"A cartoon of Pepe the Frog is a commonly used symbol of the alt-right" is the subtitle of the image in the BBC article. Look at it, the drawing innocence is really staggering: I'm wondering what is the link, whether the link is warranted, and whether Twitter used posts of Pepe the Frog to recognize alt-right people. Sounds like a badly AI-generated inference to me.
As someone with a fairly large rare Pepe collection, and who has been responsible for illustrating some extremely rare Pepes, but is in no way sympathetic to the notion of white supremacy, I find this whole Pepe controversy quite annoying. I've even removed the Pepe patch I had on my backpack in fear that someone would misinterpret my politics.
The clearest indiction I had that the media and the Clinton campaign were completely out of touch with reality came after reading this gem of an article on the Clinton campaign website.
Wow, thanks for posting this. I'm not a US citizen so I had not reviewed the candidate sites but I started to suspect things like this had to come from the democratic campaign. I figured soundbites though, not a page on the website. Unbelievable.
I usually take my civic duty fairly seriously and try to stay on top of the candidates and their campaigns but this year I found the negativity and vitriol displayed by both sides to be so grating that I was just tuning things out these last few months.
This whole issue with Pepe really drove things home for me, as juvenile as that may sound. I first stumbled upon Pepe years ago when I was even less sure of myself than I am now and I found the image of Pepe staring out of a window as the rain poured down outside [1] to be a perfect illustration of angst.
I'm upset that such an innocent meme could be co-opted by literal Nazis, but to be honest, I don't hold neo Nazis in particularly high regard so I'm not really surprised nor disappointed. On the other hand, I'd like to think a major candidate's campaign would put a bit more thought into the issue than simply asserting that Pepe posters are all Nazis.
I think most decent people would be upset and hurt at being called a racist, sexist, homophobe, or Nazis without a concrete reason. Yes, Pepe is just a stupid cartoon frog and it's not the end of the world that I no longer have him adorn my backpack, but still I feel this is a good example of the effect falsely labelling people with certain isms can have.
Despite being a progressive far to the left of Clinton, this whole affair makes me sympathetic to all the Trump supports, many, perhaps the vast majority of whom are not racist and have legitimate anger at the way Washington has neglected their concerns, who now face being lumped in with actual racists by the media.
The artist who created Pepe had nothing to do with the alt-right, it's an internet meme they took by sheer volume, just by using it a lot. Pepe has been around for 10 years, and the use of it as a symbol of white supremacy is 2-3 years old. The artist recently got put on a web page by the Anti Defamation League on a post categorizing Pepe as a hate symbol, next to the Nazi Swastika. The artist called them to try and get it reconsidered and have his name removed, since he had nothing to do with current usage of Pepe. He's now trying to #savepepe.
The current usage of Pepe by the so-called alt-right has sadly but definitely been intended as a symbol of hatred and racism, but I wouldn't assume the discrepancy between what Pepe looks like and what hate groups use it for implies anything about how and why Twitter is blocking these people.
The reality is sometimes the meaning poured behind a symbol gets changed. The SWASTIKA symbol, originally meant "Good Fortune", existed 5000 years before the Nazis used it.
it's an internet meme they took by sheer volume, just by using it a lot.
I think you have your causallity a bit mixed there. They did use it a lot, and then people started lobbing guilt by association at the rest of us that were using it. We had no option but to let Pepe go.
Pepe is a symbol of hate because it wasn't my (or anyone's) hill to die on defending the integrity of a meme from libel by social manipulators.
The particular situation with pepe the frog is a bit more nuanced than news sources let on.
He went from "Feels Bad, Man" comics to being very frequently photoshopped with 3rd reich / swastikas / other neo-nazi logos.
Pepe is an interesting case because it brings up the discrepancy between trolling (messing with others in "bad fun") and actual people who vehemently support and push aggressively hateful messages.
This really is one of the more ridiculous Clinton campaign talking points that just made them look very out of touch.
Pepe is a common meme template. Of the thousands of Pepes that I have unwillingly seen, none were neo-nazi except those in articles accusing Pepe of being a neo-nazi symbol. However, if you go to a deliberately offensive chan then sure, you will find every meme-template being used offensively.
> Of the thousands of Pepes that I have unwillingly seen, none were neo-nazi except those in articles accusing Pepe of being a neo-nazi symbol.
YMMV. In the circles I browse, they are frequently used, but they were only used to troll. They are certainly used for more aggressive hate in other places, including on Twitter.
This has been my experience too. I've been baffled at the coverage of Pepe as a hate symbol. I had seen it around on the internet for years. To me it was just another meme. The idea of it being a hate symbol came off to me almost as propaganda.
> being very frequently photoshopped with 3rd reich / swastikas / other neo-nazi logos.
Your samples are biased there. If you are already looking at alt-right tweets then obviously you will see more trump- and nazi-related pepes.
If you look anywhere else then pepe is just another highly versatile meme.
/pol/ also shopped MAGA cap onto various anime characters. Momiji inubashiri being particularly popular, probably because she already wears a red hat in her canonical design. Does that mean those anime characters themselves symbolize hate or even conservatism? I think not.
It just means that outside observers are not familiar with memetic mutation.
