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Writer's pictureEshal Zahur

Kamala Harris is Brat: A Meme-ified Political Campaign

This piece was originally published in the September 2024 issue of Pandora Curated.


Kamala Harris in Brat Green filter

In the teeming cesspool of American politics, where endorsements feel like they are stuffed into kid's goodie bags at a five-year-old's birthday party, one voice has risen above them all—defining the ethos of a generation. It is not Oprah. It is not even Beyoncé. How ironic it is that it is not even Mark Ruffalo posting eco-friendly Instagram stories into the void of celebrity tabloids! It is Charli XCX—British pop singer, pop musician, and now seemingly the unexpected queenmaker of Kamala Harris' presidential bid. Honestly, how did Charli do it? Not through impassioned speeches or a carefully crafted op-ed, but with three curt and cryptic words that blew up the Internet: "Kamala IS brat." 


No grand intros or policy breakdowns. Just Charli XCX, her iPhone, and a world-altering X post (formerly known as a tweet).  


The Viral Explosion


In mere moments, Charli’s post with its bold lowercase aesthetics exploded across the digital landscape like a ringtone from 2005. “Kamala IS brat” trended, garnered millions of retweets, unfurled in Reddit threads, and was memed into oblivion. Harris’s own X account wasted no time hopping on to the bandwagon, taking advantage of going viral, changing their profile image to neon chartreuse—the same shade from Charli’s album cover for Brat. Harris, typically something of a sharp interlocutor in debates and adroit at maneuvering her bureaucratic post, had been transmitted into the realm of being a celebrity—a rebel—because brat was no longer just a word; it was a vibe.


What did Charli even mean by "brat"? A criticism? An endorsement? An avant-garde form of political analysis? Nobody knows for sure, and that’s the genius. It was the precise kind of meme whose efficacy was predicated on cultural literacy—if you were not immersed in Charli XCX's neon club aesthetic, chances are you wouldn't even have noticed, or at least understood, unless you were adept at comprehending rare memes. You see, a good meme is not simply a joke or aside; not simply, or reductively, a polemic, however clever, but to me, quite vociferously a gatekeeping attempt. It is a blocking out of one group from another, a sort of inside joke that both overtakes and penetrates through the consciousness of the general public. Charli's brat meme was outright the key to the coolest "club" in political endorsements. 


Memes: The New Political Endorsement


Charli's minimalist endorsement wasn't simply an instance of pop cultural lightning; it was, what I refer to as, a political mindbomb. It is a term coined by Bob Hunter, a co-founder of Greenpeace after he sent an image of a bleeding whale to the media so they could shock and enrage the public into action. Today we refer to political mindbombs as memes and they have become the currency for today's political dialogue.

 

Memes in politics are as important as fast food is to culinary arts. Memes are fast, disposable, universally digestible, and leave little intellectual impact. They are vile little things filled with low nutritional weight. And yet, like fast food, they pack a caloric punch. In this age of attention spans measured in nanoseconds, a meme will reach more people in seconds than any campaign ad could reach, ever. Just ask Hillary Clinton: her campaign's ill-fated trial to harness the power of the Pepe the Frog meme in her 2016 campaign ended badly when the meme mutated into something much worse.


The element that makes Charli's simple three-word endorsement so great is that it is a perfect encapsulation of the definition of a political mindbomb. It featured an explosive amount of content that cuts through the noise, grabs your attention, and stampedes into your brain. Soon after Charli's endorsement, Harris' team embraced the neon glow of the brat aesthetic that had been waiting to cross over professionally. 


But let’s face it: considering that policy wonks rarely trend on Twitter, any replacement of that content with some Gen Z-friendly trend would have been the best thing that happened to Harris since... well, ever. 


A Suit, a Senator, and Some Serious Vibes


In a most extraordinary transformation, Kamala Harris has become a brat. She has gone from her cocoon and emerged as a butterfly. Here is a woman who has spent her work life traversing the office-infested corridors of government buildings, interviewing individuals before the Supreme Court bench, and jousting with other politicians about serious matters of immigration, health care, and criminal justice reform. And now? Now she is living her best brat life, courtesy of the vibes gifted to her by Charli XCX. Does it matter what she believes about immigration or police reform? No, because she’s a relatable trend. After all, puns matter more than politics for the politically unengaged privileged youth. The elections are, after all, fodder for cracking a joke. 

 

And let us be clear, this is a serious political strategy. In our current moment—how can someone truly win the minds of the public without becoming a social media influencer? Image is everything, without which you are nothing more than another cog in the system. After all, Harris has a reputation for being bright and serious. Why not try out a little bit of bratty irreverence?

 

Associating a person who could be the next President of the United States with a one-dimensional image of a young woman who, in XCX's words, "just likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes," is a serious rebranding. It adds an obvious shot of fun and relatable emotional content to Harris's largely vacant public presentation. In today's meme-driven culture, engaging people with serious messages about helping those in need is shifting passive attitudes to political awareness. Relatability matters more than a 10-point policy plan.


The Danger of the Meme


Let us proceed with a note of caution. Memes are like fire; they can be useful but can burn you if not handled well. The Democrats learned this the hard way in 2016 when they took on the meme of Pepe the Frog and helped it evolve as an alt-right symbol. In other words, Ed Miliband, former UK Labour leader, became a walking meme after a meme of him awkwardly eating a bacon sandwich went viral. The “bacon sarnie incident” did nothing to enhance the image of a relatable, everyman candidate; it may have indeed cost him the election. 


Memes are subversive by their very nature. They exist to expose, to skew, to poke fun, to elicit some reaction ranging from joy to cringiness. They thrive on sarcasm and irony and they have no rules about consistency or nuance. So while Harris may enjoy the viral moment that was their brat rebrand, there is always the chance the very meme will swing back at them, and her attempts to seem relatable become yet another entry into the “cringe-worthy things politicians do” bucket. Maybe this is Kamala’s road to becoming cool to the apolitical youth, or maybe this is just her 15 minutes of fame.


Kamala IS Brat—Whatever That Means


Ultimately, Charli XCX’s endorsement of Kamala Harris is a beautiful snapshot of the world we live in—utter chaos, beauty, absurdity. It’s a world where a three-word meme post of a British pop star can send political campaigns on a loop. This is the world where vibes matter more than policies, where gauche neon chartreuse may ostensibly be the key to the white house. 


In the year 2024, Kamala Harris could indeed become the first brat president, perhaps guiding the free world with a combination of political wit and recklessness in rebellion, or perhaps she will be at least the only candidate to have ever rode a meme to the Oval Office.  



 

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