‘Alt-Right’ Icon Pepe The Frog Is ‘Officially Dead’
Image by tumblr
By Sam Kestenbaum May 8, 2017
The online cartoon Pepe the Frog was “killed off” by its creator, seemingly in bid to stop his image being hijacked by the “alt-right.”
Over the weekend, Pepe’s creator Matt Furie posted a comic strip depicting a funeral for the frog character, attended by other characters from Furie’s Boy’s Club strip.
“It’s a clear declaration that Pepe is now dead,” the blogger Marykate Jasper wrote. “The alt-right has killed the joy.”
In September Pepe was added to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of “hate symbols,” joining the swastika and the Ku Klux Klan’s burning cross.
Furie and the ADL attempted an online campaign to “save Pepe” from becoming an “alt-right” icon. It looks like that is over, wrote Rich Johnston wrote on the website BleedingCool.com.
“After an attempt to Save Pepe from such appropriation, it seems that Furie has given up trying,” Johnson wrote.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
