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.

Comments

The Comic

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone who sees that comic is just going to laugh harder than they were before.

It's fucking hilarious seeing these losers take a stupid meme so seriously.

What's wrong with hate symbols?

[Anonymous Coward]

If speech doesn't offend anyone, nobody will try to ban it. The only type of speech in need of protection is that which someone considers offensive and wants to ban. I consider hate speech a good thing because it's indicative of a free society. One of the first things to go in a society that isn't free is hate speech, a fact that has been documented throughout history. Regimes that aren't free tend to restrict speech, and we need to promote free thought and free speech. In a free society, you should speak against hate speech rather than attempt to ban it.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a truly free society, people could just murder, assault, rape, and steal with no consequences, except for vigilante justice. That's why we make these crimes illegal. It's a trade off of some freedom for some safety, and that's the right thing to do.

Hate speech itself may not kill people, but it has harmful effects on society. It creates groups of people that are scared to speak up, scared to do things, and in some cases, people do kill or commit crimes based on it. Hate speech must be controlled as part of a harmonious society. I understand that people have the right to speak their minds, but people also have the right to be free to do what they want in life, and being intimidated by hateful speech infringes on that.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[MightyMartian]

The use of Federal hate crime legislation was the only way the stranglehold of White Supremacist Jim Crow laws were finally loosed in the former slave states, a hundred years after the Thirteenth Amendment was supposed to have guaranteed freedom for African Americans. You may dislike them, and in some ways I might even agree that they have been a blunt instrument, but the fact remains that if Congress had not passed the Civil Rights acts, and the Executive had not been willing to use them to target the purveyors of systemic inequity in the South, it's almost certain that it would have been decades longer before something approaching equal rights would have been achieved.

And no one is getting arrested for this appropriation of a damned frog symbol, but the creator and others are trying to "de-meme" it. Isn't that what a free society does? Where a group believes there is some injustice, it puts for the argument, perhaps even vigorously, that the injustice needs to be righted? It almost seems to me that some peoples' ideal free society is where certain people can literally say anything they want, and no one is ever allowed to call what they say into question. Again and again, what I see from the Trump camp and the Alt-right isn't the notion of freedom of speech, but rather freedom from consequences. Whether it's Milos concocting fake tweets to go after a black actress because he didn't like the movie she was in, or guys running around spouting thinly veiled (or sometimes not even veiled) racism, and the expectation always is "If you try to shame me, you're a fascist!"

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[Dutch Gun]

It almost seems to me that some peoples' ideal free society is where certain people can literally say anything they want, and no one is ever allowed to call what they say into question. Again and again, what I see from the Trump camp and the Alt-right isn't the notion of freedom of speech, but rather freedom from consequences.

In another article on Slashdot, we have people boycotting a Silicon Valley business associated with a CEO who has dared to donate to Trump. And we have a GOP office being firebombed just the other day. But hey, it's all good because those are evil Republicans, right?

Don't you dare pin this all on the right. I've seen more than plenty from the left as well. Fascist assholes who simply want to silence their opposition are all over the spectrum, sadly.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[poity]

The loss of life, bodily integrity, and personal possession are reasons why your listed crimes are harmful. Their causes are the immediate physical actions that precipitate their loss. In contrast, speech precipitates no loss and no harm, and you only deem it "harmful" because they merely have the potential, down the line, to motivate or to lower the mental obstacles for actions that deprive life, bodily integrity, or personal possession. Your view of "harm" is suddenly made so expansive that it would force us to conclude that, for example, socialist slogans and ideas are forms of hate speech in the sense that they have the potential -- proven through historical precedent -- to motivate actions that deprive life, bodily integrity, and personal possession.

Ultimately, your argument would like us to take extra steps up the chain of causality to ban things that aren't directly related to harm. How far up the chain of causality can we really go, or should we go? 2 or 3 steps seem just as arbitrary a demarcation as 20 or 40 steps. If a butterfly flaps its wings and down the line someone is killed, must we then ban the butterfly from flapping its wings?

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[Pseudonym]

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. If that's how they choose to stand up for what they believe in, that's their business. You and I, in turn, may use this information to decide whom we want to associate with. I don't see the problem.

And we have a GOP office being firebombed just the other day.

That's a crime. That is a problem. I hope whoever did it is caught and does hard time.

Don't you dare pin this all on the right.

More to the point, don't pretend that "the right" or "the left" is a heterogeneous mass. In both cases, we're talking about a loose association of different individuals and groups with different agendas, some of whom are extremists.

