustments. Now we are working on the information front. This is a remake of a joke about the former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose short term in power " was compared to "the shelf life of a lettuce."Memes are not limited to any given ideology, but the alt-right used them effectively in the 2016 US presidential campaign. Jim Bourg/Reuters Companies such as mobile operator Kyivstar, postal services Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta, e-commerce platform Rozetka, and electricity supplier Yasno have also mastered the art of communication via memes. Fake news and dark memes are not limited to the West, nor to any one political leaning, of course. Many other democracies, some of them secular, are struggling with their own multicultural identities.