Peace is brat: NATO,digital militarism,and the absurd

Abstract

On the 2nd of September 2024, NATO posted an image of the word ‘peace’ on a neon-green background with black lowercase font on Instagram, a meme of the recent album by British musician Charli XCX. This example of the brat summer trend stands in clear contrast to the usual visuals that dominate NATO’s Instagram feed: muted tones of camouflage, active soldiers training, military vehicles, and vast landscapes. I take this ‘peace’ post as an example of digital militarism and as an opportunity to explore this vis-à-vis the format of memes. Memes are an inherently playful communicative device that utilise humour and silliness, often for the purpose of community-building. Drawing from the fields of popular culture and digital militarism, I thus ask, what happens if those associated with the utmost seriousness – an explicitly military organisation responsible for ensuring ultimate safety and providing protection – engage with the silly? This article argues that NATO’s engagement with the brat summer meme produces absurdity in several ways: through the choice of meme, the (in)congruence of the post and its singularity.

Keywords

digital militarism memes NATO popular culture

Introduction

On the 2nd of September 2024, NATO posted an image on Instagram. This in itself was not remarkable; the NATO Instagram account posts almost every day. Yet, the picture was out of character for the international organisation. The post was simply the word ‘peace’ on a neon-green background with black lowercase font. It was a meme of the recent album by British musician Charli XCX that is associated with a certain gendered messiness, embrace of vulnerability, partying, and early 2000s aesthetics. This article takes NATO’s ‘peace’ post as an example of the explosion of digital meme culture into mainstream circles and explores the juxtaposition between NATO’s typical military branding and the use of the brat meme. In a world where slippages between subversive digital and mainstream politics are now common, I ask what happens if those associated with the utmost seriousness – an explicitly military organisation responsible for ensuring ultimate safety and providing protection – engage with the silly?

By exploring NATO’s ‘peace’ post, I examine the function and potential of memes in the context of digital militarism, which describes how martial logics and militarism are embroiled and productive within the digital sphere (Crilley and Pears, 2021; Jester, 2023). Memes, mainly in the forms of images, exist predominantly online, use humour as a communication device and are ‘silly, playful and non-serious’ (Baspehlivan, 2024: 35; see also Dean, 2019). I argue that NATO’s engagement with memes in general, and the brat meme in particular, produces a distinct kind of absurd militarism. Here, this absurdity is generated in three ways. First, the (in)congruence of the post. NATO’s online presence is not known for embracing meme culture and rhetoric, rather presenting itself as a Realist, dependable, and professional security actor on an international stage (Hedling et al., 2022; Wright, 2019; Wright and Bergman-Rosamond, 2021). As such, the ‘peace’ post represents a deviation from NATO’s usual Instagram presence while simultaneously trying to stay relevant to a modern, online audience. Second, absurdity is generated through the singularity of the post. The ‘peace’ post is both literally and figuratively speaking surrounded by a distinct militarism, as the only example of a post different to the rest of the content. Third, through the choice of meme which stands for a gendered vulnerability, messiness, and recreational drug use, which does not align with NATO’s identity and purpose. This article makes two contributions. Empirically it contributes to nascent work on the format of memes in the context of digital militarism, and conceptually it joins efforts to include the silly as well as the serious in explorations of global politics by attending to what happens when the serious and the silly interact. Much attention has been directed at the use of humour and memes by far-right and anti-establishment actors, yet they must also be understood when used by those that are considered serious, established agents of international politics.

This article proceeds as follows. First, I provide an overview of the politics of popular culture, research on memes, and NATO’s digital diplomacy. Second, I set out the theoretical framework of this article by engaging with digital militarism, the ordering function of humour, and the absurd. After a discussion of the material and method, this article then turns to the analysis of NATO’s posting of the brat summer ‘peace’ post. Here, I show how this post takes NATO into the absurd. It does so through three aspects: the (in)congruence of the ‘peace’ post to the overarching brand and identity of NATO, the singularity of the post within NATO’s Instagram feed, and the presence, as well as the choice, of meme, which embodies a particular gendered messiness, recreational drug use, and volatility; before ending with a conclusion.

The politics of popular culture and NATO’s digital diplomacy

Although traditionally overlooked or dismissed in the study of global politics, popular culture is not distinctly separate and different from the sphere of ‘serious’ or ‘real’ politics, rather, they are mutually constitutive and deeply intertwined (Crilley, 2021; Hamilton and Shepherd, 2016). One cannot be made sense of without the other. Mainstream culture – particularly through humour and an embrace of the silly (Baspehlivan and Wedderburn, 2024; Berlant, 1997; Brassett et al., 2021) – often helps to make sense of (and offers a site of resistance to) ‘serious’ global politics by providing alternative perspectives and vantage points from which to interrogate ‘the international’ (Cooper-Cunningham, 2022; Grayson et al., 2009). As such, popular culture is deeply implicated in our understandings of global politics, and vice versa. For example, political cartoons and satire are clear examples of how engagement with popular culture can provide alternative ways of making sense of the world, as well as offering space for the subversion of dominant narratives (Brassett and Sutton, 2017; Crilley and Chatterje-Doody, 2021).