To paraphrase a friend of mine:

It's okay to be a conservative; some values are worth preserving and defending. It's okay to be a progressive; the times they are a-changing. It's okay to be a radical; sometimes the joint needs to be shaken up. It's okay to be all three, perhaps on different issues. But it's never okay to be a fundamentalist.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[Kjella]

In contrast, speech precipitates no loss and no harm

If you're in front of a firing squad, I'm pretty sure the man giving the orders is part of it. Libel, slander, threats, many forms of speech are illegal. You can easily join a criminal conspiracy by speech alone. The kind of hate speech that is outlawed is generally intended to intimidate or incite, hidden by a thin veil of being non-specific in terms of perpetrators, victims and means. That is to say, the "good people of this town" (KKK) is going to make sure the "people who don't belong" (negros) are "not welcome here" (take your pick). The euphemisms don't really cover up that it's a call to action and to make sure the would-be victims "get the message" and refrain from exercising their freedoms and rights.

Ultimately, your argument would like us to take extra steps up the chain of causality to ban things that aren't directly related to harm. How far up the chain of causality can we really go, or should we go? 2 or 3 steps seem just as arbitrary a demarcation as 20 or 40 steps.

That depends on the strength of the links more than number of links. If a general gives an order it doesn't really matter how many degrees of indirection there is before a private pulls the trigger. If I put a line of candy out into the road hoping your kid will follow it without paying attention and get run over, I think most people would say that's highly malignant even though I had very little control over what, if anything, would happen because the underlying intent to cause a sequence of events leading to harm was there. As opposed to the goodie bag tearing as I cross the street without me noticing and it happening entirely by accident. It's like saying we're here, we want to be there, between us there's private land nobody told anyone to break the law by trespassing. But really everyone can add 2+2.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[silentcoder]

> And we have a GOP office being firebombed [cnn.com] just the other day.

Interesting how you ignore the context in which it happened - the same week where almost the entire remaining republican guard abandoned Trump and Trump made several public speeches accusing them of disloyalty, of rigging the election etc. etc. etc.

There is at LEAST even odds that it was a Trump supporter who did it, to punish the GOP establishment for not supporting Trump any more. We won't know for sure until somebody is arrested but considering when it happened - that's still a very likely scenario. More likely, in fact, than that a democrat did it - why would we BOTHER ? Trump's poll numbers are down by double-digits compared to Clinton - right now we're soaring, what could we possibly gain from it ? Trump voters have a lot more to be angry about right now, Clinton supporters are busy celebrating.

I'm not saying that there aren't fascist elements on the left - but to suggest that they are not vastly more prominent on the right is just plain ignorant, the ENTIRE religious-right/moral majority brigade fall in that category and they are all on the right, and fascism literally has no closer ally than neo-NAZIs - Hitler was one of THE proto-fascists, something he learned form it's inventor: his close friend Mussolini.
Generally - if the left doesn't like what you have to say - we will respond by excercising our own own freedom of speech and association - for example with boycotts. It's only in rare cases where real, measurable harm is being done by speech that the left as a whole would support laws against that speech.

The right on the hand have been trying to ban everything with a nipple for 30 years.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[shilly]

Really not sure why you think this contradicts what I was saying. I was referring to the blithering idiot who doesn't understand why a consumer boycott is a completely different thing from a firebombing.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[Mashiki]

Oh boy! Everyone's favorite anti-democratic pro-fascist poster is back! I wonder if I can now count you as my own personal stalker.

Yes, expecting that people have different opinions and *not* attacking them is fascism for you. Good to see you're still so cowardly that in that same thread you haven't responded to anything else, while still claiming "I'm attacking people" when I show you the face of the modern left engaging in witch hunts. Perhaps you'd like another? Like this person who's also on the far-left, self-identifies as a SJW and openly advocating people and fire bombing business for having a different opinion.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[jmac_the_man]

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.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[RoccamOccam]

http://www.realclearpolitics.c...

A new video investigation released Monday by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action shows how Democratic-aligned organizations used a tactic called 'bird-dogging' to incite violence and chaos at Trump rallies for media consumption. A key Clinton operative is captured on camera saying, "It doesn’t matter what the friggin’ legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherfucker."

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[operagost]

You beat me to it. Freedom of association is a wonderful thing to the left when it means boycotts and riots. In business and public schools? Not so much.

Re: What's wrong with hate symbols?

[DRJlaw]

You beat me to it. Freedom of association is a wonderful thing to the left when it means boycotts and riots. In business and public schools? Not so much.

You're free to become a closed-membership baker. The fact that it's commercially infeasible is your own problem. If you want to sell to the public, then you have to sell to the entire public, not just white anglo-saxon protestant straights.

Next thing you know they'll demand that businesses sell to blacks. The nerve of some people...

Insanity

[s.petry]

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.

Re:Insanity

[Maritz]

Lol, it was Hillary's campaign that started all that election rigging crap.

