CLOSE The Anti Defamation League is now calling 'Pepe the Frog' a form of hate speech. Time

Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character turned Internet meme, has been added to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of hate symbols. (Photo: Screenshot)

Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character turned Internet meme, has been added to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of hate symbols.

The character was added to the database Tuesday, after Pepe the Frog was depicted as a slew of racially charged caricatures including Hitler and a Klansman, according to the group.

“Once again, racists and haters have taken a popular Internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing users,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO said in a statement.

Greenblatt said many had abused the image to “harass and spread hatred on social media.”

But Pepe the Frog wasn’t always considered a hate symbol.

The frog first appeared in Matt Furie's Boy's Club cartoons in 2005.

Known as the “sad frog,” Pepe was often depicted as a mellow character with the slogan “feels good, man,” among others. Just a year ago, celebrities like Katy Perry shared the meme alongside many other Americans.

ADL notes that Pepe’s Internet meme famedom took a turn for the worst when the character spread to the websites 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, where a “subset of memes came into existence promoting anti-Jewish, bigoted and offensive ideas.”

The meme was also recently dragged into politics. Two weeks ago, Donald Trump's son posted a photoshopped photo depicting his father and Pepe the Frog as The Deplorables. He later said he didn't know there was a negative connotation to the character.

In response to the photo, Hillary Clinton's campaign posted an in-depth explainer on Pepe the Frog and his ties to white supremacy.

Furie recently told the Atlantic the politicalization of Pepe and Clinton's explainer downplay the importance the mellow character holds for many young people.

He believes the demonization of Pepe will be a "passing phase."

"Pepe is more than, whatever is happening in the news today, especially to younger people and to teenagers," he told the Atlantic. "For example, I get emails pretty regularly, from kids, from high schools, who need my permission to use Pepe in their senior shirts, or their clarinet club, or their photography clubs, and I tell them to go ahead as long as they sell me a shirt."

Follow @MaryBowerman on Twitter.

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2dCAj86</s>Pepe the Frog is a cartoon character that has become a popular Internet meme (often referred to as the "sad frog meme" by people unfamiliar with the name of the character). The character first appeared in 2005 in the on-line cartoon Boy's Club. In that appearance, the character also first used its catchphrase, "feels good, man."

The Pepe the Frog character did not originally have racist or anti-Semitic connotations. Internet users appropriated the character and turned him into a meme, placing the frog in a variety of circumstances and saying many different things. Many variations of the meme became rather esoteric, resulting in the phenomenon of so-called "rare Pepes."

The majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted. However, it was inevitable that, as the meme proliferated in on-line venues such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, which have many users who delight in creating racist memes and imagery, a subset of Pepe memes would come into existence that centered on racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted themes.

In recent years, with the growth of the "alt right" segment of the white supremacist movement, a segment that draws some of its support from some of the above-mentioned Internet sites, the number of "alt right" Pepe memes has grown, a tendency exacerbated by the controversial and contentious 2016 presidential election. Though Pepe memes have many defenders, the use of racist and bigoted versions of Pepe memes seems to be increasing, not decreasing.

However, because so many Pepe the Frog memes are not bigoted in nature, it is important to examine use of the meme only in context. The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist. However, if the meme itself is racist or anti-Semitic in nature, or if it appears in a context containing bigoted or offensive language or symbols, then it may have been used for hateful purposes.

In the fall of 2016, the ADL teamed with Pepe creator Matt Furie to form a #SavePepe campaign to reclaim the symbol from those who use it with hateful intentions.</s>The popular Internet meme Pepe the Frog has been officially designated a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.

The anti-bigotry organisation added the meme its database of hate symbols on Tuesday, noting that it did not always have connections to white supremacist organisations, but has gained traction with the emergence of the Alt-Right movement.

Pepe the Frog debuted in the 2005 comic Boy’s Club and took on a life of its own through the 4chan message boards. But the meme has become a favourite amongst Donald Trump supporters to express feelings of racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia.

