# Zak Asplin’s Somali “New Mainers” post shares a racist “Two Buttons” edit

Zak Asplin shared a Tommy Robinson post about Somalis in Britain and warned that Somali “New Mainers” might treat America similarly. The embedded image alters [Jake Clark’s “Two Buttons” comic](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/daily-struggle-two-buttons). It retains the red shirt, white glove, cloth, and forehead-wiping pose, but replaces the original light-skinned man’s anxious face with an anti-Black caricature: an enormously enlarged forehead, hollow cheeks, half-closed eyes ringed by dark shadows, an elongated nose, exaggerated protruding lips, and two prominent yellow front teeth. The buttons read “Learning” and “Learing.” The latter echoes the misspelled sign at [Quality Learning Center](https://www.fox9.com/news/youtuber-nick-shirley-returns-minneapolis-day-care-after-viral-fraud-video.amp), a Minneapolis childcare center highlighted in Nick Shirley’s December 2025 video alleging fraud at Somali-run childcare facilities. That reference places the image in a controversy over childcare services and funding for [children and families](https://ispu.org/islamophobia/educators-administrators-teachers-parents/). The edit combines ridicule of the center’s sign with a demeaning portrayal of Somali intelligence, then carries that racial generalization into Asplin’s warning about Somali immigrants in Maine. Its distorted Black facial features and intellectual ridicule echo [minstrel caricature](https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/caricature/).

## Archived quotation

> To those living in Maine like me, pay attention to how many of Mills Somali ‘New Mainers’ might treat America as they do Britain...

[Archived source](https://web.archive.org/web/20260101024759if_/https://twitter.com/ZakAsplin/status/2006557988132356524)

Timestamp recorded by the archive: 2025-12-31T21:47:59-05:00. This is not the publication date of this archive page.

[Direct post screenshot](https://zakasplin.com/assets/post-somali.webp)

[HTML entry](https://zakasplin.com/posts/somali-new-mainers-two-buttons-post/)



## Source and context

This entry records Asplin’s own warning to Maine residents above material shared from Tommy Robinson. The screenshot contains both the warning and the altered “Two Buttons” image, so readers can distinguish Asplin’s added text from the material he shared.

Related context: [his claim about assimilation in the US and Europe](https://zakasplin.com/posts/islam-cannot-assimilate-us-europe/).