Dark Brandon, Political Anti-Heroes, and the Immortal Sulla
What the memetic ideal of benevolent dictators tell us about democracy
WHAT IS DARK BRANDON?
If you’ve been relatively exposed to the political meme-sphere in the past 4 years, you might be familiar with Dark Brandon. For those out of the loop, Dark Brandon is a meme that the new left has developed by embracing the conservative coloring of Joe Biden as a dark, villainous figure, responsible for high gas prices and attacks on American values. They call him Brandon as a reference to the “Let’s Go Brandon” chant, often heard at Trump rallies and NASCAR races. The Dark Brandon meme flips this around, turning him into an antihero with an appealing aesthetic. The Biden campaign has even officially acknowledged and embraced the meme, selling merch like the mug pictured below. As the 2024 election season ramps up, we will no-doubt see an uptick in Dark Brandon memes.
But exactly why are people so attracted to the idea of such a menacing version of a politician who has previously sold himself as America’s wholesome uncle? What does this attraction mean for the democracy? To answer this we need to understand what people love about Dark Brandon.
THE LIGHT WITHIN DARK BRANDON
1.) Malarkey will not go unchecked.
Dark Brandon’s domestic policy stance stands in contrast with common complaints about the President. He is a no-nonsense hyper-focused cybertronic machine, hellbent on cutting red tape and achieving policy progress at any cost. This offsets the “Sleepy Joe narrative” and is extremely appealing if you believe Dark Brandon to be on your side. Who wouldn’t want a Terminator fighting for them on Capitol Hill?
2.) Dark Brandon is in touch with the kids
Dark Brandon knows that vaporwave is cool, and understands the future as well as his RAM remembers the past. Coming of age in the 60s, Dark Brandon remembers old-school cool and elevates it to bring us a cyber-punk promise of the future. His laser eyes imply a laser-focused sharpness that is a stark contrast to Joe Biden’s moments of mental in-fortitude.
3.) Dark Brandon’s strong foreign policy
Dark Brandon doesn’t shy away from battle. He’s willing to flex the muscles of the American military and geo-political machine, and use his cybernetically unwavering resolve to ensure our enemies will never put America or her allies under the yoke. This is an upfront and in-your-face version of the willingness to police the world that the left has previously had to keep in the back-room for fear of seeming patronizing to the minor powers of the world. In part, this is due to the rise and increasing boldness of American rivals on the world stage. When framed as a protector of the world from evil rather than a hegemon ruling over it, the left can stomach and even savor the idea of an interventionist foreign policy.
4.) Dark Brandon is anti-decay and pro-growth
Dark Brandon is more than just a figure-head. He gets things done, cuts red tape, and feels the pain of those on the front lines. He puts de-railed trains back on track, re-shores critical manufacturing, and funds large-scale infrastructure projects. He is the embodiment of an empowered governor, and will stop at nothing to move his metrics.
This, in stark contrast to the president-in-being, hamstrung by a republican controlled congress, highlights not what people see in Joe Biden, but rather an ideal of what they want in their elected representatives. Playing up Dark Brandon is doubly useful to the campaign. It allows them to distract from and offset his inadequacies as a candidate, while simultaneously tapping into a wellspring of populism deeply desired by democracy.
People often say “joke about outcomes you want”, to highlight the power of humor in making memetic ideas materialize into truth. But what would happen if a politician were to go farther than offering a Dark Brandon character as a farcical and complementary reflection of themselves, and actually stepped into the role? For that, we look to history.
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
We’ve established that the desire for an irreverent, agentic, antihero, of a leader is alive and well in American politics (for an example on the right, see notes at the end of the post). Now let us look to history to show us what happens when someone like that takes power. There are many examples that fit this template, but what immediately struck me about the Dark Brandon archetype is it’s similarity to the men on either side of the conflict between the famed “benevolent” Roman dictator Sulla and his longtime rival Gaius Marius.
Sulla came to lead a faction known as the optimates, while Marius led a faction known as the populares. It was a classic divide between upper and lower classes that plagued the Roman republic, much like our own. Both men eroded the foundational legitimacy of the republic they claimed to love in pursuit of power for themselves and their side.
Both leaders would become notorious for cutting red tape, making exception to rules where it benefitted them, and being adept statesmen. The clash of their ambitions and disruption of the delicate system of Roman checks and balances would plunge the republic into Rome’s First Civil War.
