At first glance, the Department of Education’s October 27 X post seems like generic Harry Potter-esque slop. It shows a trio of students walking toward a sprawling Hogwarts-like castle while a young girl with long, flowing white-blonde hair watches them from the foreground, accompanied with the text “There’s Magic in Learning!” and “Make Education Great Again.”

But for a hyper-online, highly radicalized subset of the internet, the state was not just communicating a vague policy stance—it appeared to be adopting the deeply-coded visual language of the “Malfoid.”The reaction online was immediate. On X, Bulwark reporter Will Sommer quickly diagnosed the situation, posting that the Department of Education was “embracing the ‘malfoid’ meme, a right-wing fan fiction idea about a female Draco Malfoy who Harry Potter could fall in love with.”

Others responded with Malfoid art and AI-generated clips, including some featuring President Donald Trump.

The Malfoid concept did not come from conservative think tanks but began in creatively chaotic fan fiction websites like Archive of Our Own (AO3). Gender-bending characters—taking a canonically male character and rewriting them as female or vice versa—is a time-honored tradition in fandoms. However, in these specific stories, the gender-flipped female Malfoy character is not just a narrative experiment for someone’s crackship. She is a potent avatar for toxic elitism, with a ruthless obsession with “blood purity.”

The term Malfoid is a portmanteau combining “Malfoy”—the last name of Harry Potter’s school nemesis Draco—with “foid,” which is short for “femoid” or “female humanoid”—a highly offensive incel term used to describe women.

In the original books, Malfoy is prejudiced against wizards whose heritage is mixed with muggles (non-wizards), but it’s framed as a moral failing to be overcome or punished. In Malfoid fan fiction, however, the character's bigotry is romanticized, transforming her into a right-wing aesthetic vehicle actively propagated by far-right meme channels and Telegram groups. Potter is no longer a traditional hero, but a stand-in for disaffected young men who fantasize about a relationship with a beautiful, cruel silvery-blonde girl.

A quick search of platforms like Reddit and Tumblr for the term brings up a wide range of art, AI-generated and drawn in heavily stylized anime aesthetics, featuring a busty wide-eyed blonde demeaning a blushing and devoted Potter.

The character is also depicted as explicitly anti-queer and anti-trans, as the word “foid” becomes a way for the far right to claim that this gender swapping is correcting an error.

For young, radicalized internet users, the Malfoid provides a ready-made, pop-culture-literate mascot for ethno-nationalism. She is the ultimate “guy’s girl” updated for the digital age, injected with a dark, pop culture edge that makes her more appealing to a terminally online demographic than traditional political propaganda. It’s an effective way to package white supremacy and conservative purity ideals into a highly shareable, visually appealing internet aesthetic.

Prominent right-wingers using fantasy and fiction to promote their ideals is not a new phenomenon. For years, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has been relentlessly co-opted by several prominent figures on the political right, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Similarly, the Trump administration has normalized communicating to the public via memes. Trump’s own feed on Truth Social is a constant stream of AI-generated meme imagery, and various government departments, such as DHS, have previously utilized memes and Tolkien's work to make light of deeply serious issues like ICE raids.

Since dropping the Malfoid meme, the Department of Education has continued its “There is Magic in Learning” X posts with images referencing The Lord of the Rings and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Leslie Hahner, a communications professor at Baylor University, says the “collapse of boundaries between internet subcultures and mainstream institutions” is a defining feature of modern politics. “Symbols that once circulated in niche online communities now regularly appear in political campaigns, government communications, and major media coverage,” she says, noting that while memes might have a bigger reach, this strategy becomes dangerous when adopting toxic internet culture.

She says the use of “incel imagery” raises uncomfortable questions. “Is the agency unaware of the symbol’s cultural baggage, or does it believe these associations are useful for attracting engagement from relevant audiences? Either possibility is significant,” Hahner tells WIRED. “If officials are unaware of the connotation, it suggests a lack of cultural literacy or an inability to safeguard learners from toxic symbols. If they are aware, it raises questions about why a federal institution would choose to amplify imagery tied to dehumanizing online discourse.”

In response to WIRED’s request for comment, the Department of Education quoted Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: “Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry. Why should that mean it’s not real?”By utilizing the visual markers of the Malfoid, the institution signals continuing cultural alignment to a radicalized, terminally online base without ever triggering the alarm bells of traditional media oversight. It is an algorithmic wink, assuring the most extreme corners of their constituency that the institution shares their foundational worldview.

We are witnessing the end of traditional political persuasion. Policy papers, detailed legislative agendas, and traditional campaign speeches simply do not enthuse the youth anymore; aesthetic identity does. Modern political operatives understand that young voters have been trained on platforms like TikTok and Wattpad to consume information through hyper-specific tropes rather than cohesive, logical ideologies.

The internet is no longer a reflection of our political reality. Our political reality is simply executing the tropes of the internet, and the state is perfectly happy to play along.