Abstract

In 1976, Richard Dawkins introduced the idea of a meme. Like a gene, it could proliferate and spread cultural information. In the subsequent decades, the meme has become a commonplace method of transmitting information online, commonly referencing popular culture. This article takes seriously the power of memes as a device of information warfare. It builds upon previous research conducted in fields from communication to immunology and war studies to argue that memes act as white rabbits, drawing people towards conspiracy theories and misinformation. This article argues from a Realist Constructivist theoretical basis. It assumes that states will act out of self-interest to defend their strategic objectives through memes and information warfare, and that powerful actors will work to construct memes to spread ideas and ideology. However, this article also understands that there are limits to state power and acknowledges that other actors may play a key role in memetic and information warfare.

"You can resist the invasion of armies,

"You can't resist the invasion of ideas"

-  Victor Hugo

What’s in the meme?

Since Dawkins' first description of the meme in The Selfish Gene , various competing definitions have developed with varying levels of helpfulness and colloquial appeal., Dawkins later refined his definition, adding coadaptive ideas, such as law and justice. The same can be said of modern warfare, where memes have evolved alongside other forms of informational attacks. However, this addition fails to deliver a logical distinction. Following Dawkins’ general definitions leads the reader to a strange, undefined no man's land between digital virality and the meme. It is evident that both share some traits; the meme, to be effective, requires a level of virality that allows it to share information. However, it possesses niches which virality does not. For this, it is far more useful to examine the usage of memes in conflict and international relations by using Shifman’s definition, with certain caveats: “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users.” The final part of Shifman’s definition is the most critical, as it includes an element of virality. Memes share many of these characteristics, most notably the consistent trait of virality, in that they are massively popular. Yet even Shifman’s definition lacks something fundamental about the nature of memetic warfare: memes operate like a mind virus, and once released into the wilds of the internet, they spread, mutate, and adapt much like pathogens. To understand memetic warfare, it is essential to note that after an actor releases a meme, they lose control over how the meme works or functions. It can be modified beforehand and tailored to influence a given subculture or group. After the meme is injected into the internet, it spreads, with its impact being more profound in certain areas than others. It is important to point out that, unlike the Frankfurt School and the hypodermic needle theory, this article does not suggest that culture is homogeneous, or that the observer is passive, as Stuart Hall and other sociologists have discussed. Rather, memetic warfare requires that those observing the meme are active, becoming vectors for the spread of more memes and information to destabilise or disrupt the target state.

Before proceeding, it is important to understand that memetic warfare need not be waged within the guise of a traditional declared war. Rather, like other forms of information warfare and the spreading of disinformation, it is waged constantly as actors attempt to undermine others and further their own goals. Critically, actors with the means to do so construct the messages to be conveyed by these memes. Given the ubiquity of computers, global internet access, and the recent proliferation of public A.I. models, an actor of almost any size can, with minimal technical knowledge, start a large-scale disinformation campaign. However, states and other large actors, such as terrorist groups, have the advantage of manpower, computing power, and willingness to counter these attacks. These actors construct the meme and the message behind it, and then spread it across the internet.

Theoretical conceptualisation of the meme

Soft power:

Beyond sharp interpretations of memes, there is also a basis to suggest that memes are foundational in actors' abilities to increase their soft power capacities. This follows Nye’s understanding of soft power as the ideational, economic, and cultural exports of a country that give it influence. Given the proliferation of social media platforms, the ability to create memes that resonate with tens of millions, if not billions, of people is an irresistible prospect for generating soft power. While it is difficult to prove that states themselves have been responsible for the proliferation of memes, memes themselves have become part of the organic creation of culture, which, beyond a certain point, the state cannot control due to limitations in resources. It nevertheless amplifies state influence within the system, allowing them to leverage other states and create images, perhaps for self-preservation among domestic audiences, but also as a manipulative tool. This is because memes are intrinsic to a nation’s culture. Memes, and what is considered to be funny, are linked to the various and inherent cultural views within a nation. Take, for example, the rise of the “keep calm and carry on” meme. While initially this meme had been locked firmly within the British Isles, it was designed to reinforce the idea of Britishness and stoicism. It has since become a global phenomenon and effectively extends British soft power and influence, taking up a similar position to cultural exports that came from traditional media organisations such as the BBC. Given that studies into the cultural impact of memes are in their cultural infancy, it is difficult to argue the significance of this point. However, it is essential to consider which states have the largest presence on social media, which memes (templates) are the most popular, and to explore various interpretations of memes and their meanings.

