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The cultural context of racism can be a fascinating deep dive. By any American definition, Japan is super-duper racist, but by any American definition, most of the world is super-racist, because Americans have a more complex history of race than many other nations do, what with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and all.
As for Pepe being a hate symbol: this is what happens when you ignore the trollies, folks. 
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I learned that joke with the dissident being Czech specifically. Good jokes never die, they just get recycled into the current political situation.
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Seems like there’s no going back for Pepe, at this point. His use as an alt-right symbol has eclipsed his previous existence as a harmless meme.
Sad!
I used to have a vintage woolen Wehrmacht coat. It didn’t have any insignia or markings, but when I visited East Germany (and it was still East Germany then) I was advised that people would recognize it and react… unfavorably. For whatever reason it was unremarkable in West Germany, but before crossing the checkpoint I had to buy a dopey-looking fake down jacket.
It was a very sturdy coat, and warm! I mean, I wouldn’t want to besiege Stalingrad in January wearing it, but it was great for winters in civilized places.
Not that I’d want to besiege Stalingrad under any conditions.
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Yes, me too! It’s just been 20 years since I’ve heard that joke, so the retelling may be a little fuzzy.
I hope this joke isn’t recycled into one about an American dissident and a Trump Brown Shirt 
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I thought it was originally a reference to Coquí, the mascot of Puerto Rico.
I’m mystified how it became a symbol of bigotry. Look at that guy!
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Yeah, none of that was about reddit. Feel free to keep avoiding it, though! Couldn’t hurt.
I’m curious, if 4chan did this with another character, say Moana, would that get listed as a common hate symbol as well? Is this co-opting of a character only valid if the character is primarily internet based and not as relevant to the world?
If you’ve never lived here how can you say those things with complete confidence?
Bcsizemo is talking about 4chan, though.
Reddit is hard to pin down because it’s not really a forum, it’s a huge collection of unrelated forums. Anyone can make a subreddit for anything, and moderate it as they see fit. There’s subs that are festering shitholes and subs that are well-run and pleasant.
The default subs (the several dozen subs that new users are subscribed to) are somewhat more homogeneous culture-wise just because most people see them, but quite of few of them (generally serious subjects, like /r/science) are sternly moderated to keep things on topic.
I think it only works if the thing it evolves out of is something old people are already uncomfortable with. Like it could happen to dubstep but not to Beatles music.
There’s also some American baggage you have to be careful not to externalize in other countries. If you’re in France or Zimbabwe and you see a caricature of a black person that would be considered racist in Philadelphia, it’s probably Philadelphia that is the problem, because of the sordid history of race relations in the USA. There’s nothing inherently wrong with cartoons of people with exaggerated stereotypical African features, it’s the way those cartoons were used in US history that is the problem.
Now that I think of it, it happens even inside the USA. If you are in the American northeast, and some old Maine fisherman calls you “boy”, you have to remember that old Maine fishermen call everybody under the age of 70 “boy”, and it’s simply not racist like it would be in Alabama.
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I agree. Perhaps I should have said it’s been my experience that it’s been homogeneous cultures whose chauvinism lends itself to a lack of exposure to different ethnic groups which allows bigotry to be openly and non-critically expressed. I realize I’m straying from the original Issue of symbols now, but I find these behaviors interlinked.
Or maybe it’s been the enclaves I’ve met.
I’m spit-balling here, feel free to help me refine this.
My own travel outside the USA has been so limited I have little to offer. 
I can say that in Great Britain I saw a lot more classism than racism, but that was memorable because I got chastised by my English relatives for talking to “Irish tramps” living in a hedgerow.
Before I left to spend a month backpacking around the UK, a British friend advised to sew a Canadian flag patch on my backpack. “Otherwise the English might think you’re Irish, the Scots might think you’re English, or anyone might know you’re American. But everyone is OK with Canadians.”
It was good advice; I was bought many beers by people welcoming a traveling Canadian, and once in Scotland, a guy in a football jersey grabbed me in a pub and yelled “Oi! I thought you was English, and I was aboot to kick yer arse, but yer Canadian, so what’s yer pleasure?”
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SMH at yet more American cultural appropriation.
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I’ve traveled a fair bit, though mainly in Asia.
In Cuba I saw a fair number of grotesque charactures of Africans, despite the large proportion of the population having some African ancestry, used in advertising. Not unusual if you consider the logos/mascots used here by businesses. However, these were emphasizing physical attributes to create the character. Exaggerating features is a fairly common behavior in creating the idea of “others”, making them more animalistic and easier to consider inferior. This becomes an issue as Cuban society is highly stratified based on skin tone. It’s perfectly acceptable to have a stereotype of a black savage as the mascot for your bar in a society that considers dark skin inferior.
Undermines my previous idea about lack of exposure, but it’s the first example that came to mind. More of an example of how these symbols can be open and still racist.
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God damn it /pol/, you ruined yet another face of chan culture.
Still can’t believe they didn’t mention the “Happy Merchant”.
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