This relationship between popular culture and global politics is even more dynamic online, and others have examined various digital content and their role within and reflection of global politics (Crilley and Chatterje-Doody, 2021; Johais and Meis, 2024; Shepherd and Hamilton, 2016). In addition, research has examined how traditional diplomacy interacts with the digital sphere – either presenting an additional communication outlet (Danielson and Hedling, 2022; Wright, 2019) or an opportunity to engage with audiences in a less formal manner (Duncombe, 2018; Eggeling, 2023; Šimunjak and Caliandro, 2019). Most relevant for the exploration of NATO’s brat summer ‘peace’ is research on the social media accounts and digital behaviour by international security actors, such as the CIA (Crilley and Pears, 2021), arms manufacturers (Jester, 2023; Schneiker et al., 2019), and militaries (Berg, 2025; Strand and Kehl, 2019). Particularly when those actors lean into the more humorous tone that exists on social media, Crilley and Pears (2021) have found this to be a legitimising tactic through ‘obscuring’ – or rather distracting from – the very founding principle of these organisations: violence.

In the case of NATO, there have been two past examples that show how social media campaigns are used to garner support and promote NATO’s mission. This mission centres around ensuring its members’ freedom and security through both political and military means (Rynning, 2024). In 2018, NATO collaborated with two people separately in an effort to engage a wider (younger) audience, who might have had little knowledge of NATO itself but followed the activities of certain celebrities, and usher in a public relations strategy that was no longer ‘in the Stone Age’ (de Hoop Scheffer cited in Wright and Bergman-Rosamond, 2021). The collaboration with Angelina Jolie, international celebrity and actress known also for her humanitarian activism, spanned an op-ed published in The Guardian, a joint press conference and subsequent visual media of this event. Interrogating the identity narratives made visible by this collaboration, Wright and Bergman-Rosamond suggest that while this collaboration might have added a touch of glamour to NATO’s self-image, it ultimately legitimised its ‘self-defined ‘military leadership’ in the area of conflict-related sexual violence’ (2021: 443) – thus further reifying the militarised logics foundational to NATO. In the same year, NATO’s Instagram account was taken over by Lasse Matberg, influencer, model, and lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy, during a military training exercise. Hedling, Edenborg, and Strand examine Matberg’s stint as the ‘face of NATO’ (2022: 2) and argue that he embodies an imaginary of NATO, and respective militarisation, that is simultaneously ‘muscular, imperial and militarist’ as well as ‘caring, democratic and progressive’ (2022: 10). Both these instances illustrate the tensions between presenting itself and its activities in line with the progressive imaginary of the modern West while at the same needing to uphold and expand the military capabilities that are the whole raison d’etre of NATO.

NATO’s choice of Instagram influencer marketing does still follow established marketing strategies of using celebrities as spokespeople for humanitarian causes (Kapoor, 2012; Mitchell, 2016). The ‘peace’ post however provides an opportunity to explore what happens when these serious, well-regarded international organisations, who hold power on the global stage and, in the case of NATO, are tasked with ensuring security through military means, engage with the silliness of memes.

Memes and humour

The meme was first proposed as a ‘unit of cultural transmission’ prior to the invention of the Internet (Dawkins, 1976; see also Nooney and Portwood-Stacer, 2014). Nowadays, the meme has become synonymous with Internet culture and can be described as units (made up of images, videos, and texts) that ‘become viral through a collective process of sharing, imitation, and remixing’ (Baspehlivan, 2024: 35). Memes thus encapsulate the Web 2.0 and social media culture: its participatory aspects, interactive dimensions, and user-generated content (Jackson et al., 2021; Shifman, 2013). In fact, the meme lives and dies through its interactive nature. It competes for the attention of an online audience, needs to engage an audience and then be re-packaged and distributed widely, and thus aligns with principles of modern digital capitalism and neoliberalism – to do so it needs to catch and embody a certain Zeitgeist. This also means that memes always respond to and are located within a specific time and place, though they can then transcend these (Baspehlivan, 2024).