Sharp power:

Memetic warfare provides an opportunity for manipulation beyond standard cultural exports. They have, in recent years, played an increasingly important role in the maintenance of US hegemonic power around the world, allowing for the continued export of US culture, as well as the continuation of seemingly liberal values on a global level. Fundamentally, hegemonic powers can spread their cultural values through the use of memes, influencing populations for strategic advantage. These values and norms are constructed by powerful actors, with the hegemonic power acting as the heaviest centre of norm creation. While there is undoubtedly a nature of free-floating, the ideas embodied in memes are linked to constructed cultures. That is to say, the Liberal constructivist conception of decentralised information and values is disconnected from the reality of memes, which are inherently tied to the powerful and their ideational power, which stems both from their military strength and cultural prowess.

Memes, therefore, stand as a new form of statecraft, low-cost and enabling powerful actors to use more methods to shift and destabilise the nature of other states. While previously influencing cultures and populations directly was difficult, the democratisation of the internet benefits the strongest actors in the international system, providing them with a mostly passive method of influence. Of course, it would be incorrect to argue that powerful actors have full control over the information space, as individuals do not all bend to the will of actors and are distinctly separate from them in terms of living their lives. However, if a culture has been constructed that believes in certain values, it provides a bank of ideational influences to change the way others think. While much of the action can be state-directed, often, particularly in domestically liberal societies, there is a consistent presence of memetic warfare, not directed by the state, but by universalising ideologies such as liberalism.

This argument, however, does not devalue Realism, but rather disputes much of the argument made by neo-realists and neo-liberalists. In the online space, it is difficult to make the argument around state control and action in the same way as traditional geopolitical IR.

Of course, liberals may place more emphasis upon non-state actors, such as NGOs or IGOs. However, it is difficult to foresee the need for these organisations to use memetic warfare. While they may attempt to influence actors and populations of the need for their existence, it would be extremely unlikely for the WHO to promote memes that taunt a state or attempt to subvert a domestic political process. This is both because they are largely dependent upon states to provide funding, but also because they are often beholden to state demands for certain actions.

The argument can also be made that other non-state actors, such as technology companies, have a powerful role. This is indisputably true. Yet, it is difficult to disconnect these companies from the states in which they are based. This is, as Zuboff has argued, because there has been an increased domestic security integration between states and technology companies post 9/11. Taking this argument further, there has been increased cooperation between companies and states on a national and international security level, which has allowed states to attempt to control the internet and counter its decentralised nature in order to further their own aims. We can see this link most starkly in China, where government intervention in social media platforms is overt, as opposed to the more inconspicuous nature of many Western governments.

Having established this theoretical framework, the following sections will apply it to the practical actions of domestic and foreign actors in the memetic battlespace.

Using the meme?

When discussing memetic warfare, it is essential to recognise that it cannot wholly transform the entirety of a state's political and information systems. Through various pieces of research, it has been established across various fields that culture, and therefore information, is not homogeneous. Furthermore, it would be difficult to make the argument that memes alone would make massive changes. It is impossible for one information device to make such profound changes to the understanding of international actions, or indeed the ability to change the minds of a domestic population. Rather, the meme is intended to find susceptible groups who are more likely to believe what the meme suggests. This is aided by mechanisms within social media algorithms which target retention and aim to keep individuals engaged. It is these features that make well-placed memes easier to disseminate and self-spread, allowing them to have a disruptive capacity. Rather than changing the opinions and minds of individuals, memes act as a white rabbit; they are to be followed down the information rabbit hole, in the hope of changing or modifying the way people perceive the world in some way. Because of the nature of algorithms, individuals who engage with distributed meme content are likely to find more. This is why it is rare to see states creating new conspiracy theories or disinformation through memes, but rather clinging to already conceived disinformation and disruption, which actors may have already created. Memes, therefore, are not a strategy in themselves, but rather a large part of information warfare.