“The Pepe the Frog character did not originally have racist or anti-Semitic connotations,” the ADL said in a statement. “Internet users appropriated the character and turned him into a meme, placing the frog in a variety of circumstances and saying many different things. …

“[T]he use of racist and bigoted versions of Pepe memes seems to be increasing, not decreasing.”

The ADL included images of the Alt-Right versions Pepe the Frog, including bigoted caricatures of the frog as a Jewish rabbi, the frog wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, and a version of Pepe in blackface.

Prior to the ADL's designation, Pepe's creator, Matt Furie said he was not concerned with the longevity of the Alt-Right's co-opting of the frog.

“I think he’s on a weird manifestation right now,” Mr Furie told the Washington Post, “It’s unfortunate that he’s peaking nationally in the news in this really negative way, but I think it’s just a phase.”

Because of the popularity of Pepe amongst Mr Trump’s Alt-Right supporters, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has voiced her concern about the use of the meme.

After Ms Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment sparked controversy earlier in September, Donald Trump Jr posted a photoshopped image taken from the film The Expendables, that included a Pepe with coiffed blonde hair – like the Republican nominee – as well as other surrogates for the New York businessman.

The Clinton campaign called the meme “horrifying”.

However, Pepe the Frog’s background is far more innocuous.

The first image of Pepe featured the frog uttering the phrase, “Feels good, man.” And such was the philosophy of Pepe according to creator, Mr Furie.

“I find complete joy in physically, emotionally, and spiritually serving Pepe and his friends through comics,” Mr Furie told the Daily Dot. “Pepe offers you complete support, attention, and embraces how capable you are of birthing your own Pepe.”

“Seeing a frog always takes my breath away and brings a genuine smile to my face,” he added, explaining that he wanted the readers of his comic to experience “a thrill of overwhelming beauty and joy.”</s>The Anti-Defamation League officially declared “Pepe the Frog” to be racist and anti-Semitic as it added the cartoon chatacter to its database of “hate symbols” on Tuesday.

The popular image, also known on the internet as the “sad frog,” has been used as a versatile base for memes, usually used to express emotions or experiences, since it first appeared in the online cartoon Boys Club in 2005.

However despite admitting that the in the vast majority of cases use of the frog was not racist or anti-Semitic, the A.D.L. has added the frog to its database of hate symbols, along with the Swastika and the Blood Drop Cross of the Ku Klux Klan.

“These anti-Semites have no shame,” ADL’s chief executive Jonathan A Greenblatt said. “They are abusing the image of a cartoon character, one that might at first seem appealing, to harass and spread hatred on social media.“

The Alt-Right movement, a disparate group of right-wing social media users, has repeatedly shared Pepe re-workings on social media.

The movement has been described as an alternative to mainstream conservatism, but its proponents have repeatedly abused Jewish Americans and portrayed white people as oppressed.

The Alt-Right has claimed Mr Trump as its presidential candidate of choice. The mogul has not approved it, but did re-tweet a caricature depicting him as Pepe the Frog in October 2015, with the caption “You Can’t Stump the Trump“.

The frog made headlines in mid-September when Hillary Clinton said most of Mr Trump’s supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables“.

The Republican’s son Donald Trump Jr shared an altered version of the movie poster for “The Expendables”, which showed Pepe with his father and other conservatives, labelled “The Deplorables.”

Mrs Clinton’s team duly released a post titled “Donald Trump, Pepe the frog, and white supremacists: an explainer” claiming, “that cartoon frog is more sinister than you might realize“.

In May 2016, the Daily Beast quoted an anonymous white nationalist saying that a campaign was under way to “reclaim Pepe from the normies” – internet slang for mainstream users.

The ADL has clarified that most Pepe memes are not racist, and that innocent versions will not be subject to the hate symbol designation.</s>Pepe the Frog, a green frog with red lips created by cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005, has been labelled an “online hate symbol” by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) after his adoption by the white supremacist movement.