Moreover, memes are inherently playful and stimulating; not only do they rely on interaction, they also primarily communicate through affect, such as humour, nostalgia, or anger. The purpose of memes is not to factually represent ‘reality’ but rather to respond to, challenge, and re-conceive a reality that is presumed to be serious and stable (Mortensen and Neumayer, 2021; Nooney and Portwood-Stacer, 2014; Seiffert-Brockmann et al., 2018). They thus echo a long tradition of political satire, especially its visual aspects, with the aim of being a way in which people make sense of global politics (Berlant, 1997; Särmä, 2016). As in the case of satire, memes often rely on humour and provoking laughter to communicate a distilled message, capturing a specific feeling and comment on the state of the world. Beyond providing commentary, humour is productive. It has an ordering function and quality that both includes and excludes. As Brassett et al. (2021) discuss, who laughs with whom about what ‘discloses important information both about their identities as subjects, and about the affinities, alliances and antagonisms through which these subjectivities find meaning’ (p. 2).

This also contributes to and accelerates two of the primary functions of memes: community-building and identity-shaping. In addition to their interactive nature, memes create shared relationality, as argued by Baspehlivan, which then result in the coming together of ‘diverse political subjects’ (2024: 46) and have the ability to ‘demarcate and move frontiers between “us” and “them” in the political’ (Mortensen and Neumayer, 2021: 2367). They thus play a ‘crucial role in political community formation’ (Dean, 2019: 259). As such, addressing NATO’s version of the brat summer meme provides an opportunity to examine how international organisations might utilise memes to move frontiers between groups and engage new audiences, as well as the potential pitfalls to this strategy.

Digital militarism and the absurd

The concept of militarism describes the use and maintenance of military means to ensure security, which is often associated with a certain existentialism that subsumes any opportunity for anti-militarist opposition or alternatives (Basham, 2013; Basham et al., 2015). Research on militarism is not just contained to the study of military forces but explores military logics, their various forms and encroachment across all spaces of socio-political life (Dowler, 2012; Enloe, 2007; Partis-Jennings, 2020). Militarism in the online sphere has been titled as militarism 2.0, as it reflects the interactive elements that characterise the Web 2.0 introduced above (Jackson et al., 2021; Wright, 2019). Explorations of militarism 2.0 include military marketing campaigns (Strand, 2021; Strand and Kehl, 2019), the social media behaviour of security companies (Jester, 2023; Joachim et al., 2018), digital memorialisation (Knudsen and Stage, 2013), and military reality TV (Kaempf and Stahl, 2023; Pears, 2022). Recent work on digital militarism has expanded to the format of memes. Hesse (2023) highlights the role of memes and humour in Ukrainian soldiers’ survival, and subsequent effects on perceptions of nuclear threat. In a popular culture context, Faux (2024) investigates how ‘Barbenheimer’, the simultaneous release of the films Barbie and Oppenheimer and the subsequent meme, makes visible the gendered narratives around nuclear war in the popular imagination. So far, research on memes within the context of digital militarism has explored them as reflective of knowledge about (nuclear) war and productive of resistance among soldiers. Joining the effort to examine memes as a vehicle of digital militarism, this article considers what happens when an international military organisation engages with memes and the absurdity this might produce.

The absurd describes a mismatch, something that ‘does not make sense or [. . .] which does not adhere to the expected system of rules and logics that structure any given system’ (Holm, 2017: 149). It thus often derives from incongruity and is ‘characterised by an absence of logic’ (Couder, 2019: 12). However, this deviation from the expected does not mean that it should be discounted but rather be seen as an opportunity. As Holm contends, being open to the absurd means paying attention to what could be and sitting with the mismatch, that is, to interpret ‘breakdowns in a manner that does not try to resolve them’ (2017: 172). Simultaneously, then, attending to the absurd is an opportunity to interrogate how current systems, logics, and resulting expectations operate and are imbued with power. To interrogate these systems of power fully, we must then also attend to that which can be disregarded as nonsense or silly. In their engagement with the silly, Baspehlivan and Wedderburn propose that the wider seriousness of the discipline of International Relations inhibits deeper engagement with the non-serious and seemingly non-political; thereby excluding particular ways of being and knowing (2024). As such, considerations of the political need to pay attention to ‘silly things’ as ‘valuable resources’ precisely because of their ‘fleeting, trivial abundance’ (Baspehlivan and Wedderburn, 2024: 4). Thus, building on Berlant, they propose an embrace of the counterpolitics of the silly. While there is some research that delves into the silly per se as a place to examine international politics (Jarvis and Robinson, 2024; Rowley and Weldes, 2012; Särmä, 2016), here, I consider what happens when seemingly serious actors, such as international organisations, engage with the silly, and in particular what happens if this silly is in the format of memes.

Material and methods

NATO’s brat summer ‘peace’ Instagram post constitutes the primary material of this article. NATO’s Instagram account is active, uploading stories almost every day and frequently posting images or videos to its grid. The account has 1.5 million followers and has posted 3547 times since 2014¹ (it became a verified account in 2017) – which is an average of nearly one post per day.

