The Nihilist Penguin

A meme used by extremists, supermarkets and the government

Hello world.

Amid concrete and clay and general decay i am calling you from the foyer of the Intercity Hotel Ostbahnhof Berlin to talk about the nihilist penguin. My name is Marcus, i am researching TikTok, memes and propaganda. The recent craze of brands, marketers, and state institutions engaging in the nihilist penguin meme (Know Your Meme) is a perfect example for the current now in the vibocracy (#147) where nazi-coded messages and dogwhistles are disseminated and amplified as fluid memes – willingly and unwillingly. Or: How the German Federal Foreign Office tried to hijack the penguin back on TikTok.¹

I am putting my little meme-framework (#149) to the test here. It was kindly taken up by Paul Bradshaw (Online Journalism Blog) and already translated to German, thanks to Dirk von Gehlen (M.E.M.E.S.).

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🐧 The Nihilist Penguin — a Meme Nazis Love to Appropriate

Fox News got it right: President Trump’s penguin post (that you have most likely seen) wasn’t ignorant; it was a deliberate nod to a viral right-wing meme (Fox News).

On January 23rd, 2026, the official White House Twitter/X and Instagram accounts shared a Nihilist Penguin meme that depicted an AI-generated photo of a penguin holding an American flag next to U.S. President Donald Trump with Greenland’s flag planted in the background near mountains with the caption, “Embrace the penguin.” The post referenced the Trump administration’s push to acquire Greenland that was prominent at the time of the meme’s circulation. Later on January 23rd, the official DHS Twitter account (DHSgov) also shared a version of the meme with the caption, “Americans have always known ‘why,’” receiving over 5.1 million views, 41,000 likes and 2,300 replies in three days (Know Your Meme).

(Source: DHS)

While parts of the internet (including me and a lot of commenters underneath the official Insta post) were still shaking their heads at yet another episode of presidential AI-slop nonsense – after all, penguins live at the South Pole – the internet’s content-exploitation machine was already in full mode. Here is an attempt to unwrap some layers of meaning.

📖 M — Meaning (Lore & Context)

☐ Do we understand the meme’s origin or background?
☐ Who is likely to understand it immediately — and who isn’t?
☐ Which parts of its meaning are coded, dogwhistled, or only visible to in-groups?

While the clip of the penguin from a Werner Herzog documentary 2007 was shared to TikTok as early as late 2024, it did not go viral and become a meme until mid-January 2026. On January 16th, 2026 an edit appeared on TikTok that included Werner Herzog’s narration and the organ cover of the song “L’Amour Toujours,” making it the first known example combining the two elements of the 2026 meme trend. The combination resonated well among users posting about e.g. “saving Europe” alongside quotes from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (Know Your Meme).

“The online right saw the penguin as a powerful rebuke of secular modernity, marching toward a greater purpose” (Fox News). On January 23rd, 2026, the official White House Twitter / X and Instagram accounts shared an AI image referencing the penguin meme. On January 27, Lidl a trademark used by two German international discount supermarket chains used the footage (Herzog + Organ) for a video on TikTok. Other brands (Sixt, Deichmann) used it too.

Penguin: Emblem of masculinity

From the early days of internet culture, penguins have functioned as ideal meme animals: visually distinctive (upright, human-like posture), readable emotions (confusion, determination, isolation) and a strong contrast between cuteness and harsh environments. Compare the Socially Awkward Penguin (2009).

(Source)

The penguin first became an emblem of masculinity thanks to a previous viral video featuring a drag queen interrogating an elementary-school-age boy about men wearing makeup. The child asserted that boys cannot wear makeup. When the drag queen asked the boy, “Who said?” the boy pointed at a paper penguin on the wall and exclaimed, “The penguin over there!”. “The penguin over there” became a tongue-in-cheek internet defense of manhood and sex differences against the LGBT cult.” (Fox News)

Penguin + L’Amour Toujours

TikTokers paired the penguin footage with an organ remix (Youtube: Andreas Gärtner) of the right-wing anthem “L’Amour Toujours (I’ll Fly With You)” and overlaid images of Western heroes: Joan of Arc, Alexander the Great, Aragorn, Jesus Christ, King Baldwin IV and Luke Skywalker. Countless similar penguin edits have garnered millions of views online (Fox News).

From late 2023 onward, parts of the song’s melody were repurposed in Germany and elsewhere by far-right actors who attached explicitly racist chants such as “Deutschland den Deutschen – Ausländer raus” to the tune at parties and social media posts, including at a highly publicized incident on Sylt where such chanting and a Nazi salute were documented.

The appropriation sparked widespread condemnation: politicians denounced the behavior, copyright holders filed complaints, and events like the Oktoberfest banned the song to avoid further racist outbursts.

Geboers, M., & Bösch, M. (2025). Malicious earworms and useful memes, how the far-right surfs on TikTok audio trends (arXiv: 2506.20695). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.20695

The nihilist penguin meme variations using the L’Amour Toujours sound carry accumulated political meaning. Appropriated by far-right actors, the sound operates as a dog whistle shared by the Trump administration in the context of “publishing a stream of nazi propaganda” (The Atantic).

🎭 A — Affect (Vibe)
☐ What emotion does the meme trigger first?
☐ Is it earnest, ironic, cynical, or ambiguous?

This meme isn’t funny – it’s heavy. Especially due to German director Werner Herzog and his thick and uinque German accent that have helped him turn into a meme icon, used to signal seriousness, depth, and existential weight opposed to an internet culture otherwise dominated by irony, speed, and surface-level meaning. Meanwhile
the organ version of L’Amour Toujours replaces club nostalgia with ceremony, authority, and historical weight, adding legitimacy. The result is an affect that is openly earnest for insiders, affirming endurance and civilizational purpose, yet safely ambiguous to outsiders. It can be dismissed as AI absurdism – but it doesn’t feel that way to the people it’s meant for.

