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Ignorant, Calculated, or Just Weird?
Hillary Clinton’s website has published an “explainer” about Pepe the Frog, an omnipresent character in the meme-verse. Despite being used in every possible way for years — many highly unsavory, this being the Age of the Internet — the Clinton machine explains that poor Pepe is “a symbol associated with white supremacy.” But how?
Pepe is a cartoon frog who began his internet life as an innocent meme enjoyed by teenagers and pop stars alike. But in recent months, Pepe’s been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the “alt-right.” They’ve decided to take back Pepe by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-semitism and white supremacy.
Sounds legit, if you ignore the “almost entirely” and the equivalence of “white supremacists” and “the Alt-Right.” But what about the cooption? The source is described as “a prominent white-supremacist” via the Daily Beast. Although it turns out that rather than “prominent,” the source is better described as “anonymous.” The name? Maybe it’s @JaredTSwift or, perhaps, @PaulTown_, both of whom are referenced elsewhere in the piece. Or perhaps not.
It is, of course, easy to find offensive Pepe memes. But to ask people to think that every Pepe reference is always and necessarily an invocation or approval of white supremacy is an idea so ridiculous that only a Democrat or a journalist (but I repeat myself) could believe it.
Published in General
I take offense at the coopting of a glorious name such as Pepe.
The swastika is still nothing more than a religious symbol for millions of Hindus and Buddhist. That hasn’t changed a fact that for millions of westerners, it’s a symbol that means Nazism. Meme’s are nothing more than symbols.
Symbols change their meaning over time, and are different things to different people. The more Pepe is used by, and becomes identified as the strange looking frog used by people who think David Duke should be a US Senator, the less the protest of “He came from Boy’s Club though!!!!” matters.
Yet that is exactly what happened. Some of the original great intellectuals for the Italian fascists movement were Jews, Hitler’s original S.A. Brownshirt group was filled with homosexuals, including it’s leader Ernst Rohm.
Fascism hasn’t “added up” in the first place, why do you think it would suddenly make a lot of sense now?
I’m proud to say I’ve never seen this stupid frog before.
Precisely. My argument is that today, and certainly to the Trump organisation, and to the vast majority of Trump-supporting meme-producers, Pepe does not have a sinister connotation.
Of course, if one starts from the position that Trump is literally Hitler, one might reach a different conclusion.
And then there’s this. When the left has spent the last 8 years declaring everyone who dared oppose Obama’s policy proposals as a racist (as if we’d all be in favor of his ideas if he were white), then that accusation has become a punch line. It’s been rendered meaningless by overuse and misuse.
So even if Trump were an actual racist (and I really doubt it) nobody is going to believe the Dems who cried wolf far too many times.
It was obvious right away to Jewish tweeters who are the constant targets of anti-Semitic abuse. They didn’t need a Hillary explainer, and independently saw what was up. In 2016, Pepe memes are created and used almost exclusively by white supremacists. If it were otherwise, we’d regularly see Pepe memes in other contexts. We don’t. I’ve seen all sorts of memes on Ricochet, and not a single Pepe.
If only Dems find this bothersome, then that’s a really bad commentary on the Right.
But we do. Or I do. All the time. In all manner of contexts.
But then I’m not a Jewish tweeter, so I have been spared this awful behaviour – I can’t imagine how I would feel if I were targeted.
And you do not like him or them so now they a fascist. Got it.
33 comments to get to they are just like Hitler defense. Nice…
But do you understand what I’m getting at? An actual white supremacist could rise up and gain power in this country and people would blow it off. And they would blow it off precisely because “You’re a racist!” has been the Democrats go-to response to any challenge over the last 8 years.
I don’t know enough about how poor ol’ Pepe is being used by the so-called alt-right to know whether he’s truly a symbol of white supremacy as Hillary’s campaign claims, but do you understand why people are just rejecting the idea out of hand? It’s because the same Democrats who are crying about Pepe being racist are the ones who’ve declared pretty much everything racist. So why should we pay any attention this time?
So I’m sympathetic to your views, but I’m not at all interested in hearing the Democrats declaring Yet Another Thing to be racist.