“Images of the frog, variously portrayed with a Hitler-like moustache, wearing a yarmulke or a Klan hood, have proliferated in recent weeks in hateful messages aimed at Jewish and other users on Twitter,” the ADL said, explaining its decision to add the meme to its online Hate on Display database.

The ADL’s decision on Pepe, also known as the “sad frog meme”, comes two weeks after Hillary Clinton’s campaign posted an article pointing to Pepe as the common factor linking Donald Trump and the white supremacist movement.

The campaign wrote that “in recent months, Pepe’s been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the ‘alt-right’. They’ve decided to take back Pepe by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-Semitism and white supremacy.

“Now white supremacists have given Pepe the cartoon frog some Trump hair - and the candidate’s own son says he is ‘honoured to be grouped with’ him,” the post concluded.

The character of Pepe was originally created for Furie’s comic Boy’s Club, but achieved online fame in 2008 when the 4Chan forum took a shine to the character.

Depending on one’s point of view, the anonymous users of 4Chan adopted, remixed, or stole Pepe, placing him in new situations and permanently linking him with the phrase “feels good man”, which was the punchline to the first comic featuring Pepe to hit the forum.

For almost a decade, Pepe existed mostly as a meme on the internet.

However, in 2016, the rise of the “alt-right” - the group that sits at the crossover of 4Chan and neo-Nazism - led to Pepe being adopted as an unofficial icon.

The second life has disturbed Pepe’s creator, who told The Guardian: “I just try to take it in stride, but the thing that’s come to my attention is, well, I didn’t know what white nationalists were until, like, yesterday.

“And the alt-right or whatever? It’s all very new and very strange and definitely not something that I support. I guess Pepe is kind of its own internet thing now.

“I’m hoping not to get any hate or threats or anything. You have to do a little bit of research to even link it back to me, I think.”

The chief executive of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, emphasised the twisted nature of Pepe’s genesis as a hate icon.

“Once again, racists and haters have taken a popular internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing users,” he said.

“These anti-Semites have no shame. They are abusing the image of a cartoon character, one that might at first seem appealing, to harass and spread hatred on social media.”

It’s the second time the alt-right has managed to create a new hate symbol.

In June, the ADL added the (((echo))) symbol to its watchlist after online antiSemites had been spotted using it to identify Jewish users on social media.</s>(CNN) Beloved internet meme Pepe the Frog has gone through various incarnations over the years, reflecting a range of emotions.

Recent appropriations of him as Adolf Hitler, a Klansman and numerous racist caricatures have earned him a spot in the Anti-Defamation League's database of hate symbols

"Once again, racists and haters have taken a popular Internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing users," Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO said in a statement . "These anti-Semites have no shame. They are abusing the image of a cartoon character, one that might at first seem appealing, to harass and spread hatred on social media."

It wasn't always this way for Pepe, who first appeared on the internet in 2005 in artist Matt Furie's "Boy's Club" cartoons.

In 2008, a comic of Pepe with his pants at his ankles while urinating, captioned "feels good, man," spread through online community 4chan, according to KnowYourMeme

His bemused smirk was made for the internet, and a meme was born.

Pepe was manipulated over time to capture the range of the human experience, including Sad Frog, who was often paired with the phrases" Not Good Man," "Feels Bad Man," or "You Will Never..." to Smug Frog, Angry Pepe, Keith Haring Pepe, even Rare Pepes in the form of trading cards in an effort to cash in on the mania.

A decade later he had solidified his place among "normies" in mainstream internet circles, becoming one of the biggest meme on Tumblr in 2015.

As the meme proliferated in venues such as 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, criticized as a breeding grounds for all manner of inflammatory imagery, a subset of Pepe memes came into being that centered on racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted themes, the ADL said.

The 2016 US presidential campaign exacerbated the phenomena, drawing in Republican nominee Donald Trump.

After Hillary Clinton said most of Trump's supporters were in a "basket of deplorables," Donald Trump Jr. shared an altered version of the movie poster of "The Expendables" on Instagram. It showed Pepe among Trump Senior and other conservative figures labeled "The Deplorables."

