In Elaborate Joke, Internet Provocateurs Turn ‘Trash Bird’ Into Nazi Icon
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Sam Kestenbaum February 17, 2017
In the meme war over Pepe the Frog, the white nationalists won. Despite a a campaign to “save Pepe” from the “alt-right” who wielded images of the green frog to serve their ideology, Pepe remains solidly an online icon of white supremacy, posted on the Anti-Defamation League’s list of hate symbols.
Now, the meme war is being waged over “Trash Dove.”
Trash Dove is part of an iPhone icon set designed by the artist Syd Weiler. The most popular gif of the bird features the character head-banging wildly. But on 4chan, the social media platform populated by the white nationalist “alt-right,” the bird has gotten another send-up: as an icon of Nazism.
Earlier this month users began photoshopping the bird alongside swastikas or perched on Hitler’s shoulder, like a pet.
Some even took to calling the bird, “Pek,” a reference to another “alt-right” icon known as “Kek.” Kek is an ancient Egyptian character, imagined as some sort of distant relation to Pepe.
Now the Trash Dove is being recast as the symbolic reincarnation of another ancient Egyptian character: Thoth, the bird headed god.
This is all partly tongue-in-cheek, an elaborate troll. In the online world of the white nationalist alt-right, “shitposting,” — slang for posting deliberately inflammatory comments or images online to derail a conversation — is a favored pastime.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected]
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