I mean, let’s just look at this as a campaign tactic. The Clinton campaign has actually put up an “explainer” warning people that if they see Pepe, they’re seeing an expression of White Supremacy. And of course, there’s the associated appeal: “What do I do about this terrible thing?” asks the fictional subject of the explainer. Why, you go out and vote for Hillary, my dear! And you donate to her overflowing coffers!
Not only is it McCarthyism, fearmongering, “othering,” and yet another case of crying racist, it’s being used as a means to make greedy one-percenter Hillary even richer.
Sure, that’s a cogent explanation for why people do. But not for why they should. My point is that the right should not be outsourcing its ideas of right and wrong to Hillary’s campaign, by automatically defending whatever she attacks.
For examples of Pepe in action created by Trump’s rabid internet fanboys, check out this twitter account [NSFW]. Some of the memes are funny, some are horribly offensive. Overall a decent sampling
They adopted the Pepe symbol from their white supremacist backers, since they were the ones in their group who used it. It wasn’t Pat Buchanan who decided to connect himself with a frog, nor is this some Madison Avenue ad campaign. It comes from the alt right fascists, most of who came to the right because of GamerGate.
It’s like saying, “yes some Green Party activist uses a green Hammer and Sickle poster at their rallies, but that doesn’t mean they are communist!” The only reason a greenie bowed that symbol in the first place is to connect with the Marxist who see it is their symbol. It’s a rallying cry, a connection to a portion of your coalition.
Best as I can tell, this frog is an attemp to create a fake menacing symbol to scare the right people (actually, in this case, the left people), which the left is now using to to “prove” that an evil alt-right exists.
That Pepe is being used by white supremacist is not something that was invented by Clinton to gain support. Supporters of Rubio and Cruz in the primaries saw it. David French had to put with terrible versions of it, they sent images of David’s adopted black daughter being gassed by a Nazi uniform wearing Pepe and that was one of the more milder images. Along with everyone who doesn’t support Trump being called a “cuck” who are allowing the west to be raped by evil brown people. Latin conservatives being harassed for being “bean eaters”, Jews being told the ovens are getting ready for them, conservative women like Dana Loesch being told she’s going to be raped because she supported Cruz. The list goes on and on.
This is not some half backed invention of the DNC. Many conservatives have been dealing with this nonsense for 18 months. Those who want to ignore it, in order to protect Trump, or because you think it’s some “dirty Clinton trick!” are ignoring the voices of your (at least former) allies, who have been fighting this bs, and are warning you it’s becoming more mainstream largely because people refuse to take a stand against it. Mostly because they fear Clinton, and want to defend Trump at all cost.
Well yeah, the white supremacist we are talking about are fascist. I mean it maybe radical to call people like David Duke fascist I guess, but here is the punch line, he’s a fascist. And you are missing the overall point.
You think it’s odd the people like Duke would ally themselves with a gay man from Britain who likes to sleep with black men? You are Ignoring the lessons taught by Eric Hoffer. Movements such as fascism largely attract people who have no individual personal achievements, they are disconnected from the society at large, so they join forces with other disconnected individuals against what they perceive to believe is the evil of overall society.
Classically speaking, Italian fascism attracted many Jews to their cause, some who became intellectuals for the movement. Many people are surprised when they find out Italian fascism, as compared to Nazism, was based more around the idea of the nation, than the race. Meanwhile Nazism attracted a large portion of homosexuals when it first started.
To Hoffer this isn’t a surprise, these individuals are seeking validation in these movements, validation of their own self worth. So it’s not surprising the a David Duke would want to gain support from a Milo, that is the way these things have always been.
Well, here are some I pulled from /pol/ today, after reading this post.
The thing to remember about 4chan is that it is awash in edgy trolls, and /pol/ (the politics board) is a great concentration of them. There is nothing that upsets pretty much everyone (in America) like anti-semitism does, so it is a good go-to. It doesn’t hurt that a lot of celebrities and journalists are jewish, and that these folks are well-connected, so the trolling gets spread around real good. But it isn’t just anti-semitism; nothing is sacred, at all:
To say that all of /pol/ is alt-right would be silly. That would imply that millions of people, in all sorts of countries, agree on much of anything. But that makes trolling even more fun, because you are sure to troll someone.
