Let’s commemorate, then imagine. Imagine that at 100e anniversary of the Capitol uprising, January 6, 2121, The duty will broadcast an ephemeris on this event-monument. The ultramultimedia production will certainly use images, certainly including those of the “QAnon Shaman” with horned hairstyle, fur headdress, spear, flag and tattooed bare chest, screaming in a corridor of the Capitol or in the gallery of the evacuated Senate.
Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, aka the “shaman” of the QAnon movement, has become the disguised embodiment of the insurrectionary movement and may remain so for centuries to come.
This fake shaman is (or, at any rate, was) a real scheming mascot, a “conspiritualist” combining the conviction that a secret group is ruling the world with the hope of a great rupture of the “system” in the near future. A mascot is an animal, object or person considered to be lucky charms or fetishes for a cause.
The buffalo man so actively played this role in the attempted coup of January 6, 2021, that he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. He was declared sane despite a psychological assessment describing him as suffering from schizophrenic tendencies, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. Mr Chansley has just appealed the decision with the help of the lawyer who defended teenage militiaman apprentice Kyle Rittenhouse, recently found not guilty of the murder of two anti-racist protesters in Kenosha.
It is not the only traveling political mascot to have marked the last few months. In Chile, the monster demonstrations which resulted in a change of the Constitution as in the election of a new president and a new left-wing Parliament were carried out in part under the cheerful leadership of Giovanna Grandon, mother of a family, driver school bus, disguised as a giant Pokémon.
Her Pikachu costume (mistakenly ordered on the Internet by her seven-year-old son) accompanied by dancing dozens of protest marches for months. One of the banners read, “If Pikachu falls and keeps dancing, how could we not keep walking?” “
Tia Pikachu (Aunt Pikachu) was sprayed with water from police water cannons and peppered with riot control. She has eliminated four copies of the yellow tracksuit. Giovanna Grandon was eventually elected as an independent (unaffiliated) delegate to the People’s Constitutional Convention.
This mascot engaged from across the Americas is reminiscent of Anarchopanda’s involvement in the Maple Spring protests a decade ago. The costume was worn by the philosophy professor Julien Villeneuve, a supporter of a “symbolic tactic” of pro-democracy.
The iconic political animal actually has a long history. Donkey’s association with the Democratic Party of the United States dates back to 1828, when a presidential contender criticized Andrew Jackson for being as stubborn as a donkey. The republican elephant was first used in the second half of the XIXe century by cartoonist Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist who also gave shape to the images of Santa Claus and Uncle Sam.
Rallying through signs
You don’t have to amalgamate everything either. University of Montreal art history professor Ersy Contogouris, a specialist in the history of caricature and satire, points out a fundamental difference between the conspiratorial shaman on the one hand and the Pokémon like the panda leftists on the other.
“In the beginning, there is obviously nothing that connects Pikachu to the cause or the panda to anarchism, as far as I know,” she said. While the shaman created his costume and chose symbols related to his cause. Everything that is part of her costume is evocative. “Political scientists and historians have deconstructed his tattoos related toalt-right and its medieval phantasmagoria.
Professor Contogouris also underlines the part of chance and necessity in this kind of symbolic distinction. Basically, there was perhaps an abundance of signs or symbols likely to focus the cause of the protesters in Chile and even the competition, with Spiderman. By force, a Pokémon won in popular favor.
“We saw that with the French Revolution in the XVIIIe century, says Mme Contouris. There were several symbols competing and it was ultimately Marianne who took over to symbolize the Republic around the 1830s. In the case of Pikachu and the panda, I think the incongruity made it work. It’s funny, and humor helps in this kind of tense situation. “
The shaman is the result of an almost unique hypermedia release. He had made appearances before the January 6 attack, but it was there that he triumphed. The ” dude in chest And his surreal attire dovetailed with the end of Trump’s surreal reign, as political analyst Rafael Jacob sums it up in an article byUrbania.
The ideological-political tensions do not weaken in this badly damaged democracy, and mascots find themselves still and always involved in cultural wars. Last July, in Killingly, Connecticut, the school board decided to rebrand the mascot of the local football team, called Redmen since 1939, to Red Hawks because some Indigenous people find the term racist.
The high school students accepted the change without complaining. Parents instead took advantage of local elections in November to regain control of the City and the school board, and ultimately voted 5-4 for the return of the mascot Redmen. Maybe the “QAnon Shaman” hasn’t launched its latest cry either …