Politics

Why Hillary Clinton Posted Memes of Trump and a Cartoon Frog

September 13th 2016

If you make your way to Hillary Clinton's website, you'll find campaign issue breakdowns ...

HRC websiteHillary Clinton Official Website - hillaryclinton.com

a shop full Hillary swag ...

Hillary Clinton shopHillary Clinton Official Website - hillaryclinton.com

and a page titled "Donald Trump, Pepe the frog, and white supremacists: an explainer."

Hillary Clinton campaign websiteHillary Clinton Official Website

Wait, what?

Let's start at the beginning. This is Pepe:

Pepe is a cartoon frog that was created by cartoonist Matt Furie and popularized by the message board 4chan. Pepe has a long history of silly irreverence. For example, if something unfortunate happened, you would post an image of Pepe along with "feels bad man" (or "feelsbadman.jpg").

Then, a group of young, radical nationalists and Donald Trump supporters who call themselves the alt-right picked him up. Which is why Pepe is featured on Clinton's page. Because unfortunately, Pepe is no longer for the lolz.

"He’s a symbol associated with white supremacy."

Clinton's page posted this photo, which was shared online by both Trump surrogate Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr.

The "Deplorables," a play on "The Expendables" series, gets its name from a comment made by Hillary Clinton last week:

"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it."

Though Trump supporters have made the obliteration of political correctness and "faux liberal outrage" a cornerstone of the 2016 election, many of them were, in fact, outraged by Clinton's comments. But some are owning the deplorables label, hence the above image which includes members of Trump's unofficial coalition — and Pepe.

Because Pepe has been adopted by the so-called alt-right, Clinton's people feel comfortable labeling Pepe as "a symbol associated with white supremacy." Clinton's campaign isn't the first to call out the association, as the media has largely been reporting that Pepe has become a "white nationalist symbol." Feels bad man, indeed.

One self-proclaimed white supremacist even told The Daily Beast,

"We basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association."

Trump supporters have a long history of making their own language

As ATTN: previously reported, Trump supporters have used online communities to make their own community, culture, and language around the Republican presidential candidate. Some believe Trump is "the first meme president" which Trump hasn't even tried to refute — in October of 2015, he retweeted his very own presidential Pepe:

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