Really? Got a link? All I see if Trump whinging about rigging (maybe because he knows he's going to lose, because he's a detestable character)?

Re:Insanity

[hairyfeet]

Well considering we have commissioner of the board of elections in NYC admitting to voter fraud on hidden cam and even the Washington Times saying vote fraud is all too real maybe he is onto something?

Re:Insanity

[meta-monkey]

Didn't the guy you were talking to say "rigging" isn't necessarily "electoral fraud?"

The definition of rigged in this context is "To manipulate dishonestly for personal gain." Doesn't a debate where one side gets the questions ahead of time count as manipulated, dishonestly, and for personal gain? How about the DNC hiring thugs and the mentally ill to pose as Bernie supporters and start fights with Trump supporters at his Chicago rally, dishonestly manipulating the media narrative and public opinion of both campaigns? That one had me fooled. I honestly thought it was Bernie fans starting that shit, but it was really Hillary's thugs. What about the New York DNC guy admitting they bus people around to different precincts to vote multiple times? Is that rigging?

What would somebody have to do, in your mind, for an electoral process to be rigged?

Effect

[Tablizer]

Just rename it Streisand Frog

How many of these "anti-Semites" are DNC plants?

[mi]

"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"

How much of that racism and anti-Semitism is actually real, and how much — "false flag" operations by DNC-operatives like these?

“You remember the Iowa state fair thing where Scott Walker grabbed the sign out of the dude’s hand and then the dude kind of gets roughed up right in front of the stage right there on camera?” Foval asks. “That was all us. The guy that got roughed up is my counterpart who works for Bob.”

Foval also references Shirley Teeter, a sixty-nine-year-old lady who claims that she was assaulted at a Trump rally in North Carolina. “She was one of our activists,” he says while introducing the term bird dogging to the political lexicon.

In addition to these thugs on the ground, Clinton's campaign also employs online trolls (like Putin). If her political consultants aren't directing some of these guys to create fake "hate posts" — as their ethics clearly allow them to do — they aren't earning their pay...

Re:They are stopping?

[Bing Tsher E]

I used to know an anti-racist skinhead, back in the 80's. He was an okay guy. There are lots of decent people in many subcultures.

And the results are in

[Sibko]

Here's what one of the new strips looks like.
http://i.imgur.com/3j1Y1pt.png

Here is what was immediately (within hours) done with it:
http://i.imgur.com/DM8FCzc.png
http://i.imgur.com/sSYU61s.png

Actaully the WSJ debunked Hillary's claim already

[Noishkel]

The TL:DR version of this story was that someone trolled 'The Daily Beast' pretty hard by creating a lot of fake racist Pepe's under a pseudonym of 'Jared Taylor Swift'. To quote the article the Daily Beast ended up publishing was 'more or less a complete troll job,”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/regression-to-the-meme-1473960707

Re:They are stopping?

[drinkypoo]

Oh, not that? They are going to try the anti-racist skinhead gambit? What do you mean you've never heard of anti-racist skinheads? Well, crap, I guess there may be a reason for that, and one that doesn't bode well for this nonsense.

They're called SHARPs, Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice. If you haven't heard of them before, that's probably because you live in a severely insulated bubble. If you actually knew some skins or even some punks you'd have heard of SHARPs.

Jesus Christ

[rebelwarlock]

I couldn't think of anything I gave less of a shit about when I heard that some group of retards was calling a cartoon frog that made funny faces racist, and then this bullshit came up. Can we just stop talking about them forever? They are not, have never, and will never have any meaningful impact on anything. Their ideas are stupid and pointless. Just forget they exist and they really will cease to exist.

So, we're going to pretend Trump is antisemitic?

[Trailer Trash]

Let me get this straight - they're going to try to tie Trump into this? The same Trump who is officially recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capitol?

It's sad the lengths the looney left has to go to to pretend the Trump is a racist, antisemite, whatever.

Re:The war on speech is already being waged....

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Sticks and stones can break my bones, and words can cause permanent neuroendocrine damage.

We're headed towards that -- where your thoughts become merely physical processes in your brain, and this becomes physical evidence -- bye bye Fifth Amendment.

The only question is whether the 5th will disappear before the 1st as people argue the bad feelings your words cause can be traced to the same physical brain processes, and therefore banned.

Don't laugh.

Re:They are stopping?

[0xdeadbeef]

They're called SHARPs, Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice. If you haven't heard of them before, that's probably because you live in a severely insulated bubble. If you actually knew some skins or even some punks you'd have heard of SHARPs.

lol, this is like chastising someone for not knowing the difference between a Playstation and a Nintendo

"Mommmm! I'm not a neo-Nazi, I'm a SHARP! And it's not just a phase, it's who I am now!"