Dark Marius
Marius is the more senior of the two men, so we’ll start with him. How is Marius similar to Dark Brandon? Marius began his career as tribune of the plebs, a role similar to a House of Commons or House of Congress position, with the common thread being that he was meant to represent the people over the elites. Importantly, he had the power to veto Consular (a Consul is like the president, but there are two) actions and bills proposed by the Roman Senate (a body made up of elites, like the House of Lords). This power was meant to be used by the tribunes as a way for the common people to have a voice in Roman affairs. However, the cunning Gaius Marius recognized the power that his veto ability gave him, and used it to block any legislation that was not to his advantage. He threatened to use his prosecutorial powers to imprison anyone who blocked his own legislation including the sitting Consul Cotta, and notably, his own patron and mentor Metellus, who had raised him from obscurity, and supported his campaign to become tribune in the first place. The senate backed down and the bill was passed.
The willingness to break taboo, use new levers of power to govern, and throw former comrades under the bus to accomplish policy goals shows us the dark side of Gaius Marius. One has to keep in mind that the Roman governmental system was tied by superstition and ritual to their religion, so innovation in governance was often seen as taboo. Marius unflinchingly used the system as a tool, rather than be channeled by its walls.
Marius would eventually ascend to the office of the Consul himself, installing loyal subordinates in his wake. As Consul, he instituted a number of large scale reforms to the military (notably allowing unlanded plebeians to fight to earn land rather than to defend land they already owned), defeated Roman foreign adversaries, and dealt with unrest in Italy that culminated in the Social Wars.
Marius and his reforms were eminently popular, but they changed forever the incentive structure between Rome, her generals, and their armies. Before his reforms, Roman armies were made up of citizens who already had land, fighting to defend it or Rome’s honor, whereas after the reforms, the men were unlanded and therefore had to trust in the general they fought for to climb the social ladder. This made armies loyal to their leaders, and not the Republic, and is eventually what would enable Caesar to march on Rome a generation later.
In Marius’ conduct, we see a prototypical set of Dark Brandon attributes emerging, and being embraced by the people without forethought of the effect on the Republic.
Dark Sulla
Sulla led the optimates faction in the First Roman Civil war and hailed from Rome’s aristocratic classes. He fought to keep the power of the Senate from the masses, in direct opposition to the populist reforms of Marius and his ilk. He was slighted when Marius took credit for his capture of the Numidian King Jugurtha, and when Marius tried to take his right to prosecute a lucrative war away from him, he entered into war with the Marian faction.
Sulla’s story is a more militaristic one than that of Marius, in part due to the Marian reforms themselves. The conflict crossed the line from political to physical over the issue of who would be given the command (and therefore the spoils) of a foreign war against the Kingdom of Pontus. Pontus was extremely wealthy, and so the general and the legions that were allowed to conquer it would profit greatly, and be bathed in glory and power for years to come.
After the elections in 88 B.C. it seemed a given that Sulla had won command of the war in the east. However, Marius who puppeteered a tribune of the plebs named Sulpicius into enacting legislation in an end-run around Sulla’s consular power to transfer the command of the Mithridatic war to Marius.
Rather than acknowledge he had been outmaneuvered, Sulla chose to take the fight to the battlefield and convinced his troops that it was they who had been cheated out of wealth, power, and glory by Marius. The mass of the soldiery followed Sulla in his march on Rome, but he was abandoned by his officers.
Sulla was initially seen by the Senate and the people of Rome as a tyrant. The response to his crossing of the Pomerium under arms was almost universally reviled, despite his insistence that he came as a liberator, rather than a conqueror. The citizenry pelted his army with stones and roof tiles, and Marius put up a daring although ineffective defense of the city by rag-tag militia and gladiators. With control of the Senate, Sulla passed legislation outlawing Marius and his supporters, who escaped to Roman Africa (Modern day Tunisia).
With the right to command his war in the east, one might expect Sulla to leave the city immediately. But here’s where it gets interesting. Sulla passed a few more laws before leaving Rome, not all of which were in his favor. He strengthened the Senate and plugged a few of the loopholes that Marius and the populares had used to advance plebian power. He sent his army home, and held elections, which he resoundingly lost to his enemies Cinna and Octavius. He made the new consul-elects (those same enemies, who swore to prosecute him) swear to uphold the law, and then left the city for the East.
While he was gone, the two newly elected consuls fought each other for power, with Marius returning from Africa to thumb the scale on the side of Cinna against Octavius, once again laying siege to Rome. They slaughtered the supporters of Octavius and declared Sulla an outlaw, and may have meddled in the elections to make themselves consuls in 86 BC. This pattern would basically continue until Sulla returned in 83 BC.
Sulla signed an early peace with Mithridates in the East and began his march home. Although most Romans disliked Sulla, more than a few veteran legions defected to his side once he step foot in Italy. The war would forge the names of Crassus and Pompey as skilled commanders and titanic figures in Roman politics. After a war too complicated to explain here, Sulla took Rome again. His rule opened with the wholesale butchering of thousands of Italian prisoners.
