Cartoon Creator killed his Pepe the Frog, who was
hijacked by the Alt-Right
Pepe the Frog is dead. Cartoonist Matt Furie made it
official by drawing Pepe in an open casket. The funeral parlor scene was part
of a single-page strip he created for Fantagraphics’ “World’s Greatest Comics”
to mark Free Comic Book Day on May 6.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Furie turned on his creation after the alt-right fringe began using the
frog as a kind of mascot. But the little frog’s life took a creepy turn when he
was repeatedly hijacked for hate messages, particularly
during the 2016 presidential election. President Donald Trump even retweeted an
image of himself as Pepe (after ALT-Right people changed Pepe into someone who hates Jews, African-Americans, gays, Muslims and non-christians. Despicable! - That says a LOT about Trump.
Things got so bad that Pepe was officially classified as
a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.
New
York, NY, September 27, 2016 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today
identified “Pepe the Frog,” a cartoon character used by haters on social
media to suggest racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted notions, as a
hate symbol. 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.“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 A. Greenblatt, ADL 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.”