Cthulhu for President is a political parody of the United States presidential election, in which Cthulhu, the fictional cosmic horror, runs for President of the United States. Parody campaigns with accompanying political advertising materials were run for each of the US presidential elections since 1996, usually with the motto "Cthulhu for President: Why settle for the lesser evil?" [1] Similar parody campaigns have been run for presidencies of other countries.
Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft and described as an enormous clawed and winged anthropoid shape, with a head like an octopus, which is worshipped by maniacal cultists across the world. The creature was first introduced in the 1928 short story "The Call of Cthulhu", but has since been featured in numerous popular culture references. [2] [3]
The American games company Chaosium publishes multiple games about Lovecraft's work, starting with the Call of Cthulhu horror role-playing game in 1981. In 1996, Chaosium published a "Cthulhu for President" political campaign kit, including a campaign button, posters, yard and window signs, speeches, and a vision booklet, "Contract on America" (parodying the 1994 Contract with America). [4] [5] This won the 1996 Origins Award for Best Game Accessory. [6]
In 2004, Chaosium, in cooperation with Chris O'Neill and Daniel Landis of 9th Level Games, a humorous role-playing game publisher, made a complete "Cthulhu for President" beer and pretzels role-playing game. [7] In it, the players portray Elder Party campaign staffers serving the Great Old Ones in an occult political struggle. [8] The 2016 edition parodies the 2016 United States presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. [9]
The Cthulhu for President parody campaign recurred over multiple election cycles. [1] Cthulhu.org was the home of the first Internet Cthulhu for President campaign, starting in 1997, accompanying the Chaosium campaign materials, [10] and running at least through 2007. [11] Buttons and T-shirts depicting Cthulhu with the "Why Choose the Lesser Evil? Cthulhu for President" logo were sold during the 2000 and 2004 United States presidential election campaigns. [3] Cthulhu for President videos and posters were made for the United States presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, and for the 2010 Polish presidential election. [7] A Spanish website (Vota Cthulhu: Partido No Euclidiano Por el Fin de los Días – the Non-Euclidian Party for the End of Days) supported Cthulhu for President in the 2011 Spanish general election. [12] [13] A Cthulhu 2012 campaign website gave Cthulhu a vice presidential candidate, Dagon, from one of Lovecraft's earliest stories. [14] [13]
The 2016 United States presidential election cycle included a larger "Cthulhu for America" website, which drew celebrity and international attention. [2] [7] The site was launched in August 2015, and included merchandise like t-shirts, stickers, flyers, and mugs with slogans including "Why choose the lesser evil?", and a take on Black Lives Matter/All Lives Matter: "No lives matter". [7] Its Twitter account had over 35,000 followers. [1] In December 2015 Cthulhu for America put out a War on Christmas kit including Cthulhu stickers meant to be put over the logo of Starbucks coffee cups. [15] The site gave credit to Chaosium for the 1990s and 2000s "campaigns" but distanced itself from the company. [7]
The Cthulhu for America campaign was "endorsed" by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and his Twitter followers in June 2016 (also referring to the Spanish Vota Cthulhu page). [16] [13] del Toro also inverted the Cthulhu for President logo (of VoteCthulhu.com, an alternate URL of Cthulhu for America), and called it "Donald Cthrump", referring to candidate Donald Trump. [17]
In September 2016, American horror author Stephen King wrote that Donald Trump was actually Cthulhu in disguise: "The absurd hairdo isn't absurd at all. It hides the tentacles." [18] The Cthulhu for America campaign responded with an angry denial ("Trump could barely hope to be 1/63 as great as I am if he weren't such a buffoon") [19] with a longer statement including references to many of King's books. [20] [21] [22] The campaign had earlier made a similar rebuttal to John Boehner's statement that candidate Ted Cruz was "Lucifer in the flesh", [23] writing "The only being of pure evil in this race is myself". [24]
Cthulhu for America continued into the 2020 United States presidential election, this time with the slogan "Wreck. World. Worse.", parodying the Build Back Better slogan of the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign. [25] When the initial logo used for the 2020 Republican National Convention had a tangle of lines apparently emerging from the Republican elephant, it was popularly compared to Cthulhu and its tentacles. [26]
Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos. The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium; it was first released in 1981 and is in its seventh edition, with licensed foreign language editions available as well. Its game system is based on Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing (BRP) with additions for the horror genre. These include special rules for sanity and luck.
Chaosium Inc. is a publisher of tabletop role-playing games established by Greg Stafford in 1975. Chaosium's major titles include Call of Cthulhu, based on the horror fiction stories of H. P. Lovecraft, RuneQuest Glorantha, Pendragon, based on Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and 7th Sea, "swashbuckling and sorcery" set in a fantasy 17th century Europe.
