About

The Food Chain refers to a series of edits that potray a set of entities, characters or groups following the bait that a more powerful entity is showing in front of them via a fishing rod. The format combines the anti-Semitic caricature Le Happy Merchant, and the American Bear meme. Though initially used as a parody towards conspiracy theories, later iterations of the meme included many other nonsensical edits.

Origin

While the origin of the meme is disputed, the image that likely inspired the format was posted for the first time^[1] on April 9th, 2013, on the 4chan board /lit/. To an image showing the American Bear being baited by Le Happy Merchant using a burger (shown below, left), was added Le Reptilian Face, baiting the Merchant with money (shown below, right).

Later versions of the meme saw the addition to the chain a more stylized reptilian and an occultist wearing a black robe, most likely representing The Illuminati or freemasons (shown below, left). The final version of the chain has in addition an alien being baited by the reptilian with a strain of DNA (shown below, right).

Controversy

On September 8th, 2017, Yair Netanyahu, son of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on his Facebook page a version of the meme that contained his father's political opponents, as well as George Soros. The image was titled "The Food Chain"^[2] (shown below).

The meme received an outcry from Netanyahu's opponents, particularly from Avi Gabbay, the chairman of the opposition Labor Party, who said at Army Radio Sunday that the post "crossed every line imaginable"^[3] and Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel, who posted on his Twitter^[4] screenshots of Yair's meme, saying

"Is that what the child hears at home? What is this, genetics or a spontaneous mental illness? In any case it doesn't matter. We should fund a psychiatrist for him, not his security guard and chauffer."

Yair's meme (shown below, left), is an edit of an alternative version of the original chain, that shows Le Happy Merchant once again appearing on the far side of the spectrum, offering the planet Earth to the reptilian overlord (shown below, right).

Spread

The format appeared in other memes, such as The Eternal Anglo, spawning its own continuation of the chain with The Eternal Dutchman (shown below).

On April 15th, 2015, MyAnimeList user PeenusWeenusCaim posted a Shrek edit on a thread titled "How redpilled are you?"^[5], which was then reshared on r/Brogres^[6] by Redditor -shrek, titled "the larger scheme of things. [Crosspost from /r/Shrekspiracy]" and received over 65 upvotes in 6 years (shown below, left). On August 7th, 2020, a Groyper edit was posted on /pol/ ^[7] by an anonymous user (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References