The Anti-Defamation League has added the once innocuous Pepe the Frog Internet meme to its growing database of hate symbols.
“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, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
“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.”
The smiling frog first appeared in 2005 in a web comic and Internet users quickly turned the character into meme. Though the ADF acknowledges that most uses of the cartoon character are non-bigoted, they argue the “alt-right” has adopted the frog as one of their symbols and the number of racist and bigoted versions of Pepe are increasing.
The database entry is illustrated with images of Pepe dressed as a Ku Klux Klansman, a Nazi SS officer and a stereotypical depiction of a Jewish man.
ADL founded the Hate on Display database in 2000 to help the public and law enforcement track groups they describe as being motivated by hate. They added the echo symbol, “((( )))” to the same database after the “alt-right” started using the triple parenthesis to single out Jewish social media users for harassment.