Having described what memes cannot do, the question stands: what can memes do? Fundamentally, this is challenging given the diverse nature of memes and their content. Actors have the ability to construct the initial meme, allowing them to craft a narrative that they would like to proliferate. This can help to modify some of the domestic population's perceptions around the state, and typically feed into nationalist feelings in order to provide some basis to their claims, such as British First World War propaganda depicting the Germans as “the hun”. This is just one example of a pre-social media meme designed to change perceptions.

However, in a modern setting, it is more useful to examine the Russia-Ukraine war (began in 2014). Fundamentally, while there have been efforts at disinformation and offensive memetic warfare to advance a foreign actor's position, there has been large-scale defensive memetic warfare, which has aimed to maintain domestic security and national identity from external threats. While states wish to push their position on the international stage, they also need to protect their identity and domestic populations. This requires them to produce narratives to insulate or protect themselves from physical and psychological threats from abroad. Of course, it is not a dialectical matter; states can both preserve their identities and their physical security by rallying troops with memetic propaganda.

Memes also do not exist in a vacuum; individuals operate on the basis of competing information sources and disputed facts. This means that there is an opportunity for actors to compete for attention with their memes and information warfare. This requires more people power than simple memetic warfare; it requires information updates, constant attention, and resources to be used. There will be competing ideational concepts produced by different actors, which they will directly counter with memes shared by others in an attempt to produce more competitively attractive information to serve their own ends.

This entails actors finding specific groups who are being targeted and redoubling their efforts towards them, enabling them to better counter the actions of others. However, it is worth noting that defensive memetic warfare most often takes the form of memes to reinforce national identity. This can be done by pulling on national myths or heroes. For example,  following US attacks early in 2025, the Iranian government used images of archers. Fundamentally, these pull on preconstructed notions which are linked to contemporary issues, and draw upon collective memory, which has been passed down generationally. This, however, requires a strong national link between various groups, and for memory to be highly concentrated. Yet, certain groups will likely have weaker connections between the nation and the community for myriad reasons. Take, for example, separatist groups. These may be the most susceptible groups due to more tenuous links to the state; this is the white rabbit. The memes act as a link to continued conspiracy or alternative views, allowing individuals to move into a different understanding of the world because of the vehicle of the meme.

The domestic position:

Building from the Iranian position, domestic actors will always attempt to reinforce their own images and protect their own standings with their own populations. State actors will often use memes to further the image they are trying to convey. They do this by targeting specific groups with memes, tailoring their message to draw disparate groups into the state’s way of viewing the world. Memes allow state and domestic actors to reinforce the messages they wish to promulgate. They can be distributed through official channels or through bots and other less traditional distributions. Bots can be particularly useful for disseminating information in dubious ways, especially when they cannot be traced due to manipulation, which in turn leads to easier modification of understanding. Bots can be of further use in mass dissemination to multiple groups, which can prove critical in countering foreign actors, particularly when riots erupt. By releasing thousands of rabbit colonies - each with their own particular subtexts and understandings - domestic actors can exert control over certain online spaces to move individuals towards a certain position.

It is this same mass dissemination that enables states to counteract the efforts of foreign actors to destabilise them. By using the same tactics, domestic actors are able to reduce the effects of foreign actors. Moreover, using memes allows domestic actors to reinforce their own images and ideology. In pressing their own ideas through memes, they can target those who might be susceptible to influence by foreign actors. This is, however, not an infallible strategy as information warfare can overcome a domestic actor's ability to contain it, usually because of the volume of accounts and devices used to influence populations. While actors can attempt to block individual accounts, this remains ineffective for mass-scale attacks.

