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Anti-Defamation League and Pepe the Frog's Creator Are Teaming Up To Save Pepe From Hate-Symbol Status (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Matt Furie, the creator of the widely known "Pepe the Frog" meme, is joining forces with the Anti-Defamation League to reclaim the symbol from the alt-right and make it a "force for good," according to a press release. Furie and the ADL plan to start a social-media campaign by creating "a series of positive Pepe memes and messages" and promoting them with the hashtag #SavePepe, according to the release. The ADL declared "Pepe the Frog" to be a hate symbol in late September. "It's completely insane that Pepe has been labeled a symbol of hate, and that racists and anti-Semites are using a once peaceful frog-dude from my comic book as an icon of hate," Furie said in a column for Time magazine. While fiercely condemning the "racist and fringe groups" that use Pepe to propagate divisive views, Furie said Pepe was meant to "celebrate peace, togetherness, and fun." The meme, which originated from a 2005 cartoon, has been hijacked by the alt-right movement in the past several months. Members of the movement have used the meme to convey often racist and anti-Semitic messages. The messages prompted the ADL to add Pepe to its "Hate on Display" database, which documents anti-Semitic hate symbols. According to the ADL's press release on the #SavePepe campaign, Furie will speak at its "Never Is Now" summit against anti-Semitism on November 17 in New York City. The panel will focus specifically on online hate campaigns. Furie published a new Pepe cartoon on Monday detailing his "alt-right election nightmare," which depicts a sad Pepe morphing into a frog that resembles Donald Trump and then a monster. Pepe appears trapped in the mouth of the monster. The next panel depicts a nuclear explosion. Pepe then awakes and hides under his mattress.
Yup, we are currently living with wide spread insanity. Facts no longer matter, and people who don't believe in your political opinion are spreading hate.
Question though: Who is attempting to stifle speech? The people with the opposing opinion or those on the left? So are they making the frog a symbol of hate speech? I'm very confused.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
How much of that racism and anti-Semitism is actually real, and how much — "false flag" operations by DNC-operatives like these?
1) CTR explicitly instructs its workers to create and distribute racist Pepes to discredit Pepe and the so-called "alt right".
2) As anyone who spends a good amount of time on 4chan knows, literally anything at all that becomes popular will become nazi-fied at some point. It's just how the internet works, especially when you're dealing with jaded mostly-teenagers with practically total anonymity. Anything that can have swastikas spammed on it will have swastikas spammed on it, whether that 'anything' is a frog meme or a minecraft server.
3) Yes, there is racism on 4chan. Racists (and all other sorts of assholes) will always flock to bastions of anonymity and free speech - just look at any relatively-unmoderated comments section on any site on the internet. And while racism and Pepe may sometimes intersect by chance (see #2), there is no genuine correlation between the two. Much less is Pepe some revered symbol for white supremacists.
4) Also important: Much (most?) of the racism on 4chan is ironic and meant to be humorous. However since a prison shower would seem like an intolerable cesspool of political correctness compared to 4chan, this subtlety is completely lost on virtually everyone else in the world, and those who try to understand often just come to the conclusion that channers are Bad People for being amused by such things.
In another article on Slashdot, we have people boycotting a Silicon Valley business associated with a CEO who has dared to donate to Trump.
That's freedom of association and it's at least as fundamental a right as free speech.
Good thing the startups aren't making wedding cakes.