To get an idea, please read what Fox News has to say here: “DHS is right. America was built by penguins — and by that I mean rebels, pilgrims, frontier men and women, conquistadors, and cowboys. We are a nation founded by risk-takers who left the colony for the mountains. We are descended from men who suffered and died to carve civilization out of wilderness. It’s our inheritance. But beneath the idea of rugged individualism lies a deeper religious current. Some users have interpreted the mountains to symbolize Jesus Christ Himself.”

Given this affective and ideological context, the Lidl and German Federal Foreign Office adaptations risk reproducing a vibe whose political charge is already well established.

📱 T — Type (Format & Platform)

☐ What format is this (image, video, sound, gesture, multimodal)?
☐ Is it platform-native or recycled elsewhere?
☐ What role is AI playing here?

The Nihilist Penguin meme is a multimodal, platform-native TikTok format, built around a short video clip paired with music and minimal text overlays that function as a reusable affective template. While it emerges natively on TikTok, it travels easily across platforms, mutating into still images, screenshots, and political remixes on X, Instagram, and news media.

AI plays a secondary but enabling role, mainly through derivative image generation and rapid remixing, accelerating the meme’s circulation and allowing institutions and political actors to appropriate its recognizable visual language without engaging its original context.

⏳ T — Temporality (Lifecycle & Speed)

☐ Is this meme emerging, peaking, declining, or being reused?
☐ Are we early, on time, or late to the conversation?
☐ Has the meaning changed since it first appeared

The nihilist penguin meme has clearly moved past its organic TikTok peak and entered a phase of institutional reuse. What began in mid-January 2026 as a platform-native, far-right-coded remix format was rapidly consolidated through high-visibility amplification by the White House and DHS on January 23, marking a decisive shift from grassroots virality to top-down symbolic deployment. We are now in the phase of brand and institutional adaptations and variations signaling stabilization or the past-peak phase. We are late to the meme’s participatory moment but early in diagnosing its institutional afterlife. The window for organic remix culture has largely closed; what currently remains is a second life discussing the phenomenon.

⚖️ E — Ethics

☐ Is there any sign of manipulation, propaganda, or agenda-setting around it?
☐ Does this meme involve vulnerable people, trauma, or harassment?
☐ Could amplifying it cause harm, humiliation, or misinterpretation?

There is clear evidence of agenda-setting, even if not every instance constitutes deliberate extremist signaling. The White House and DHS posts mark a transition from subcultural meme use to state-level symbolic deployment, drawing on a meme already stabilized within far-right remix ecologies. The meme is structurally susceptible to dog-whistle readings because it combines elements that have accrued meaning through far-right appropriation. In this sense, the meme operates as ambient propaganda: not instructive or directive, but affectively aligning and normalizing a worldview through repetition and institutional endorsement.

The meme indirectly references symbolic violence through its association with exclusionary nationalist narratives and its musical lineage tied to racist chanting (“Deutschland den Deutschen – Ausländer raus”). The risk lies less in immediate harm than in normalizing semiotic materials that have been used to legitimize hostility. The danger lies precisely in its ambiguity, and its movement from fringe remix culture into institutional and commercial reuse where affect remains.

📈 R — Relevance

☐ Why does this meme matter now?
☐ Where is this meme circulating (which communities, regions, languages)?
☐ Who is amplifying it — individuals, influencers, media, coordinated actors?

This meme matters now because it has jumped from far-right remix culture into official state communication. It circulates across TikTok, X, and Instagram, slipping easily between languages, communities, and registers. What began in niche right-wing meme ecologies is now reused by brands, media outlets, and government actors, often stripped of context but not of meaning. Amplification no longer comes only from online subcultures, but from institutions whose endorsement normalizes the meme far beyond its original audience.

Hijacking Meaning in Dense Meme Ecologies

(Source)

Whether the German Federal Foreign Office successfully meaning-hijacks the meme is debatable. What is clearer is that its video – in parts – relies on the semiotic grammar and affective charge of the nihilist penguin, a meme already shaped by far-right remix cultures. This makes the message structurally vulnerable to misreading regardless of its stated intent. Especially when the dissimination of ideas relies on affect and vibe rather than rational discourse. Not sure if Macrons sunglasses, an animated Euro coin and a winking comic penguin are enough. The Edit for sure needs to be further dissected and analysed. Happy to hear your thoughts!


A Quote

“That’s AI” (It Isn’t) (The Present Age)

What else

US Power Play Over TikTok Did Nothing to Protect Americans (Tech Policy Press)
What the US TikTok takeover is revealing about censorship (The Guardian)
Gaza-based journalist Bisan Owda regains TikTok account after outcry (Al Jazeera)
Social media as state media (Popular Information)
The New Shadowbanning Panic (The Atlantic)
Khaby Lame and 𝘙𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘭𝘦 𝘏𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘓𝘵𝘥. (Linkedin)
TikTok users are deleting the app, with removals up 150% (CNBC)
TikTok blocks Epstein mentions and anti-Trump videos, users claim (Independent)
The Slopagandist (The Verge)

Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in tailored insights, workshops, consulting, or policy support, feel free to get in touch. Here is Linkedin. Here is Bluesky. Ciao

1. *yet set to an organ rendition of an Italian disco track (L’ Amour Tourjour) that is banned at Munich’s Oktoberfest because i has been frequently publicly chanted with the right-wing extremists slogan ‘Germany for the Germans, foreigners out.’