Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Symbol of the Resistance

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Jan. 10, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

10:30

The Symbol of the Resistance

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	So unbelievably, we are going to have to talk about an internet meme of a cartoon frog called Pepe, who's become an important political symbol.
	Yes, these are the times we live in.
	Pepe the Frog was first introduced to the internet through the e-comic called Boys Club, and by 2015 he was Tumblr's biggest meme of the year.
	While Tumblr does deserve its reputation as a dystopian backwater of SJW nonsense, there are regular people using it as well, and one of the things that people use it for most is sharing memes.
	Tumblr's annual list of the most re-blogged memes is out, and it turns out that 2015's Tumblr teens were really, really into Pepe, a weird-looking drawing of a frog that's been kicking around in the famous image board site 4chan since at least 2008.
	Tumblr's like Daily Rare Pepe's and Mega Pepe Mart sprung up to provide masses with dank new Pepe memes they craved, helping to put the frog at the top of this year's Tumblr meme ranking, seven years after he got big on 4chan.
	This is actually very unusual.
	Usually memes have a short half-life.
	They peak in popularity and then drop off quite quickly and don't tend to resurface.
	But Pepe is different.
	For some reason Pepe has an endearing quality.
	He is in fact transcended being a mere meme.
	And this is probably because of Pepe's versatility.
	But we'll get into that a little bit later.
	Because Pepe can be used for anything, he tends to be used everywhere, including by celebrities such as Katy Perry and David Dukofny.
	But Pepe the Frog really went mainstream during the successful presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
	The internet went wild after Trump tweeted out a Can't Stump the Trump video attached with a picture of Donald Trump as Pepe the Frog.
	His son, Donald Trump Jr., followed suit by sharing a meme of Pepe on Instagram, and again, the internet went crazy.
	Partisans on both sides of the aisle found this to be a newsworthy event, either questioning whether Donald Trump in fact understood what meme magic was and in fact did praise Keck, or decrying every use of Pepe as racism.
	In May 2016, Newsweek's executive editor Margarita Noriega was accused of racism, her crime sharing a popular meme featuring a cartoon frog known as Pepe, in a now deleted tweet that I cannot show you.
	This anti-meme hysteria became so great that the Clinton campaign decided that they had to address it, with Hillary Clinton making oblique references to Pepe the Frog in her alt-right speech, and her website carrying, and I'm not joking, and it's still there, Donald Trump, Pepe the Frog and White Supremacists, an explainer.
	That cartoon frog is more sinister than you might realise.
	Here's the short version.
	Pepe is a cartoon frog who began his internet life as an innocent meme enjoyed by teenagers and pop stars alike, but in recent months, Pepe's been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the alt-right.
	They've decided to take Pepe back by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-Semitism and white supremacy.
	We basically mixed Pepe with Nazi propaganda, etc.
	We built that association, one prominent white supremacist told the Daily Beast.
	This is undoubtedly one of the stupidest things I have ever seen, and I can only imagine how out of touch the Hillary campaign was to think that this was necessary.
	To say that Pepe had been almost entirely co-opted by white supremacists just goes to show how out of touch these people are.
	They only saw white supremacist versions of Pepe because the alt-right only sent them white supremacist versions of Pepe.
	Across the vast internet, there were many millions of permutations of Pepe being constantly shared that were not white supremacist versions of Pepe, and everyone else knew it.
	Watching the Hillary campaign, followed closely by the progressive press, outright claim that Pepe the Frog is now a white nationalist racist hate symbol, a title that was made official by the Anti-Defamation League when they added Pepe the Frog to their hate symbols database, was such a ludicrous event it made the people involved figures of fun all across the internet.
	It's simply not possible to declare war on memes and come out on the other side looking anything other than a total bloody fool.
	This has legitimized Pepe the Frog as a counter-culture icon.
	He has transcended being a mere meme in order to poke fun at someone else, and now he is a symbol of the resistance to the cultural hegemony of the extreme progressive left.
	When McDonald's, after seeing their declining sales around the world, rebranded themselves as a modern and progressive burger company, for a rival burger company such as Wendy's to tweet out a Wendy's version of Pepe the Frog dressed as the Wendy symbol itself, this becomes a political statement in the culture war that the progressive left is waging against everyone else.
	This became such an important symbol that progressive outlets produced article after article after article decrying Wendy's for tweeting out a white supremacist symbol.
	The pressure grew so intense that Wendy's deleted this tweet and then claimed that their social media manager simply didn't know what Pepe was about.
	But the damage had been done.
	The statement had been made.
	At the very least, the social media manager at Wendy's is not on board with the hegemonic progressive narrative.
	And they were showing it by tweeting out a Pepe.
	In the wake of the desperate witch hunt to find the culprit responsible for the failure of the Hillary Clinton campaign, which, I might remind you, cost $1.3 billion in order to fail, despite a complete lack of evidence, the Democratic establishment is firmly attempting to point the finger at Vladimir Putin.
	So when the Russian embassy in London tweets out this, in today's papers, pundits call on Theresa May to disrupt possible Russia-US Thor, no trust in Britain's best friend and ally, along with a Pepe meme.
	This is a political statement on several different levels.
	Not only is it a cheeky attempt to point out that there is no need for Britain to intervene in a possible thaw in relations between the US and Russia, it's also a strong political statement in the culture war against the progressives, because they know that the progressives have outright declared Pepe the Frog to be a white supremacist hate symbol.
	Any use of Pepe the Frog is an act of disrespect.
	It is a deliberate thumbing of the nose towards the progressive establishment and the narrative that they seek to maintain.
	So Politico is absolutely on the money when they say that the Russian embassy is trolling the US and the UK.
	Specifically, the moralizing busybodies who would have you believe that everyone they don't like is a white supremacist.
	And despite what this misleading headline from Business Insider would have you believe, the creator of Pepe does not mind this.
	Pepe was originally drawn in black and white, and so he's not happy that he's randomly got a blue shirt and brown lips, but he's accepted that out of it now.
	But he's also worked that the frog is often paired with an unrelated character called FieldsGuy.
	But either way, he says, I think it's cool.
	In fact, I'm getting kind of inspired by all the weird interpretations of it.
	And that is really the essence of Pepe.
	He can be used to do anything.
	There are, of course, various anti-Semitic versions of Pepe on the internet, but that's because he is a joke.
	And if you take a joke seriously, the onus is on you and not the person telling the joke.
	To say that Pepe is a white supremacist meme is to deliberately leave out half of the story, because Pepe is a meme for everyone.
	There are various internet communities that use Pepe in their own ways, because Pepe is more than a meme.
	He is a symbol of disrespect.
	He is a symbol to say, we do not agree with the prevailing narrative, with the people who are calling the shots.
	There is an almost unlimited number of Pepe's out there on the internet, each one designed to convey a specific message to a certain group from a certain group.
	And they will always exist because there's nothing like a smug frog not giving a damn about your sacred cows to rile people up.
	The mainstream media have fallen victim to a trolling campaign that wasn't really designed to troll them.
	They have willingly said no, no, any kind of instance of this smug-looking cartoon frog not giving a shit about my feelings is now an offence against me.
	And so now when anyone uses a Pepe, they are obligated to get their panties in a bunch.
	This is almost too easy.
	This is foolishness on behalf of the mainstream media, on behalf of anyone who sits there and complains about an internet meme.
	You have played yourselves.
	You have handed the people who wants to make you look foolish the perfect method of making you look foolish.
	Cut it out.
	It's a bloody meme.

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