Not all Pepes are sinister, the ADL said.

The designation does not apply to all Pepe memes because most of them are not bigoted in nature, the ADL said.

"The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist," the group said.

"However, if the meme itself is racist or anti-Semitic in nature, or if it appears in a context containing bigoted or offensive language or symbols, then it may have been used for hateful purposes."</s>(CNN) Beloved internet meme Pepe the Frog has gone through various incarnations over the years, most of them innocuous and amusing.

But recent appropriations of the smirking green frog as Adolf Hitler, a Klansman and numerous racist caricatures have earned him a spot in the Anti-Defamation League's database of hate symbols

"Once again, racists and haters have taken a popular Internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing users," Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO said in a statement . "These anti-Semites have no shame. They are abusing the image of a cartoon character, one that might at first seem appealing, to harass and spread hatred on social media."

The designation does not apply to all Pepe memes because most of them are not "bigoted" in nature, the ADL said. You'll likely know one when you see one.

It wasn't always this way for Pepe, who first appeared on the internet in 2005 in artist Matt Furie's "Boy's Club" cartoons.

His bemused smirk was made for the internet, and a meme was born.

A decade later he had solidified his place among "normies" in mainstream internet circles, becoming one of the biggest memes on Tumblr in 2015.

As the meme proliferated in venues such as 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, criticized as a breeding grounds for all manner of inflammatory imagery, a subset of Pepe memes came into being that centered on racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted themes, the ADL said.

The 2016 US presidential campaign exacerbated the phenomena as white power movements came out to endorse Donald Trump, tra

After Hillary Clinton said most of Trump's supporters were in a "basket of deplorables," Donald Trump Jr. shared an altered version of the movie poster of "The Expendables" on Instagram. It showed Pepe among Trump Senior and other conservative figures labeled "The Deplorables."

Not all Pepes are 'bigoted'

Context matters, though. Not all Pepes are sinister, the ADL said.

"The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist," the group said.

"However, if the meme itself is racist or anti-Semitic in nature, or if it appears in a context containing bigoted or offensive language or symbols, then it may have been used for hateful purposes."</s>(JTA) — The Anti-Defamation League has added the internet meme Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that has become a popular symbol for white supremacists, to its online hate database.

Images of the frog, variously portrayed with a Hitler-like mustache, wearing a yarmulke or a Ku Klux Klan hood, have proliferated in recent weeks in hateful messages aimed at Jewish and other users on Twitter, according to the ADL.

Pepe, which has been ubiquitous on the internet over the past decade, in the last year or so has become the flag bearer of the alt-right, which advances an insular conservatism favoring white people.

Earlier this month Donald Trump Jr., son of the Republican presidential nominee, posted to Instagram a movie poster parody of himself heroically grouped with Pepe and others deemed “The Deplorables.” Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had said that half of all Donald Trump supporters are what she termed “deplorables.”

“Once again, racists and haters have taken a popular Internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing users,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO. “These anti-Semites have no shame. They are abusing the image of a cartoon character, one that might at first seem appealing, to harass and spread hatred on social media.”

Other symbols have been added to the “Hate on Display” database in recent months, including the (((echo))) symbol, a triple parenthesis used by white supremacists to single out Jewish journalists and users on social media for harassment.</s>A cartoon depiction of a sad frog that has become a popular Internet “meme” is now considered a hate symbol.

The Anti-Defamation League said “Pepe the Frog” has been appropriated to express racist views on the Internet.

Pepe, who was created by Matt Furie, first appeared online around 2005, the ADL said, and was associated with the phrase “feels good man.” The character was the subject of countless memes, most of which were innocuous.

But the ADL says the frog has become a favorite among racists associated with the so-called alt-right. The alt-right has been described as an alternative to mainstream conservatism, but others say it is a collection of white supremacists and racists.

Some of the racist memes include Pepe depicted with a Hitler moustache or dressed in the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan.

Pepe still appears in many non-political memes.

