Trump, RFK Jr., and several other government agencies, including Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, and the British far-right Reform Party have shared social media posts recently featuring a penguin, with, in Trump’s case, statements like “embrace the penguin.”
Though brief and cryptic, these posts embrace an online meme known as the “nihilistic penguin.” It originates in a viral clip taken from Werner Herzog’s 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World, in which a lone Adélie penguin abandons its colony and, instead of heading out to sea with its peers, slowly walks inland toward the icy Antarctic interior.
