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[Toparaman]

Another very 2016 headline. Poor Pepe, he's been such a good friend for so many years, he doesn't deserve this.

It's especially dumb since in itself it's just a cartoon frog. You could MS Paint some racist text over a picture of literally anything.

They're coming for Wojack next.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Just a hilarious cartoon frog. Nothing weird about this.

This is why the dismissive replies here are inane. Pepe has been enthusiastically adopted by white supremacists, acknowledge that and move on with your life rather than burying your head in the sand. You can think it's absurd on their part, but shooting the messenger is always foolish.

Is the whole situation ridiculous? Sure, but understanding the history here is going to be important during the election postmortem when people are trying to understand how a white supremacist almost (hopefully) became the POTUS.

The internet is a huge part of mainstream life these days, which is great but simultaneously problematic in that it levels the playing field for discourse, and allows the rapid dissemination of lies which quickly become facts because they feel good to believe. As absurd as it sounds, memes are a pretty killer propaganda tool because they are basically snapshots of feelings.

 

[BlastProcessing]

After I saw numbers amongst the hate signs, I don't think this ADL is serious. Just a bunch of idiots.

Where do you live? Haven't you seen a skinhead with an 88 tatoo? Never seen a car with a 14 words bumper sticker? I see that stuff all the time in Texas. In small towns where I was born, in Ft Worth where I grew up and even in hippie ass Austin where I currently live.

I also saw it in when I lived in Iowa and Montana.

 

[FStop7]

After I saw numbers amongst the hate signs, I don't think this ADL is serious. Just a bunch of idiots.

88's used as code by gangs like the aryan brotherhood

 

[Fried Food]

interesting how so many posters are posting hate imagery in this thread

 

[butzopower]

 

[LiquidSolid]

Didn't this start the whole mess?

Stop getting all your news from GAF.

 

[excelsiorlef]

That reads like she wasn't aware JaredTSwift is a parody account.

Besides the point.

The narrative is still true and pre-dates Clinton

 

[Zemm]

dat boi is the worst meme

Dat Boi isn't so great? Are you kidding me? When was the last time you saw a meme with such hilarity and re-usability online? Dat Boi puts the memes in another level, and we will be blessed if we ever see a meme of it's caliber and passion for the memes again. Pepe breaks records. Le toucan breaks records. Dat boi breaks the rules. You can keep your copypastas. I prefer the frog

 

[Freshmaker]

Pepe used to be so happy...

How did everything go so wrong?

He pissed away all that good will.

 

[junpei]

It isn't hard to understand that language and symbolism evolves over time. Just look at the Indian swastika and the Third Reich swastika. One of them is the symbol for peace and the other symbol for tyranny. Nowadays racist tend to thrive on plausible deniability and taking over Pepe is one way to achieve that.

 

[Jumplion]

These pictures feel like a joke. How can anyone take something this dumb serious?

That's what memes are. They're collective inside-jokes for communities. And Pepe's been used enough to the point where it's pretty much a collective in-joke for that community.

I dunno how I feel about officially recognizing it as a hate symbol. It gives the meme much more power on that side of the internet, and yeah it's a pretty stupid meme, but at the same time it's hard to not see a pretty strong connection when you actually take the time to observe it.

EDIT: Also, Junpei above me made a good point, a big tactic of white supremacists/alt-right is to go "it's just a joke" or "it's just a stupid meme", creating a smidgen of plausible deniability/reasonable doubt towards their actual intentions.

 

[JackDT]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a49057/pepe-frog-creator-voting-hillary/

What do you think of this group that has co-opted your creation?

Obviously it's not in line with any of my beliefs. I've seen outrageous stuff involving Pepe online before, but I try not to dwell on it. I blame Trump for all of this, because he kind of looks like this smug Pepe meme. Now it's just this runaway train. But the people who are driving this train are these anonymous Internet trolls who don't stand for anything except for nihilism and getting a rise out of whatever racist or sexist or disgusting thing they can do. It's just an idiotic joke. They kind of seem like this group that tried to intellectualize white power, and they've appropriated Pepe for that. It sucks, but I can't control it more than anyone can control frogs on the Internet.

 

[NiiloPielinen]

That's what memes are.

I dunno how I feel about officially recognizing it as a hate symbol. It gives the meme much more power on that side of the internet, and yeah it's a pretty stupid meme, but at the same time it's hard to not see a pretty strong connection when you actually take the time to observe it.

In my opinion, this is a bad thing because this gives these guys the power to claim basically any pop-culture phenomena as their own. All they have to do is "touch" something and it becomes "tainted" and associated with them.

 

[Irminsul]

This is why the dismissive replies here are inane. Pepe has been enthusiastically adopted by white supremacists, acknowledge that and move on with your life rather than burying your head in the sand. You can think it's absurd on their part, but shooting the messenger is always foolish.

But the argument was that Pepe is being used as a "dog whistle" for white surpremacists. The pictures you quoted are the exact oppositle of dog whistles, they are blatantly obvious. And that is precisely because Pepe doesn't work as a code figure for white surpremacism, you have to add things like the fucking Confederate battle flag to make your intentions clear.

Contrast that with numbers, e.g. 88. They seem innocent until you know what they stand for. That's true for none of the racist Pepe memes.

 

[Gavin Darklighter]

So that's how they want to play it. Fine...

 

[Neuromancer]

Palmer Luckey won. 😭

 

[Gavin Darklighter]