R'lyeh is a fictional lost city that was first mentioned in the H. P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in Weird Tales in February 1928. R'lyeh is a sunken city in the South Pacific and the prison of the entity called Cthulhu.
Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, this creature has since been featured in numerous pop culture references. Lovecraft depicts it as a gigantic entity worshipped by cultists, in the shape of a green octopus, dragon, and a caricature of human form. The Lovecraft-inspired universe, the Cthulhu Mythos, where it exists with its fellow entities, is named after it.
Nyarlathotep is a fictional character created by H. P. Lovecraft. The character is a malign deity in the Cthulhu Mythos, a shared universe. First appearing in Lovecraft's 1920 prose poem "Nyarlathotep", he was later mentioned in other works by Lovecraft and by other writers. Later, writers describe him as one of the Outer Gods, an alien pantheon.
"The Call of Cthulhu" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in February 1928.
Hastur is an entity of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen is an American game designer. He worked at Chaosium, contributing to the development of RuneQuest and creating the acclaimed and influential horror role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. He later joined id Software where he worked on the development of the Doom franchise and Quake. As part of Ensemble Studios, Petersen subsequently contributed to the Age of Empires franchise.
Lovecraft Country is a term coined for the New England setting used by H. P. Lovecraft in many of his weird fiction stories, which combines real and fictitious locations. This setting has been elaborated on by other writers working in the Cthulhu Mythos. The phrase was not in use during Lovecraft's own lifetime; it was coined by Keith Herber for the Lovecraftian role-playing game Call of Cthulhu.
Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). His work emphasizes themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries, which are now associated with Lovecraftian horror as a subgenre. The cosmic themes of Lovecraftian horror can also be found in other media, notably horror films, horror games, and comics.
The Xothic legend cycle is a series of short stories by American writer Lin Carter that are based on the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, primarily on Lovecraft's stories "The Call of Cthulhu" and "Out of the Aeons".
Donald John Trump Jr., often called Don Jr., is an American businessman. He is the eldest child of former U.S. president Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana Trump.
Donald Trump, president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, has attracted considerable media attention during his career as a celebrity personality, businessman, and politician. He has been portrayed and appeared in popular culture since the 1980s, including several cameo appearances in film and television.
"Make America Great Again" is an American political slogan and movement most recently popularized by Donald Trump during his successful 2016 presidential campaign. "MAGA" is also used to refer to Trump's political base, or to an individual or group of individuals from within that base. The slogan became a pop culture phenomenon, seeing widespread use and spawning numerous variants in the arts, entertainment and politics, being used by both supporters and opponents of Trump's presidency. Originally used by Ronald Reagan as a campaign slogan in his 1980 presidential campaign, it has since been described as a loaded phrase. Multiple scholars, journalists, and commentators have called the slogan racist, regarding it as dog-whistle politics and coded language.
Social media played an important role in shaping the course of events surrounding the 2016 United States presidential election. It facilitated greater voter interaction with the political climate; unlike traditional media, social media gave people the ability to create, comment on, and share content related to the election.
The sketch comedy television series Saturday Night Live (SNL) has parodied Donald Trump since 1988, covering his time as a real estate broker to his popular run as host of The Apprentice, and during as well as after his presidency.
Ronna Romney McDaniel is an American political strategist who served as chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2017 until her resignation in 2024. A member of the Republican Party and the Romney family, McDaniel was chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 2015 to 2017.
Donald Trump's use of social media attracted attention worldwide since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers. On November 19, 2022, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated his account, although Trump has stated he will not use it in favor of his own social media platform, Truth Social. The first tweet since 2021 was made in August 2023 about his mugshot from Fulton County Jail, but the account has since remained inactive.
Republican Accountability (RA), formerly Republican Accountability Project (RAP) and, for the current presidential election, Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), is a political initiative launched in May 2020 by Defending Democracy Together for the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle. The project was formed to produce a US$10 million advertising campaign focused on 100 testimonials by Republicans, conservatives, moderates, right-leaning independent voters, and former Trump voters explaining why they would not vote for Donald Trump in 2020. By August 2020, they had collected 500 testimonials.
Donald Trump, President of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and a Presidential candidate for the upcoming 2024 United States presidential election, has elicited highly polarized public perceptions about his performance as a head of state and largely negative opinions about his temperament and personal conduct while in office. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality famous for his image as a real estate tycoon. Viewed as a heroic figure by many of his supporters, Trump was seen by some as a business "huckster" and was the frequent butt of jokes.