“The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist,” the ADL said. “However, if the meme itself is racist or anti-Semitic in nature, or if it appears in a context containing bigoted or offensive language or symbols, then it may have been used for hateful purposes.”

Pepe’s popularity has increased during the 2016 presidential campaign, with many supporters of Republican nominee Donald Trump using it for political memes, some of which are bigoted or anti-Semitic. The ADL said the number of racist Pepe memes has been “exacerbated” by the “contentious 2016 presidential election.”

One prominent example of a Pepe meme was posted by Donald Trump Jr.and showed a photoshopped version of the movie poster for “The Expendables” showing instead Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, alt-right icon Milo Yiannopoulos and Pepe the Frog branded as “The Deplorables,” in reference to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s claim that many Trump supporters were deplorable.

“Although Pepe memes have many defenders, not least the character’s creator, Matt Furie, who has called the alt-right appropriation of the meme merely a ‘phase,’ the use of racist and bigoted versions of Pepe memes seems to be increasing, not decreasing,” the ADL wrote. [Read More]

 

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 Source: VOA News: Economy and Finance</s>US antisemitism watchdog, the Anti-Defamation League, has added the “(((echo)))” symbol, used online by white supremacists to single out Jews, to its online database of hate symbols.

The group’s decision comes days after Google removed a Chrome extension that was being used by antisemites to add triple parentheses around the names of prominent Jewish public figures including Michael Bloomberg and New York Times journalist Jonathan Weisman.

“The echo symbol is the online equivalent of tagging a building with antisemites graffiti or taunting someone verbally,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s chief executive. “We at ADL take this manifestation of online hate seriously, and that’s why we’re adding this symbol to our database and working with our partners in the tech industry to investigate this phenomenon more deeply.”

The intersection of old-fashioned white supremacy and antisemitism with tech-savvy online groups centred around websites such as 4chan and Reddit has given rise to a movement loosely termed the “alt-right”. The echo symbol is just the latest artefact of that group’s thinking to burst into the mainstream, thanks largely to an article in late May from the NYT’s Weisman highlighting its use.

Weisman linked the antisemitism on display with the professed political support of those abusing him: the Twitter user who referred to him as “((Weisman))” went by the handle @CyberTrump.

But the denigration of Jews online extends beyond the Trump supporters highlighted by Weisman. An investigation by Mic revealed how widespread the symbol’s use has become, largely below the radar of the mainstream.

“To the public, the symbol is not easily searchable on most sites and social networks; search engines strip punctuation from results,” wrote the publication’s reporters, Cooper Fleishman and Anthony Smith. “This means that trolls committed to uncovering, labelling and harassing Jewish users can do so in relative obscurity: No one can search those threats to find who’s sending them.”



The pair trace the origins of the symbol back to far right blog Right Stuff. “In Right Stuff propaganda, you’ll often read that Jewish names ‘echo’. According to the blog’s lexicon page, ‘all Jewish surnames echo throughout history’. In other words, the supposed damage caused by Jewish people reverberates from decade to decade.” The parentheses are used to imply that same echo textually.

While many antisemites simply write out Jewish names with the parentheses manually, using it as a deliberate taunt, there was also a popular Chrome extension that automated the function. Named “Coincidence Detector” – a sarcastic reflection of the anti-semitic conspiracy that Jews control the media – it automatically flagged up common Jewish surnames to anyone who installed it.

Google removed Coincidence Detector on Thursday, citing terms and conditions that prohibit “promotions of hate or incitement of violence”, shortly after Mic wrote about the extension.

The publicity around the echo symbol has led to a counter protest, with Jews and non-Jews alike putting the symbol around their own names on social media, led by Tablet magazine’s Yair Rosenberg:

The echo symbol is just the latest in a string of coded ways the far right has learned to communicate online. Neo-Nazis regularly adopt the numbers 88 – standing for HH, or “heil Hitler” – and 14, referring to “the 14 words”, the white-supremacist slogan: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”.
The Anti-Defamation League declares that the "Pepe the Frog" meme is a hate symbol, particularly when used alongside other racially-charged symbolism.