These counterattacks will target individual subcultures and groups that the state has an interest in preserving from foreign actors. This operates in a similar manner to parties during election campaigns, where memes and messaging are targeted towards specific groups. When examining states such as Russia and China, there have been instances of mass domestic memetic functions designed to maintain popular support. However, there is a difference between democratic regimes and authoritarian regimes. These differences are not merely to do with legal structure, but also with surveillance. Following 9/11, most Western states have developed a digital security apparatus, as outlined by Zuboff and others. Authoritarian regimes have far more expansive social surveillance systems, which enable them to more accurately assess groups and, therefore, target them. This is further aided by state-controlled social media companies, which can enable the censoring of certain terms. In comparison, social media companies in democracies are less incentivised to cooperate with states. As a result, there is a globally critical ideational role to be played by media companies in memetic warfare.

Given that these companies are able to set the rules of the game, they have the ability to prohibit certain information or types of information from certain sources. Notably, the state still has leverage over these companies, which allows them to act within domestic and international settings to conduct memetic and broader information warfare.

It is also important to note that certain populations may have an increased level of susceptibility. The popularity of a regime will play a large part in the success or failure of a memetic device. If a government is broadly unpopular, it would be difficult for a memetic device to succeed, given that its narrative is unlikely to be believed. This may lead to an increased likelihood of the usage of bots for memetic purposes. Doubtless, the same unpopularity which makes domestic actors' memetic actions less feasible makes the actions of adversarial actors more feasible. This is because memes are reliant upon pre-constructed narratives and ideas. They can simply act like white rabbits, meaning that unpopular actors are less likely to have their interpretation understood. In these instances, foreign actors will likely choose to exploit this unpopularity anonymously.

The foreign actor:

Foreign actors are never wholly reliant upon memetic warfare to influence others. Memetic warfare comprises a vast array of information war tactics that foreign agents can use to destabilise, alter, or change the way others engage in international politics. Foreign actors may wish to destabilise the political landscape of adversarial states to further their own interests. This, to an extent, explains the nature of information control within states such as China. Governments will seek explicitly to prevent the spread of memes because of the damaging and disadvantageous effects that they can have on domestic populations as they rally against government officials. This partly explains why the CCP moved to remove images of Winnie the Pooh from Chinese social media networks, something which quickly became associated with President Xi and poor leadership from the CCP. This can also be seen with the spread of the Gay clown meme: “Dean Cooper-Cunningham’s visual analysis of the Gay Clown Putin meme in Russia, for instance, demonstrates how this rhizomatic structure of the memescape creates a queer disruptive space for ‘critical political interventions that might challenge [the] international security policy’ of Russia, which relies on the articulation and securitisation of cisheteronormative nationhood.”

Because of the nature of memes, they can use humour, which in a sense is highly political, but due to the often satirical nature, it lacks much of the scrutiny and oversight of other forms of information distribution. “Comedy itself is ‘serious politics’ – a productive, imaginative, and relational ‘practice of political resistance in its own right’ that demonstrates individual and collective inclination to contest hierarchies, hold differing opinions, and critically reflect on politics. Consequently, as Brassett argues, humour can (de)legitimate political structures, contest power relations, or encourage reimagination of various aspects of politics and society.” Brassett’s argument provides nuance that helps us to understand the power of the meme. By nature, humour can be disarming, particularly since politics can often appear comical because of its seeming disconnection from the lives of most individuals living within a given polity.

Foreign actors can attempt to spread their message through social media channels, using domestic cultural identities to influence subculture groups, attempting to move them further from what their governments wish them to believe. Effectively, foreign actors can reinforce existing discontent through the use of memetic warfare. Foreign actors must ensure that they integrate local culture and customs by paying close attention to historical memory. This means that historical memories of shame and destruction in war are critical to an effective memetic campaign. A failure to heed cultural differences will lead to poorer memetic performance.

Foreign actors, therefore, need to spend time tailoring the nature of memes. However, when memes are deployed, it is impossible for actors to control them. They are therefore reliant upon social media algorithms, as much as they are by good design and action. Furthermore, there is a need to consider the volume of memes used.