Then, after receiving permission through a vote of popular assembly (perhaps to maintain appearance of due process) he began to purge the upper classes of the Republic of its enemies. His first two lists contained about 500 names of various Senators and Equites, and each carried the bounty of their own estate and property to whoever delivered Sulla their head. It was often said of those unlucky enough to be listed, that they were “killed by their country estate”. Sons of those proscribed were demoted to the lower classes, exiled, or lost their civil rights. Among those proscribed was a young Julius Caesar, whom Sulla spared, but stripped of his inheritance and ordered to divorce his high-born wife. Later, Caesar would attempt to work within this system to “rehabilitate” some of the proscribed, to little success.
As dictator, Sulla stripped the position of tribune of the plebs of prestige and power. They could no longer propose or veto legislation, and their appointment had to be Senate approved. He also made it a dead-end job, banning an ex-tribune from ever holding other offices. Their main remaining power that was left unchecked was the power to shield others from prosecution. He bloated the Senate from 300 to 600 members (similar to the packing of the Supreme Court), and made it so that Roman courts could only be staffed by the blue-blooded elites.
He also codified the Cursus Honorum, which is like a progression tree for Roman political careers. He added an age requirement to each position and required that a candidate wait 10 years before he could repeat a term. If you take Sulla to be a one dimensional dictator, this is out of character, because this legislation would have prevented Sulla himself from taking power, and thus is an indictment of his own actions. He did a similar thing when he expanded the Pomerium, which is the taboo line of DMZ around Rome, which he himself violated to take the city.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Sulla is that once he had brutally restored the Senate to primacy (in his eyes) he voluntarily gave up power, to the mockery of characters like Caesar. In 80 BC, he resigned, disbanded his legions, and walked without guards or lictors in the Forum. He offered to explain his actions to ay citizen, and was unharmed. He would eventually retire to the countryside to be with his family and write his memoirs. (One of my hopes is that we recover these works someday through work like the Vesuvius Challenge).
When he died, his funeral was unprecedented in scale. His coffin was escorted through Rome, adorned with gold. Speeches were given by senators, and his cremated ashes were given a place of honor in the Campus Martius, to lay forever with the god of war. Sulla was oddly loved.
The immortal ideal of the benevolent dictator
What can we take away from all of this? The dynamics of republican government push candidates to appeal to a core desire in their constituencies; that of the benevolent dictator. This ideal is best embodied today by the memetic mirror of Dark Brandon, and perhaps the nascent Dark MAGA aesthetic. However, the race-to-the-bottom dynamic of ambitious politicians who attempt to fill this role only degrades and erodes the strength of our institutions. The stories of Marius and Sulla (which parallel today’s political landscape) show how one ruler’s reforms enabled the other to go further, and how even a “benevolent” dictator who is aware of his own risk to the republic, is not capable of repairing the damage done.
From this context, we can see that the Dark Brandon meme is a 21st century take on an undying idea. And although the promises of an effectively unbounded leader may appeal to the populace, history tells us to be careful what we wish for.
I wish you all a very happy 2024 election season!
-Connor, OfAllTrades
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FURTHER READING AND NOTES:
AS LEFT; SO RIGHT: THE RISE OF DARK MAGA
In coming to this conclusion, it’s important to maintain a wider lens. The Dark Brandon phenomenon doesn’t only exist on the left! There is a parallel aesthetic around Trump, loosely called “Dark MAGA”.
Dark MAGA is similar to Dark Brandon, by painting the subject as a ruthless reformer, here to “Drain the Swamp”, “Re-claim institutions” and “put Patriots in control”. Unlike Dark Brandon, whose canonical focus is on infrastructure, economic metrics, domestic and foreign policy, Dark MAGA is all about institutions and control. Dark MAGA is simultaneously paranoid and unafraid of friendly fire. Obsessed with rooting out the sickness within, as a necessary prerequisite of making war on the sickness without. It has a very conspiratorial, Q-Anon, night-of-the-long-knives feel that stems from Trump’s outsider status and anti-establishment rhetoric. A prominent example is Madison Cawthorne’s tirade after losing his home seat to a fellow (and more centrist) Republican.
Much like the Dark Brandon meme, the Dark MAGA aesthetic is something Trump’s supporters may lean on in 2024. Painting Trump as a solemn defender against tyranny, rooting out insidious plots, and constantly the victim of establishment backstabbing, allows him to write off his failures in office.
In their eyes, Trump is doing the best he can, but the Swamp runs deep. The failures of the first term and 2020 election deepens the resolve of his most loyal supporters, and emboldens them to shed any pretense of due process or respect for the institution they had left. Dark MAGA gives Trump permission to play dirty.
This edit of a Medal of Honor Speech is adjacent to the “DARK Americana” aesthetic that perhaps supersedes either Dark MAGA or Brandon.