Abstract
This chapter examines how members of a political community maintain the boundaries of a group identity through the persistent circulation of constitutive rhetoric. Working from a codex of 380 mentions of the phrase “Founding Fathers” from the notorious pro-Trump subreddit, /r/The_Donald, I detail how members of an online political community use calls to America’s past to legitimize their political identity. Ultimately, I argue that the narrative of the Founding Fathers becomes a way for members to cast themselves as marginalized even while aligning themselves with persons in power.
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Goad, R. (2020). Trump Daddy. In: Jones, J., Trice, M. (eds) Platforms, Protests, and the Challenge of Networked Democracy. Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36525-7_15
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