Pepe The Frog and Alain Soral - Far Right Symbolism
In July, controversial author Alain Soral’s YouTube channels were closed due to repeated infringements to the community standards and rules. His channels were removed from YouTube because the content he produced was found to be inciting hatred. In response to his critics, Soral posted an image of himself on Twitter holding a mug with the words “Der Fuhrer” on it along with a Nazi symbol. With the image Soral tweeted: “To all my critics, champagne!”, in an apparent snub to his critics and to make light of the sanctions he had been confronted with. Despite the obviously hateful and antisemitic origins of the Nazi symbol, the tweet is still available online; the content only being blocked in certain countries. The tweet has amassed over 1,700 likes and 650 retweets at the time of writing.
Many drew comparison between Soral’s picture and a famous image of Pepe the Frog, where both are seen holding a mug with Nazi symbols on it. But who is Pepe the Frog? The cartoon character has innocent origins but has been used in right-wing circles as a meme to spread hate. Especially in the run-up to the 2016 US elections, Pepe the Frog was heavily used by the “alt-right”. “The majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted,” explains the ADL on the Hate Symbol Database. “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 centred on racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted themes.”
The original creator of Pepe the Frog is artist and author Matt Furie, who created to character as part of his “Boy’s Club” series on MySpace in 2005. Seeing his character be used to spread hateful and dangerous messages, Furie attempted to reclaim Pepe, launching the #SavePepe campaign. “It’s the worst-case scenario for any artist to lose control of their work and eventually have it labelled like a swastika or a burning cross,” Furie told The Guardian. Through the #SavePepe campaign Furie collected over 600 positive Pepe memes with the aim of reclaiming the character and returning it to its innocent roots. However, in the end Furie decided to ‘kill’ Pepe, drawing him resting in an open casket in a one-page strip.
“The rehabilitation of Pepe was always going to be a struggle, and it’s hard to imagine Furie taking much joy in creating new Pepe strips knowing that, whatever his own intentions, the character would be read through tinted lenses,” explains Shaun Manning in Comic Book Resources. However, despite Pepe the Frog’s ‘official’ death, the character is still easy to be found on social media. It is often used by users in their profile pictures to signal their affiliation with the “alt right”.
Soral’s image on its own is already alarming: proudly posting a picture of yourself holding a cup with clear Nazi symbols on it normalises the extreme antisemitism and terror that came with Nazism. While we cannot be certain that Soral purposely recreated the Pepe meme, it would be in line with his past online, as we have explored through the Get The Trolls Out project. Potentially signalling his affiliation with the “alt right” is troubling, especially as he is broadcasting this dangerous rhetoric to his over 60,000 followers on Twitter. Someone posting a Pepe the Frog meme is not automatically alarming, as he is used for innocent purposes; however, we must keep track of version of the meme used to spread hate.
