Pepe the alt-right Frog

Pepe the Frog soon became labeled as the symbol of the “alt-right” by many “left-leaning” media outlets.

In August of 2016, during a Hillary speech, someone was heard shouting “PEPE!”.

The video went viral.

The public sentiment around Pepe has shifted dramatically at this moment. Pepe was no longer seen as a cute, internet relatable frog, rather as an alt-right, hate-symbol.

In September 2016, Hilary Clinton put up an “explainer” on her website titled “Donald Trump, Pepe the frog, and white supremacists: an explainer.”, a piece that mostly focused on bashing supporters of Donald Trump and depicting Pepe as a hate symbol.

It has been deleted since then.

This didn’t resonate well with some people, as many still thought of Pepe as a cute frog. The complexity of the situation stirred a lot of additional conflict between people as there was also a group that was being ridiculed as Nazis, white-supremacists or racists for still liking the "old" Pepe.

Later that month Matt was interviewed by The Atlantic where he was asked to comment on the Hilary explainer and on Pepe in general.

“I think it downplays the fact that Pepe is more than, whatever is happening in the news today, especially to younger people and to teenagers. I get emails pretty regularly, from kids, from high schools, who ask my permission to use Pepe in their senior shirts, or their clarinet club, or their photography clubs. I’ve got a cousin in suburban Ohio who plays volleyball, and she texted me because she’s all excited because she’s playing on ‘Team Pepe’. So it’s cool for me to focus on the positive aspects of Pepe and really just see this as some kind of passing phase, because you know, everything changes.” - Matt, for the Atlantic

Unfortunately, for the majority of people, the alt-right’s use of Pepe just drowned out any other visual interpretation.

Richard Spencer, a known white nationalist, used Pepe often in his speeches when talking about “unleashing the chaos”.

Alex Jones, host of the "Infowars" show, also loved referencing Pepe on-air.

Lord Kek & the Kingdom of Kekistan

After some time, a 4chan user discovered an ancient Egyptian frog god called Kek. It became an instant hit.

The word “kek” fit perfectly as it was used by gamers as a variation of “lel”, which was by itself a variation of “lol” or “laughing out loud”. It didn’t take long for some people to propose the idea of “Kekistan” - an imaginary kingdom, a promised land for Pepes.

At this time, rumors of Hilary Clinton being ill began circulating online and the 4chan community grabbed onto that. They would create memes of her being ill and in a weird way “manifest” for this to be a reality.

On September 11, Hillary Clinton was videotaped collapsing in front of an SUV.

For the 4chan community, this was a witchcraft-like situation.

During another speech, Hilary Clinton referred to people who supported Donald Trump as “deplorables”.

This provoked another tweet by Trump, which went viral, where we posted a modified version of “The Expendables” movie poster, featuring himself, Alex Jones, Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Milo Yiannopoulos and the one and only Pepe the Frog.

While all of this was happening, Matt expressed his fear of Pepe becoming an “alt-right” symbol in his comic on The Nib titled “Pepe the Frog: To Sleep, Perchance to Meme”, where Pepe slowly morphs into a Trump-like creature.

Pepe the hate symbol

In late September 2016, the Anti Defamation League (ADL) officially declared Pepe the Frog as a hate symbol.

In their statement the ADL claimed: “In recent years, with the growth of the "alt right" segment of the white supremacist movement, a segment that draws some of its support from Internet sites like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, the number of "alt right" Pepe memes has grown, a tendency exacerbated by the controversial and contentious 2016 presidential election. Though Pepe memes have many defenders, the use of racist and bigoted versions of Pepe memes seems to be increasing, not decreasing.”

Matt’s name was mentioned in the piece.

As the news that Pepe was declared a hate symbol was going on, Matt started receiving a vast number of cancellations for his PePe Official clothing line.

His previous dream of having the clothing line distributed into 580 stores across the USA was immediately crushed.

“We didn’t wanna sell it anymore, we were afraid that white-supremacist would wear it.” - Matt