Actors can attempt to flood the zone, pushing an enormous number of memes through bots. Actors wish to control the information space, squeezing out other information and deceiving users into believing their account. By releasing droves of white rabbits, actors are able to systematically take over online space, removing opposition to their ideas. While this will not be completely successful, countermeasures can be deployed both by oppositional actors and by social media companies, which likely cooperate with state actors. HoweverIn addition, sheer volume alone will not convince everyone. Research from Pew has found that only 28% of individuals say that social media is important in keeping up to date with the news. Conversely, a study from Manchester University has found that there is a kind of blind trust in the information which individuals see online. The chances of success are relatively high for foreign actors. Of course, if effectiveness is measured as a percentage of the total population converted to a given belief or led down a given rabbit hole, it will seem less effective. However, the primary purpose of memetic warfare is more about information disruption than wholesale societal destruction. The nature of memetic warfare is not one of a solo strategy of destabilisation, but rather as one combined with various other features of information, traditional war and disinformation. It acts as a powerful enabler for a state's broader strategic actions.

Before or during conflicts, we can observe upticks in memetic warfare, when actors attempt to disrupt the information space and reduce individuals' ability to understand what is happening around them. This can be particularly effective when targeting subcultures which are disconnected from central governments. These groups may be oppressed, poor, disparate, or ethnic minorities who do not share the national identity with those in power. Memetic devices offer other actors the opportunity to damage collective identities and shift strategic positions to their benefit. Fundamentally, memes are a device which forwards the needs of foreign actors.

Countermeasures

While much of this paper might give the impression that memetic warfare is an insurmountable challenge to the state, that would be an overstatement of the power which memes and information warfare have for the state. There are various countermeasures that may be deployed by actors to avoid some of the effects of memetic warfare.

At a state level, actors can establish agencies to identify and address misinformation, as well as implement digital literacy programs and logic education. These kinds of passive defence can be exceptionally useful in reducing the potency of the memetic devices. Furthermore, states can set up rapid support agencies to counteract the spread of misinformation online. Of course, more traditional paths such as sanctions and the potential use of force are options to counter the effects of memetic warfare. This does not mean that any of these strategies will be completely effective; however, in the eyes of states seeking to maintain order and domestic legitimacy, it is better than nothing.

Given the nature of the internet, direct government action and its effects are severely limited. Most of the countermeasures are limited to and by social media companies. The role of the state is not diminished, but rather that social media companies have to act as an intermediary between the state and memetic devices. There are, of course, differences between authoritarian and liberal democratic states. Where authoritarian states have more control over social media and the internet, liberal regimes may have ideational difficulty with using some of the same tactics. Those who control social media and internet algorithms are able to divert traffic and prevent certain kinds of information from being shared on their platforms, thus, stemming the flow of memetic devices and information warfare. These companies also have the power and the resources, without the review of courts, to ban and disable accounts which appear to be sharing memes or seem to be attempting to share false information.

There are also various passive measures that allow states to counteract information warfare. Educating citizens in internet safety, similar to Finland, and ensuring access to reliable information from traditional media sources on both social and traditional broadcast mediums can help dispel false information and enable states to develop passive countermeasures, reducing the impact of constant information warfare. These processes and this education mean that the power of memetic warfare shifts, moving agency from the aggressor to the defender, allowing them to construct countermeasures that can largely banish, in combination with active defences, the worst effects of memetic warfare. While it is still largely dependent upon the ability of governments and organisations to remain popular, there can be a high level of diffusion.

Beyond this, companies may revert to recently abandoned practices such as information warnings and labels attached to content. These solutions doubtless raise questions around the nature of liberty and for the internet to be free from control. However, we can already see that internet companies, at the request of states, have acted to curb some of these freedoms and liberties in the name of countering misinformation.

The future?

