Nazi Pepe Controversy

Overview

The Nazi Pepe Controversy refers to the discourse surrounding a rumor spread by the Hillary Clinton campaign and several news organizations in the summer of 2016 that claimed Pepe the Frog is used as a white supremacist symbol.

Background

On May 26th, 2016, The Daily Beast^[1] published an article titled “How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt-Right Symbol.“ The article included an interview with Twitter user @JaredTSwift,^[2] identified as an “anonymous white nationalist,” who claimed there was a “campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies” by creating anti-Semitic illustrations of the frog character.

Developments

Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

On August 25th, 2016, Hillary Clinton gave a speech denouncing the alt-right. During Clinton’s address, a /pol/ user posted a thread revealing that he is a member of the audience at the event, to which another user suggested to the OP that they yell “Pepe” as to interrupt her speech.^[3] In the YouTube livestream, a man off the screen can be heard yelling “Pepe!” at approximately 56 minutes in.^[4]

On September 9th, 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that half of Donald Trump’s supporters were in a “basket of deplorables.“ On September 10th, Donald Trump Jr. posted a photoshopped movie poster on Instagram^[5] of the 2010 action film The Expendables, which features various prominent conservatives and Pepe the Frog with the title “The Deplorables.”

On September 11th, NBC News^[6] published an article about the photoshop, which referred to Pepe the Frog as a “popular white nationalist symbol” based on a statement made by Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich. That same day, several news sites including The Hill,^[7] Vanity Fair,^[8] Talking Points Memo^[9] and CNN^[10] published reports describing Pepe as a “white supremacist meme” and “white nationalist symbol.”

On September 12th, the official Hillary Clinton presidential campaign blog^[11] published a post titled “Donald Trump, Pepe the frog, and white supremacists: an explainer,” which labeled Pepe the Frog as “sinister” and a “symbol associated with white supremacy.”

Online Reaction

Over the next 24 hours, posts about the news coverage and the Clinton campaign’s reaction reached the front page of various subreddits, including /r/cringe,^[17] /r/politics,^[12]^[13] /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[14] /r/KotakuInAction,^[18] /r/4chan,^[15] and /r/The_Donald^[16] where many Redditors mocked the Clinton campaign and the mainstream media for failing to understand the Pepe meme. Meanwhile,

News Media Coverage

On September 13th, The Daily Dot^[19] published an article titled “Pepe the Frog is not a Nazi, no matter what the alt-right says,” stating that “Pepe lacks political affiliation.” On September 14th, the Daily Caller published an interview with @PaulTown_ and @JaredTSwift in which the two Twitter pranksters admitted fabricating the basis of the Daily Beast report.^[20] That same day, in an article titled “No Hillary, Pepe the Frog is Not a Racist Meme”,^[21] Ian Miles Cheong of Heat Street wrote that “no single group or ideology has ownership of the meme.” Heat Street would later retract the article and issue a full apology. On September 17th, the Economist^[22] published the article “Pepe and the stormtroopers: How Donald Trump ushered a hateful fringe movement into the mainstream” which described Pepe the Frog as “a cartoon-strip creature co-opted into offensive scenarios” and gave the “Deplorables” poster as an example of such an offensive scenario. On September 19th, Heat Street founder Louise Mensch wrote “Hillary Clinton Is Absolutely Right, ‘Pepe’ Meme Is Antisemitic – An Apology.”^[21] Heat Street retracted Cheong’s article in full and added a note stating “This article was wrong and we should never have published it.”^[24] Cheong said on Twitter that “I was wrong about Pepe. It has, in fact, become an anti-semitic meme.” By September 26th, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had added Pepe the Frog to its list of hate symbols.^[25] The ADL noted that “The majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted” and warned that “it is important to examine use of the meme only in context.”

Creator’s Response

In an interview^[26] from Esquire with the character’s creator Matt Furie, he stated that he “had never heard of the alt-right or any of that stuff--even white nationalism” and that “I’m learning about that stuff with you, about what the hell is going on.” He would later go on to say how coverage on those who make these memes are “giving this fringe group more attention. They’re just these scattered nihilistic guys, I don’t even know what their intention is.” In another excerpt of the interview where he is asked about his thoughts on the group who has co-opted his creation, he states:

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.