Jeet Heer at The New Republic writes—The Perversion of Pepe the Frog: In hijacking the amphibian character, the alt-right is defiling a great tradition of racial commentary in cartoons:
Pepe the Frog is all over the internet these days, usually in obnoxious or outright racist tweets by anonymous trolls of the alt-right—and sometimesby Donald Trump and his son. The fictional cartoon character has become an unofficial mascot of sorts for the Republican nominee’s campaign. As Vocativ reported Thursday, a group of Trump supporters in Pennsylvania has raised more than $5,000 to put up billboards showing Pepe (wearing Trump’s hair) guarding the border wall, with the message, “It’s always darkest before the Don...” The Hillary Clinton campaign has even felt compelled to explain that Pepe is a symbol of white supremacy and anti-Semitism, and the Anti-Defamation League has declared Pepe to be a hate symbol.
Pepe began as a benign symbol. Created in 2005 by cartoonist Matt Furie, who had no racist intent, the original Pepe was a slacker amphibian, a low-key dude at peace with the universe. His catchphrase was “feels good man,” taken from a comic strip in which he explains why he drops his pants all the way down when he pees standing up. For years Pepe was a popular, inoffensive internet meme. It was only in the last year or so that he was hijacked by hatemongers. The racist Pepe is in many ways an inversion of the original one. As Furie noted in an interview with The Atlantic, “The internet is basically encompassing some kind of mass consciousness, and Pepe, with his face, he’s got these large, expressive eyes with puffy eyelids and big rounded lips, I just think that people reinvent him in all these different ways, it’s kind of a blank slate.”
Still, it’s not entirely an accident that Pepe has been coopted in this way. For well over 100 years American artists, both racists and anti-racists, have found animal cartoons an effective way to make allegories about ethnic difference. Because direct discussions of racism are often fraught and divisive, anthropomorphism allows artists with good intentions to explore the issue indirectly. But as Pepe’s sinister turn shows, it also allows artists with racist intentions to be directly hateful.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Whitman For Governor Rollout Woes Continue Unabated:
For a candidate whose first foray into elective politics was met with an enviable raft of prominent endorsers (Mitt Romney, former Governor Pete Wilson, and John McCain) and a ton of free media, the past two weeks have been absolutely brutal for California Republican Meg Whitman. The alleged frontrunner for the GOP nomination for Governor in the Golden State, her introduction to the political stage has been pure amateur hour.
It started with a Sacramento Bee investigative story, which outlined an almost comically sparse voting history for the first-time candidate. The same weekend as that revelation became known, Whitman was blasted in a straw poll at the state GOP convention by state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
Then, last week, Whitman tried to explain her proclivity for electoral absenteeism, and dug herself in deeper, making the rather silly excuse that she was too busy raising a family to register to vote.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin says both polls and jobs are looking up. Trump tries to Make Bigotry Acceptable Again, and Ryan can’t wait to leverage it. Gun dummies freak out over clowns and BLM. New contributor JJR1971 notes TX schools are still fighting desegregation orders.
YouTube | iTunes | LibSyn | Support the show: Patreon; PayPal; PayPal Subscription