Pepe the Frog listed among common hate symbols by Anti-Defamation League

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/28/pepe-the-frog-listed-among-com.html

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Now the price for those ultra-rare Pepe is going to skyrocket

Hopefully your portfolio is well aligned to take advantage of this.

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So are we specifically targeting the Nazi/anti-semitic ones or is this just a blanket Pepe means hate?

Not like 4Chan cares, they thrive on your fear/hate/loathing.

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The whole thing is baffling.

The racist hate. The use of an ugly cartoom frog. None of it fits together in my mind.

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Alex Jones has been using Pepe lately as his wink towards his viewers/listeners/followers, so I think right now it’s a general hate sort of thing.

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I’m sure I could dig you up some infographics if you want. Something about the Holocaust didn’t happen, Hitler had vision, Jews and women will be the downfall of society… You know your run of the mill so far right we are now circling the Sun going back in time Star Trek 4 style kind of things.

Really I noticed Pepe more as an emotional outlet rather than a hate symbol. A lot of /r9k/ Pepe stuff centers around suicide or rage, just like a lot of /pol/ ones are Hitler based. But realistically that’s the flavor of those boards as well, so the fact a common character gets morphed to represent the general ideologies of each board doesn’t surprise me much.

Kind of an inverse to boards like /pol/ you have things like /diy/ where occasionally you’ll come across people who know their stuff and really want to help an anon out. Then other times it devolves into a pissing fest about which power tool brand is better…

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I think you just nicely outlined in two paragraphs exactly why I don’t delve into Reddit!

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Depends on how tribal and simplistic your worldview is.

Are Thor’s hammers hate symbols? They are worn by violent racist prison cult members. How about the Star of David? It’s used by violent racists, too. What about the US flag? It’s been flown over atrocities and is venerated by several violent racist hate groups.

I usually judge by context, personally.

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Bummer… oops, I mean "feels bad man."
Does that mean I need to burn my copies of Boy’s Club?

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That is the best way, but then no one can surmise Jawa lawn ornaments might be racists because their pose is similar to racists lawn ornaments than no one under 40-50 actually knows about/remembers.

I fall prey to it too. I saw someone wear a Wolf 88 shirt, and that seemed a little White Powery to me. Only an Asian person was wearing it, so that seemed weird. Looking it up, it is from a Korean Pop group, EXO. The one person I know who is into Korean Pop is a shaved metal head. He probably shouldn’t wear that shirt around.

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I saw a lot of things like that when I went to Tokyo – things that would be seen as unacceptably racist in the US but somehow acceptable there, including a frequently seen subway ad for a new Black Eyed Peas album featuring a red-lipped monkey.

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I’ve found a lot of blatantly racist things to be perfectly acceptable around the world. My hunch is it’s usually in homogeneous societies.

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I remember them, and I’m way younger than… okay, I’m not.

Now I feel old.

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Well,

  1. Japanese can be pretty racist, especially with other Asian groups. They have a superiority complex going on a lot of the time.

  2. They lack the same sensibilities as the west because there isn’t the same history as in the US, especially with the depiction of blacks. I think they see it more as fun caricatures, but they don’t have the baggage of hundreds of years of slavery, oppression, and mockery in entertainment that the US does.

  3. Hardly any black people in Japan, so no one really cares if a few foreigners are upset by it. Same reason they still use swastikas with no stigma.

But in the example of the Wolf 88, the Wolf was a song title, and 88 was supposed to represent butterfly wings. I doubt anyone in Korea knows that 88 is used by white power groups.

I looked into going to Japan a year ago - I just can’t afford it right now. But if I go outside the US again, I think I want to go there.

Pretty much. Even among whites in Europe there are hostilities against other whites who are of different ancestry. I mean for centuries they were killing people speaking different languages. Hostility, hatred, and anger towards different people are as old as civilization. Race hatred just makes it even easier to divide people up.

Fun fact - Polish people actually get deeply offended at Polack jokes. If you want to tell them a Polack joke, make it a Russian joke instead.

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What about the Finns?

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They belong on fish.

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I avoid the default front page like the plague: it’s nothing but sh*tposts, imgur memes, and pictures of people’s pets. Instead I subscribe to the subreddits that interest me, and only read those.

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Invalid argument, do not actually exist.

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I went many years ago when I was more gainfully employed and knew someone living there; it was a fantastic visit and I most definitely recommend it. There were so many moments of cultural disconnect: seeing Col. Sanders dressed in Japanese garb outside the many KFCs there… visiting Harajuku and seeing the bizarre fashions on display… trying to use an Asian-style squat toilet while on a bullet train… visiting temples in Kyoto and being laughed at by a grandmother for my grossed-out expression as I tried natto.

My Polish family-in-law loves telling nasty Russian jokes, definitely! (btw, it’s usually “Polack”)

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