The ‘peace’ post in question was posted on the 2^nd September 2024 and depicted a neon-green background with the word ‘peace’ on it in lowercase font. This ‘peace’ post was inspired by British artist Charli XCX’s album entitled brat and was posted within the wider context of the brat summer trend. brat summer came about in response to, while simultaneously contributing to, the enormous success of brat, the album. brat quickly became the highest-ranked album of 2024 and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize for 2024 Album of the Year. It was further nominated for nine Grammy Awards (including Album of the Year) and won three of these nominations. Pop culturally, the neon-green colour of the album artwork increasingly appeared in (digital) spaces and the phrase ‘. . . is brat’ was applied to a host of different entities. The latter reached its height when Charli XCX herself tweeted in July 2024 that US presidential candidate ‘kamala [Harris] IS brat’, upon which her official campaign Instagram account (@kamalahq) adopted the neon-green brat aesthetic. In this context, ‘brat’ is always complimentary, rather than the traditional ‘being a brat’ that has assumptions about being spoilt, badly behaved, and selfish. Some months later, ‘brat’ was named word of the year by the Collins English Dictionary and Forbes later declared ‘brat summer’ as one of the biggest pop culture moments in 2024. This demonstrates the large and tangible impact that both the album and the associated brat summer trend had on pop culture and politics.

While, as with any research focusing solely on specific social media content, I am unable to determine or analyse the intention behind the post (Hedling et al., 2022; Shepherd, 2015), it is possible to note that NATO considers its Instagram presence and posts as aspects of its wider strategic communication (Banet-Weiser and Sturken, 2019; Joachim et al., 2018; Wright and Bergman-Rosamond, 2021). NATO’s brat summer ‘peace’ Instagram post is thus public, and NATO has developed a communication strategy that includes social media and is aware of its content being both public and part of a larger ‘NATO brand’. In addition to the Instagram post that provided the impetus for this paper, I also include two NATO documents as additional material (the NATO Digital Media Management Guide and the NATO Brand Guide, both available online). Turning to the ethical considerations of analysing social media posts, I follow Jester’s exploration of the social media presence and digital marketing of arms manufacturers (2023). Here, she posits that there exist several reasons to assume consent of these arms manufacturers to study their social media accounts. Primarily, for the analysis of NATO’s ‘peace’ post, these pertain to the account as belonging to an international organisation, which has presumably engaged a communications team that has a considered and strategic approach to their social media presence, as well as that it can be assumed that these have engaged intensively with the terms and conditions of the relevant social media platform (Jester, 2023: 476). As such, I consider NATO’s Instagram as public, hence the ethical concerns around consent and privacy are mitigated.

My analysis of the NATO brat summer ‘peace’ post is structured by both Ahmed’s (2006) ethnography of text and Hansen’s (2011, 2015) visual analysis. Ahmed’s methodology presumes understandings of the performativity of language and as such follows assumptions that texts ‘do things’ (2006). Here, I take this performativity to result in texts relying on and provoking certain responses and reactions which in turn produce specific understandings and shape realities. In the case of the NATO Instagram account, these realities are imbued with a certain sense of militarism and wider narratives of the justification of this international actor. To analyse these, I interrogate the silences and absences made visible through the (visual) tensions between the brat summer ‘peace’ post and NATO’s Instagram presence as a whole. As such, I use an intertextual approach that considers the ‘peace’ post in four stages: ‘the image itself, its immediate intertext, the wider policy discourse, and the texts ascribing meaning to the image’ (Hansen, 2011: 53). Hansen further discusses how an image’s specificity can shape its reception and (securitising) potential by discussing three components: immediacy (including the affective responses upon identification with an image), circulability (ability to reach large audiences), and ambiguity (potential for the image to be ‘read’ and understood correctly) (2011: 56–58). Although she did not write about memes, these three components are also central to memes as a ‘unit of cultural transmission’ (Dawkins, 1976). By paying attention to these components within a wider intertextual approach, I am able to examine the ‘peace’ post’s ability to ‘help build or reinforce a moral position’ (Campbell, 2003: 72).

Analysis

Taking NATO’s brat summer ‘peace’ post as the impetus, I explore the interplay between digital militarism and the silly. In particular, I consider what happens if those associated with the utmost seriousness, that is, tasked with military protection and a remit for violence, engage with the silly. The analysis revealed that there are three ways in which NATO’s engagement with the silly produces absurdity: through (in)congruence; through singularity; and through the choice of meme.