Given the nature of the internet and the current state of technology, it seems obvious that some changes will be necessary in the future. With the advent of publicly available generative AI, it will become easier to create memes. Furthermore, while the public has had access to AI for a number of years, states and companies have had access for a little over a decade. AI provides an opportunity for significantly easier memetic and information warfare. The ability to create information and generate lifelike videos (deepfakes) and then disseminate them using AI agents to specific groups, means that there can be increased precision in memetic warfare, as well as wider applicability. Publicly available AI models will allow non-state actors such as terrorist groups to engage in large-scale memetic warfare in ways that we have yet to see. While Daesh, at the height of its power as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), used videos and messaging groups to recruit individuals, the use of AI-created memes deployed by AI agents will allow groups to target subcultures and more accurately find new recruits. This will doubtless prove to be deeply problematic for domestic policing and will require new levels of regulation and cooperation both within and outside states. It will also allow them to flood the zone, pushing massive numbers of white rabbits, enabling individual small-scale acts to do what previously was only possible for state or large organisational actors.

While concepts of the metaverse have largely failed to inspire popular imagination, with MetaMETA largely rolling back much of its investment, should the metaverse begin to encroach upon the real-world experience of individuals, it is possible that memetic and information warfare may become increasingly effective. The increasing amount of time spent in the metaverse would allow actors to influence people and the perception of their reality. If an individual is surrounded for hours per day, not just through a screen, but in their perception of the room they stand in, it is not difficult to imagine that they could become influenced. Furthermore, the idea that immersion in digital zones will increase disinformation is something we have already observed with increased time spent on social media and the internet. Given that individuals' perceptions of reality are altered by screen time, the likelihood that the metaverse will influence them seems almost inevitable.

The final, and likely most important development, relates to the fragmentation of the internet. While many will be aware of the effects and nature of the ‘Great Firewall of China’ , around the world today, we see the division of the internet, with countries being split into different zones. While China’s control is the most profound example of this, the demise of net neutrality is spreading globally. The UK's ‘Online Safety Act’ is the most prominent within liberal democratic societies. Government regulation of the internet means that cross-border flows of information will become increasingly obstructed. While this will prove useful for State governments, it may significantly hinder the actions of foreign actors attempting to influence foreign populations. Yet, it also proves to be a dampener for the ability of internet companies to exist, and will likely be subject to much tumult in democratic societies, provided that the public takes notice. Should the internet continue to fragment, due to algorithms and regulation, memetic warfare will likely become more difficult. However, this is far from clear. It is entirely possible that the division of the internet will lead to internal proliferation of memes, and it is important to consider that it only takes one rabbit to lead individuals down the rabbit hole.

Case study: Post-2014 Russia/Ukraine conflict:

Ukraine: Defensive Memetic Warfare and Soft Power:

Since the advent of the most recent conflict in Ukraine, there has been an uptick in the usage of social media and information warfare, both to rally and attack. Broadly, Ukraine has attempted to use memes and informatic warfare around the world, but with particular effect in neighbouring countries and other Western allies, in an attempt to increase international support and gain access to advanced weapon systems. Conversely, Russia has sought to reduce international support and use disinformation both within Ukraine and around the world to increase complexity and further confuse the nature of the conflict on a global level.

“Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the social media presence of both Ukraine and Russia has been closely scrutinized by researchers in communications, media studies, and human-computer interaction. The separatist movement in the Donbass region has intensified a battle of narratives: both sides employed five contextual frames, namely historical, geographical, religious, ethnic, and political. A popular framework for the analysis of memes relies on identifying the overarching narratives, whereby each meme constitutes a partial element. Boatwright and Pyle studiedstudy 163 tweets by the verified @Ukraine and @Kyiv Twitter accounts posted in February 2022, finding pre-invasion promotional content as well as myth-making. Similarly, Yehorova et al. identifiedidentify different humorous elements in the early wartime tweets. A more structured framework of narrative analysis is that proposed by Stephen Karpman and expanded by de Saint Laurent et al. to include two dimensions: moral quality (benevolent or malevolent) and power (strong or weak). In our study, we employ this framework and the resulting four archetypes: Hero (benevolent, strong); Victim (benevolent, weak); Villain (malevolent, strong); and Fool (malevolent, weak).”

