No one asked Pepe how he feels about being involved in America’s most divisive campaign, but The Daily Dot did ask its creator, Matt Furie. The Trump association was the next step, and Pepe as a Nazi became the mascot of the “alt-right”, Trump supporting movement, quickly spreading to Twitter. On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of Donald Trump, proudly promoted the above Instagram post, which includes a meme frequently shared by white supremacists.
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The image, which spoofs a poster from the film “The Expendables”, shows a ragtag group labeled “The Deplorables”, a reference to Hillary Clinton’s remark that “you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables”.
But in recent months, Pepe’s been nearly entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the “alt-right”. When one presidential candidate loves to communicate with his voters through 140-character bursts on Twitter, and a hasty tweet can cause an worldwide scandal, the other side has to be quick to respond in similar fashion.
Yes, a cartoon frog, the KKK, and Hillary’s lungs are all issues that have been widely discussed in connection with the campaign for the White House in recent weeks.
Trump jnr shared the image seven hours later, explaining that it had been sent by a friend. Because of the absurd nature of this “explainer”, it’s only fair to explain reality.
Just curious: Who else is in this photo? .
According to the Clinton campaign, however, the frog is a symbol of “white supremacy”. If say, a white supremacist drew a swastika on a photo of a Carebear, would the cartoon bears then become symbols of hate? A panel where Pepe’s called out for peeing with his trousers all the way down – he responds, “feels good man” – became particularly popular. The comic frog has been a staple of internet culture ever since. Her sick Pepe was retweeted over 10,000 times.
You may have seen him on social media, crying in one of those posts you’re supposed to relate to, or grinning and saying something snarky in one of those posts that makes you question why you still use Facebook. This resulted in spoof sales of “rare Pepe” collections on eBay.
Something that most meme-lovers know is that once their pet meme is embraced by “normies”, or people like Clinton who don’t get internet culture, it is no longer cool.
But today, Pepe is everywhere for a different reason.
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The internet never forgets.