Absurd through (in)congruence

In an effort to maintain their mandate, international organisations must advertise themselves as credible, responsible and necessary, they will have a distinctive brand identity. NATO’s brand is codified in and ensured through various guides (some of which are public and available online). Anything that deviates from the brand identity causes confusion and opens up for questions and challenges to the brand itself. Here, I consider NATO’s ‘peace’ post in relation to NATO’s brand and the guidance provided on how best to communicate this brand. Two documents provide guidance on this: the NATO Digital Media Management Guide (DMMG), published and produced for NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (its Strategic Warfare Development Command) and the NATO Brand Guide (BG) which is applicable for the overarching NATO brand.

Across these guides, the NATO brand is presented most succinctly through its brand promise: guaranteeing our freedom and security (NATO, 2017b: 19). To achieve this, NATO provides three so-called chapters (political, military, and change), and all communication is to reinforce ‘one or more of these three themes. Always ask yourself the question: What chapter am I making stronger?’ (NATO, 2017b: 21). Further, the BG provides key words for each chapter, for the political theme these are ‘peace, democracy, individual liberty, rule of law, cooperation, determination’ (NATO, 2017b: 22). The brat summer ‘peace’ post thus has clear links to one of the themes, in fact, it spells out one of the keywords: peace. Further, the caption of the ‘peace’ post declares that ‘Summer might be over, but the goal for peace remains [green heart emoji]’.

However, the ‘peace’ post does not in any other way align with the NATO brand or follow its communication strategy. The DMMG clearly states that social media writing and posting should be consistent ‘in quality, type of posts, frequency’ (NATO, 2017a: 27) and the BG provides a whole section on how language matters, and communications should both avoid jargon and beware of jokes (NATO, 2017b: 36). The latter in particular makes explicit reference to the fact that ‘humour can easily be misinterpreted’ (NATO, 2017b: 36). Previous social media engagement by NATO has followed this advice and focused on engaging with NATO’s audience on specific topics and in a way that is accessible to them. For example, its communication strategy on Facebook relating to nuclear weapons has achieved more likes and engagement than that on other topics (Crilley, 2021). A communication strategy that is focused in both content and form on the type of narratives that audience are used to and expect from NATO is thus much more congruent to its overarching effort to ‘stay connected and spread themes and messages of importance across the Alliance. It allows [NATO] to tell the NATO story both effectively and efficiently’ (NATO, 2017a: 26).

With regards to image-based social media, the BG sets out guidelines that clearly determine the type of image to be used and how they fit within and further the overall brand strategy. As such, images are to show NATO’s diversity; make a connection; tell stories; be real; show the logo; show clarity (NATO, 2017b: 42). All of these are supplemented with additional information that detail how this can be achieved and why it matters. For example, images are to ‘show the world we live in’ and indicate diversity, convey emotion and include the NATO logo. The ‘peace’ post does not fulfil any of these criteria: it is merely a neon-green background with the word peace written on it. There is no logo included, it does not show different NATO representatives nor the ‘societies we work with’ (NATO, 2017b: 42), and the story told is not necessarily in line with NATO’s purpose and promise. Rather than guaranteeing our freedom and security, to those au fait with memes and current pop culture, the ‘peace’ post indicates knowledge of brat summer, yet this might not be legible for those unfamiliar with this specific and other wider Internet trends. The original album artwork for brat by Charli XCX depicts the word ‘brat’ at a low resolution, that is to say that there are no sharp edges of the letters, rather there is a bleed between the black of the letters and the neon-green background. NATO’s brat summer ‘peace’ post is equally low resolution – even though both the BG and the DMMG explicitly state the need for high resolution of the images used, stating that ‘bad pictures tell the story badly’ (NATO, 2017b: 42) and the DMMG including a whole section on ‘content creation’ with detailed instructions of how to ensure a high quality of the images used (NATO, 2017a: 17).

However, while the ‘peace’ post deviates from NATO’s brand identity and does not follow the clear digital media guidelines, there are some ways in which the ‘peace’ post is not as incongruous as it first might appear. Exploring the ‘eat the rich’ meme, Baspehlivan proposes ‘myriad processes of capture’ (2024: 21) to describe how memes are utilised, or captured, to afford the captor a suggestion of being cool (McGuigan, 2009) and ‘in with the times’ (Baspehlivan, 2024: 22). It is a way through which to claim relevance and often uses humour as the vehicle for connection. Whereas Baspehlivan investigates processes of commercial capture and state capture, whereby memes, their humour and Zeitgeist relevance are capitalised on by commercial or state actors, I consider NATO’s ‘peace’ post as an example of military capture. Here, it is military actors that engage with memes in an effort to be relevant; to not only be up to date but being, or remaining, a relevant actor. This is particularly important for an organisation that relies on continuously reiterating its existence, need and value to the public. As such, engaging with audiences by using popular culture might seem like a straightforward way of doing so or even a good one to reach audiences beyond those that are already interested. And yet, NATO’s geopolitical relevance is currently already very high. NATO and the protection it promises is the Zeitgeist. Increased geopolitical tensions across Europe, particularly exacerbated since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have resulted in increased public support for NATO, renewed member states’ commitments to increase their military spending, and the recent accessions of Finland and Sweden (in 2023 and 2024, respectively) who until then centred supposed neutrality and peace in their foreign policies (Larsson and Rhinard, 2020). Considering this support, there does not seem to be much reason for NATO’s capture of the brat summer meme. More so, to be successful, capitalising on popular culture trends, especially memes that are so particular in their rhetoric, visuals, and humour, needs to be done in a considered manner. Therefore, as with any engagement with popular culture as advertising, there needs to be some overlap between the meme itself and the brand or organisation identity.

