About

Our Blessed Homeland / Their Barbarous Wastes refers to a political cartoon created by Tom Gauld that later turned into an exploitable object-labeling meme used to satirize the way one community looks down on another despite the clear similarities between the communities.

Origin

On March 1st, 2015, cartoonist Tom Gauld posted a political cartoon he'd crafted for The Guardian.^[1] The cartoon depicts two nearly identical kingdoms, with one kingdom labeled "Our Blessed Homeland" and the other "Their Barbarous Wastes." The cartoon illustrates how one country feels patriotic about its attributes while denigrating the same attributes of the opposing country (shown below).

Spread

The cartoon began seeing use as an exploitable meme primarily on Tumblr starting in the early 2020s. One of the earliest known variations appeared on October 22nd, 2020, on the Tumblr account rtrixie,^[2] which made a similar point as the original cartoon and gained over 120 notes (shown below).

On March 21st, 2021, Tumblr user sirnekomeowinton^[3] posted one of the first humorous examples of the meme, labeling the sides "Tumblr" and "Twitter" (shown below, left) In a May 23rd follow-up post, Tumblr user flakmaniak^[4] altered all the characteristics in the original comic to have them apply to Tumblr and Twitter (shown below, right). The post gained over 224,000 notes in roughly one month.

On April 26th, 2022, Redditor rene_gader posted a Super Smash Brothers variation on the meme to /r/SmashBrosUltimate,^[5] gaining over 4,900 points in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References