Memeday: If Donald Trump offers you a free helicopter ride, say no

As you'll see, the real Trump Helicopter Ride memes get a lot uglier than this — As you’ll see, the real Trump Helicopter Ride memes get a lot uglier than this

So I made a little mistake in my post yesterday. After quoting one Trump fan’s tweet celebrating the murder of British Labour MP Jo Cox, I noted that the same Trump fan had also suggested that a writer for Vox be treated to a “TRUMP HELICOPTER RIDE.”

I took this to be a reference to a famous scene in the film Scarface in which a man is thrown to his death from a helicopter. But, as several commenters informed me, it was far more likely to have been a reference to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of murdering people by throwing them from helicopters into the ocean.

Indeed, as I discovered when I looked into it further, “Pinochet helicopter rides” have become a popular meme amongst Alt Right Anime Nazis and their fellow travelers on the far right; the notion of murdering leftists by tossing them from helicopters is apparently irresistably hilarious to this particular demographic.

Since most of those in this lovely demographic also adore Donald Trump, the Pinochet Helicopter Ride meme has morphed easily into the Trump Helicopter ride meme. (It probably didn’t hurt that early in his campaign Trump actually did give helicopter rides to children at the Iowa State Fair; hopefully all of the children were returned to their parents intact.)

So for today’s Memeday, let’s take a look at the Pinochet Helicopter Ride meme as it has transformed into the Trump Helicopter Ride Meme. (Each meme links to the site where I found it.)

Let’s start with Pure Pinochet:

And now we see the meme mutating towards Trump. Yep, that’s Bernie Sanders getting tossed to his death.

Then Pinochet becomes Trump, with Bernie still in the role of victim — presumably because of the clashes between Trump fans and protesters, whom Trump fans assumed were all Bernie supporters. And possibly because he’s Jewish.

Here cartoon versions of a couple of Trump protesters — I’ve crossed out their faces, because they never asked to become memes — get tossed to their cartoon deaths by a Trump-loving Pusheen the Cat.

With Hillary Clinton now the presumptive Democratic nominee, she’s replaced Bernie as the favorite victim.

One inventive soul even made a little video — making use of the scene from Scarface I thought was the inspiration for this meme. Since it won’t embed, you’ll have to go here to see it.
hiltrumpheli