Indeed, the reactions to the ‘peace’ post further suggest a certain level of incongruence between the post itself and NATO’s brand identity and communication strategy. While I am unable to prove intention behind all the comments, I illustrate and consider a snapshot of the comments. There are 1192 comments on the ‘peace’ post, which vary in sentiment, length, language. However, just the first 40 comments include the following categories: disbelief and embarrassment at NATO posting the brat meme; statements of support for those currently living through and in war and conflict; drawing attention to different ongoing wars and conflicts across the world; explicit questions directed at NATO; statements that convey a lack of trust in NATO. Across all of these categories, the absurdity of the ‘peace’ post is made visible. In particular, the incongruence of this post and the absurdity produced by NATO’s engagement with popular culture and memes – in stark contrast to its promise, identity, and brand strategy otherwise – is encapsulated by a comment that puts the silly brat summer ‘peace’ post in direct opposition to the suffering taking place in Ukraine.

The comments capture the incongruity and resulting absurdity of the ‘peace’ post. As discussed above, the misalignment between expectation and behaviour, in this case NATO’s brand identity and the posting of the brat summer meme, results in absurdity. It is not necessarily only the word ‘peace’ that causes this incongruity of NATO’s identity, as peace is one of NATO’s guiding words, but rather the format in which it is presented: as a meme of a pop singer’s album. Particularly when considered within the wider state of the world and ongoing wars and genocide, this engagement with the silly is not received well by the audience. It is the engagement with something as silly as an Internet trend that results in the disconnect between the ‘peace’ post and NATO’s overarching identity and brand and ultimately produces absurdity.

Absurd through singularity

Further, NATO’s brat summer ‘peace’ post’s incongruity is even more striking in comparison to the rest of NATO’s Instagram account and respective feed. The ‘peace’ post stands out in two ways: it is the only example of a meme and visually very different from the rest of the feed, which is dominated by military imagery: soldiers in camouflage uniforms, weapons, different military vehicles, and varied (vast) landscapes.

NATO’s Instagram feed features a mixture of different military activities. Soldiers are depicted in the field, training in all different environments and landscapes, and handling different types of weapons. The colour palette of the feed is dominated by blues, whites, and saturated greens. Combined these appear in various manifestations: as the surrounding landscape (of the sea, forest or ice), in the colours of different camouflage prints, or even in the shades of grey the weapons and vehicles are painted in. Throughout the feed a sense of dynamic action is conveyed: the posts often depict training exercises that feature a lot of movement and various manoeuvres. This coherent imagery is disrupted by the brat summer ‘peace’ post; both in its form and in its colouring. NATO’s Instagram feed does not have any other post that is just text – in this case it is even just one word. And the neon-green colour of the background, imitating the original album artwork and the colour that became synonymous with brat summer, stands out from the sea of muted tones. The ‘peace’ post also stands out vis-à-vis the content of the other posts on the feed, not only with regards to their visuals. Almost all of the other posts on NATO’s Instagram feed depict some form of military activity or military personnel. These posts are very much about war, even if they do not explicitly depict it. They are presenting and producing war and militarism through the depiction of preparing and training for war.