Within the conflict in Ukraine, it is easy to see the use of memes as devices to support ideational claims made by states, such as the Russian claim over swathes of territory, as well as ontological ideas about the nature of these states. Relating particularly to the damage done during war, to the concept of safety, security, and nationalism. When states are attacked, it is not merely physical; it is an attack on their identity and ability to continue to exist, as Mitzen has described. It remains necessary for states to defend their core strategic interests at all costs, including ontological goals, in times of conflict. Moreover, these memetic devices are not merely designed to protect, but also to inspire. They are, in many cases, forms of propaganda. This allowed states to reach disparate groups and attempt to improve their connection to the national ideal. They function as traditional propaganda pieces, designed to link to traditional ideas and interpretations of the national myth. This, as discussed above, allows them to be so potent. In times of crisis and conflict, the nature of the meme can shift from a passive ideational idea to something which is designed to strengthen resolve and prevent the faltering of minds with the weight of bombs falling.

The best example of the Ukrainian countermeasures is likely NAFO (North Atlantic Fella Organisation), which has been dedicated to countering the spread of Russian information during the course of the war. Many have observed that it is likely the best example of information warfare globally:

“Negative historical associations (e.g., with Stalin or Hitler) are often employed. Extreme evilness is attributed to the Russian army… a cartoon shows Russian pilots gloating as they kill Ukrainian babies, a typical atrocity frame employed in propaganda. Even Russian civilians are portrayed as evil: in the rightmost example, they happily play with bloodied toys taken from Ukrainian children.”

Memes enable Ukraine to reinforce a shared national understanding of its enemies. Releasing these defensive white rabbits allows for a further level of villainisation, which enables there to be a stronger resonance within the Ukrainian population. This allows for more rallying and an increased uptick in soldiers joining the military due to the damaging image provided by the memes to the population. Furthermore, it allows for the promotion of historical memoriesy in allies, particularly those in Europe. The triggering of these memories allows for the activation of a transgenerational memory, and therefore moves both individuals and governments to act to support the Ukrainian government. The idea of evil, and the framing of Russia as a historical enemy, and the centre of a kind of ideational evil. This idea of memory, and the links to historical circumstance, particularly the unspoken nature of much of the trauma and damage which was experienced, is what makes these memes particularly potent in the international sphere. This is dependent upon shared experience, and a kind of collective memory, or collective cultural understanding, but it is something that Ukraine has mastered during the course of this conflict, enabling it to connect with the diasporic nationalities of Europe.

Russia: Offensive Memetic Warfare and Sharp Power:

Meanwhile, Russia has continued to use memes within conflict zones.; Iits use in Ukraine is, however, is likely the most advanced. Russia has used various memetic devices to spread disinformation around Ukraine for its own ends. Releasing white rabbits claiming control over various regions in the east, or encouraging individuals to leave or return to certain territories, or inspiring the idea of de-Nazifying Ukraine. Since 2014, Russia has used various memetic devices to undermine accusations by foreign governments.

“Russia’s strategic narrative that the 2018 Salisbury poisoning was staged by the West not only deflects accusations of responsibility, but contributes to Russian popular suspicion towards democratic states, presents events as a Western plot to be expected because of Russia’s return as a global power, and mobilises a particular form of domestic patriotism and support for authorities. However, US and European narratives about Russian misinformation and interference can discredit Russia’s other actions that do not involve misinformation, contribute to broader discourses around ‘fake news’ and rising global threats to democracy, and enable particular policy responses. Strategic narratives, as Roselle et al. (2014) argue, should therefore be regarded as a powerful resource, vital to contestation and a complex media ecology, and key to understanding influence.”

Memes can be used as a justification and as something which can undermine the accusations from foreign actors, enabling future actions. Similar actions can be seen in Ukraine, where Russia has used memes as part of false flag operations and to direct the domestic and Ukrainian populations. Putin’s domestic popularity at the intensification of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022 meant that memes designed for the Russian population were significantly more influential than they otherwise might have been.

Memes fundamentally stand as a method of passive and active informational warfare, which in our divided and increasingly technologically advanced world, will continue to grow in importance and shift the dynamics of international relations and conflict for decades to come. Power through memes is something deeply useful both to states and to a fuller understanding of international relations and the coming balance of power relations.

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