It’s really sad, honestly, that the Hillary campaign is so desperate as to go after a web board mostly concerned with cartoons and porn. She’s given them a legitimacy and platform that they could only dream of before.
I didn’t say that.
Is that relevant? White supremacists (among all sorts of other unsavory types, like anti-semites, gay-bashers, literal slavery supporters, etc.) tend to like and use the Bible too. Does that make the Bible a white-supremacist tome?
People aren’t worried about 4chan. Well some people are, but that’s not what we are talking about. What we are talking about is how the alt right (a group largely made up of white supremacist, and fascist) has adopted the symbol as one of their own, and are claiming ownership of it.
Some are saying that symbols can change so fast that they are essentially meaningless, and this is an argument about nothing. Others, like me, are saying eventually a symbol does become connected with a notion or idea, for the overall population even if it doesn’t mean that for the place the symbol originated.
The swastika is the perfect example of this. It started as a symbol for a group of Indian religions (Buddhism and Hinduism predominately), but because of the Nazi Party to the west it’s a symbol of hate, and genocide. The East where it originates still can see it in it’s original context, but that doesn’t matter to the west where it is an ultimate symbol of evil.
Pepe for 4chan may forever simply symbolize “trolling”, to the culture at large though the frog is becoming a symbol for white supremacy, because of the way the alt right has used him, and he is becoming ID as such through the culture as a whole.
I would like to flag this whole post for being on the main feed. This is exactly who Ricochet isn’t.
The symbol of the Bible was not used by Hitler, it did not become connected it the popular mind as a symbol of Nazism. Mostly because the overall population already ID the Bible as a symbol of Christianity.
Pepe is an image from a subculture, unknown by the overall population, that is now being connected in the popular mind as an image of white supremacy because of the efforts of the alt right. Unlike the Bible which had almost two thousand years of history to fall back on before Hitler rose, Pepe is just some badly drawn Frog, that comes from a subculture that honestly few care about even if they do know about it. He’s much closer to the swastika in that regard.
Some people at the time understood that Hitler was using a symbol that had largely become popular in the west because of Britain, which had conquered India. Kipling famously used it in a lot of his books. People don’t think of Kipling now though when they think of the swastika, nor do they think of India, they think of the Nazis.
I was taught in European History that the Nazi symbol was adapted from the Hakenkruez, the hook cross, a symbol associated with Christianity so I hit up Wikipedia (universal font of truth that it is).
And apparently the swastika is a darn near universal symbol that’s earliest representation was found in the Ukraine.
It’s earliest appearance in India was 3,000 BCE but it’s been found in Bulgaria in cave paintings dated to 6,000 BCE.
Moral of the story: I actually learned something interesting out of this whole argument. Thanks Genferei and Tyler Boliver.
That connection is being made by the Hillary campaign, not the actions of the alt-right. The “alt-right” wasn’t even a thing in the popular mind (internet politics junkies like us notwithstanding – and even there it wasn’t universal) until Clinton made it a thing, connecting it to neo-nazis and the like, when before it was a very loose group of “everyone who didn’t feel they have a voice in the GOP” (some of which for good reason). Now her campaign is making Pepe a thing, and connecting it to those connections made before. And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker, and are perpetuating that meme here on Ricochet – where, again, most people haven’t even seen it before, despite supposedly being some big racist symbol.
I like it when I ask “What’s the point?” and get a good answer. (Note to self: read more source material before having opinion.)
I completely agree that people representing the Trump candidacy should be more circumspect about what they repost. The defense “I’m not voting for them, they are voting for me” does not work you when promote and appear to endorse your own basket case supporters.
What part of a discussion about the political uses of popular culture isn’t Ricochet material? Or is it the way I wrote (or the editors edited) the OP? Or the way we seem to be talking past one another in the comments? (This last seems pure Ricochet…)