Another indicator of the singularity of the ‘peace’ post becomes apparent when considering it with the two posts either side (the one prior to and the one after it). The ‘peace’ post is flanked by posts that are very representative of NATO’s general Instagram presence and its wider identity. It is preceded by a post made up of several images, whose first image depicts a soldier scaling / abseiling a structure in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Whereas the post after the ‘peace’ post depicts military personnel in action, this time in the Mediterranean Sea, where three soldiers are hooking an Osprey helicopter onto a platform at night. The discrepancy between the posts either side of it and the ‘peace’ post in question extends to the different levels of engagement (in the form of likes and comments) that these posts garnered. This suggests that NATO’s engagement with the silly, through the format of memes, did result in a reaction from the wider public – drawing attention to NATO’s Instagram account and the organisation itself. The engagement with the silly, and memes in particular, garners more attention than the more traditional communication strategies NATO has used. However, beyond the attention generated, the absurdity produced through this engagement with the brat summer meme poses questions around the quality of this attention. The ‘peace’ post received nearly 11 times more comments than the posts either side of it (105 and 102, respectively, compared to the 1192 of the ‘peace’ post). Likewise, the ‘peace’ post also stands out in terms of the number of likes received: 82,397. Meanwhile, the posts either side received 20,274 and 15,315, respectively. The latter two are more indicative of the usual engagement (measured by likes) that posts by NATO receive. Going through the feed, most posts have received between 15,000 and 30,000 likes, some even have only 6,000 yet none is as highly liked as the ‘peace’ post. Thus, both when looking at the ‘peace’ post in the grid format of the whole feed and when scrolling through the feed, whereby one individual post is visible at a time, the singularity of the ‘peace’ post becomes clear. Both in its visuals and in its identity as a meme, the ‘peace’ post is the sole example of them across NATO’s Instagram feed. The high engagement with the ‘peace’ post, evidenced by the large number of likes and comments, thus suggests that (in comparison to the other NATO posts) this one went viral.

The singularity of the ‘peace’ post thus plays into the absurdity produced by it. Not only is it out of place in NATO’s Instagram feed and incongruous with NATO’s wider identity and brand, but the ‘peace’ post is also the sole example of NATO engaging with memes. As such, though this unexpected post might provide an opportunity to challenge assumptions about NATO, when considered among the rest of NATO’s Instagram feed, its out-of-placeness further heightens the military imaginary and narratives otherwise present. The ‘peace’ post thus entrenches the militarism of NATO and the associated imagery it presents across its Instagram feed, rather than being an opportunity to question the very logics and structures it is built on.

Absurd through choice of meme

The final aspect through which NATO’s ‘peace’ post intersects with absurdity is the choice of meme. As introduced above, the brat summer meme, which the ‘peace’ post emulates, derived from Charli XCX’s album entitled brat. Emblematic for a certain gendered messiness, vulnerability, and recreational drug use, the choice of the brat summer meme heightens the absurdity of NATO’s engagement with memes.

As introduced above, the ‘peace’ post was posted within the wider context of the brat summer trend. brat summer came to represent an embrace of having fun and partying, while the album also attended to certain vulnerabilities and gendered messiness. In particular, brat centres girls having fun over the pursuit of romantic relationships. When asked in June 2024, on her social media and BBC podcast Sidetracked respectively, Charli XCX described the sentiment underlying her album as:

you’re just like a girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, who does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.

it can be like, so trashy. Just like a pack of cigs and and a Bic lighter. And like, a strappy white top with no bra. That’s like, kind of all you need

This sentiment, characterised by vulnerability and messiness as well as a welcoming of trashiness, represents a rejection of the pursuit of the heteronormative ideal and was predominantly received by women and the LGBTQ+ community. In particular, it found strong support among Millenial and Gen Z generations across the West and is linked to the wider return of Y2K aesthetic (Chokrane, 2023). In line with this, Charli XCX unpacks the notion of the ‘it-girl’ that dominated the early 2000s and discusses the blunt persona often needed to survive the industry. Through references to jealousy, alleged feuds, and her self-awareness around being a pop-star, discussed throughout the album in the wider context of partying and the associated scenes populated by the a who-is-who of celebrities, Charli XCX problematises not only what it means to be a famous female musician in the current age, but also ‘how hard it is to be a human’ (Snapes, 2024). This particular messiness and vulnerability, that also extends to discussions of potential motherhood, feel at odds with NATO’s brand and identity. NATO’s purpose is to ensure security, for many the alliance serves the role of the ultimate protector, and as such the choice of the brat summer meme seems startling. It is not just the meme format that designates a departure from NATO usual communication strategies and online behaviour, but the choice of this meme constitutes the starkest deviation, and it is within this that large parts of absurdity are produced.

In addition, this discrepancy between brat, the associated brat summer meme and NATO’s identity and brand become even more evident in light of Charli XCX’s musical home and origins: the English rave music scene and Charli XCX’s time at illegal raves in London, where she started performing as a teenager. Her music is best described as electropop, electroclash or dance (Bennett, 2024; Hunter-Tilney, 2024; Kim, 2024). This scene, and the associated recreational drug use, is most evident in the song 365, in which Charli XCX sings about being a party girl and using cocaine (‘bumpin’ that’). Here, the discrepancy between the choice of meme and NATO’s identity and brand is once again quite pronounced – ultimately producing disbelief and absurdity. NATO casts itself in the role of the protector and its entire brand identity is centred around providing security. This also means that violence is thought of as a response rather than something that NATO does without cause; it sees itself as responding rather than instigating violence. This in turn provides a certain legitimacy or at least explanation for violence, which then can be less central to how NATO presents itself. However, the production of recreational drugs is often mired in violence and intertwined with illegality (Blume, 2022; Duran-Martinez, 2015; Millán-Quijano, 2020) – which not only are misaligned with NATO’s identity and purpose but the association alone between NATO and this drug use and production is a mismatch.

In fact, NATO runs projects that provide “a unique, combined approach to countering drugs-trafficking by connecting target countries of the drugs trade” with those involved in the sourcing and transit of the drugs (NATO, 2017c). Through its engagement with the brat meme NATO thus (maybe inadvertently) connects itself to rave culture and its associated recreational drug use – which in turn stands in direct contrast to one of its missions to “combat cross-border narcotics trafficking”. The “peace” post might be generously read as an attempt by NATO to engage with an audience that is otherwise beyond its reach. However, in this case, NATO’s engagement with the brat meme results in absurdity. These feelings of absurdity, and associated cringe, are produced by the gap between that which is collectively enjoyed (here brat summer) and the “felt inauthenticity of its rechannelling” by those that capture it (Baspehlivan, 2024: 35). Ultimately, NATO’s choice of meme calls into questions its internal processes of preparing and publishing communication with wider audiences.

This is further illustrated by the distinctly subversive aspect of brat. In an interview with Vogue Singapore, Charli XCX states that the choice of colour for the album cover was guided by an interest to explore why some things are ‘considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad?’ (Ray, 2024). Her intention with the visuals of the album was to provoke people, deliberately choosing an ‘offensive, off-trend shade of green’ (Ray, 2024). brat seeks to provoke and subvert established hierarchies – Charli XCX is not ‘doing things to be nice’ (Ray, 2024). This overt desire to challenge, question and not be nice sits at odds with NATO’s nature as an organisation that relies on continued public support to derive legitimacy. Although NATO is inherently militaristic and thus violent, its public image as the ultimate protector nonetheless relies on certain justifying moves. NATO’s explicit militarism is only accepted and supported as long as it is seen to be in pursuit of the ‘right thing’ – it is hard to see how not being nice on purpose can be part of that. This tension, or gap, between the choice of meme and what it stands for and NATO’s identity and purpose then produces the absurdity of this engagement with the silly. Not due to the silly per se, but because of NATO’s engagement with it through the choice of the brat summer meme.

Conclusion

Through its engagement with NATO’s brat summer ‘peace’ post, this article explores what happens when those tasked with protection and security engage with the silly. By analysing NATO’s ‘peace’ post, this article demonstrates how such engagement with the silly can produce absurdity. Here, this absurdity is generated in three ways: through the ‘peace’ posts’ incongruence with NATO’s wider, and very explicit brand identity; through its singularity as the sole example of NATO’s engagement with memes; and through the choice of meme itself, which in this case stands for a particular kind of messiness, vulnerability, and recreational drug use.

The absurdity generated by NATO’s ‘peace’ post does not derive from the engagement with the silly per se. Rather, it is the choice of meme that produces absurdity and then in turn, through its singularity and incongruence, highlights and entrenches the distinct militarism of NATO. Instead of calling into question the violence NATO represents, perpetuates, and relies on for promises of future security, the ‘peace’ post and associated connotations of a brat summer result in reactions that cement NATO’s military power and purpose. The comments and reactions overwhelmingly suggest that NATO should not imitate Internet trends but rather concentrate on its important mission. Thus, NATO’s engagement with the silly results in a confirmation of its seriousness as a military actor – albeit with a temporary redirection, away from the overt and explicit militarism and towards a more absurd and seemingly banal form.

Joining efforts to examine memes as a vehicle of digital militarism, this article does not suggest that the silly and engagement of it do not belong within studies of international politics. To the contrary, they can be the very thing that makes visible the (contradictions within) current systems, logics, and resulting expectations. As such, paying attention to the intersections between the supposedly serious and the silly, and scrutinising the boundaries between them, helps to examine how power structures are perpetuated through and reproduced within the unserious. Research has so far investigated how far-right and anti-establishment actors use humour and memes, yet these dynamics must also be understood in relation to those that are regarded as serious, established agents of international politics. Furthermore, in times of increased militarisation, it is pertinent to consider how militarism is disseminated in the digital context. Memes and silly Internet trends are also vehicles of digital militarism and as such require attention to make visible and challenge militarist logics and narratives.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Luise Bendfeldt

Notes

Author biography

Luise Bendfeldt is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish Defence University, where she primarily researches the (everyday) politics of preparing for war. Her further research interests are popular culture, gender, masculinities and the stories told about violence.

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