Several prominent YouTubers have defended Pepe the Frog in a new video, dismissing claims by the Clinton campaign and the mainstream media that the internet meme is an icon for white supremacy.
The video, entitled “#NotAllPepes – YouTubers Unite! Save Pepe the Frog!” features YouTube’s most popular music reviewer Anthony Fantano (TheNeedleDrop), along with popular critics MrRepzion, Armoured Skeptic, Chris Ray Gun, Shoe0nHead, Lyle McDouchebag, and Vernaculis, who took turns during the collaboration to mock claims that Pepe the Frog is a racist symbol.
“In the heat of this year’s tumultuous election, many unfair assumptions, outright lies, and nasty rumors have been made about our good friend… Pepe the Frog,” declared the YouTubers in the video. “The Anti-Defamation League has mistakenly labelled Pepe a hate symbol. This means that Pepe now shares a home with the swastika, the confederate flag, white power pride.”
“The problem is, Pepe is not a symbol of hate. Pepe is a symbol of joy, of happiness, of friendship,” they continued, before listing a variety of modified Pepe the Frog memes. “You and I cannot let reckless politicians abuse our innocent memes. Pepe deserves better. And with your help, we can clear Pepe’s name, and make him happy for once.”
“Tweet #NotAllPepes,” they encouraged. “And together we can make the world a little greener.”
The video ends with a song criticizing Hillary Clinton for branding Pepe the Frog a white supremacist icon, and numerous Twitter users have since gone on to tweet under the #NotAllPepes hashtag.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign branded the cartoon frog a “symbol of white supremacy,” basing their claims on a Daily Beast interview with two notorious trolls who have since mocked the author for falling for their claims.
Clinton’s claims have since been echoed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, NBC’s Katy Tur, Heat Street’s Louise Mensch and Ian Miles Cheong, and even the Anti-Defamation League, who added the cartoon frog into their Hate Symbol Database alongside the Nazi swastika, the burning cross, and the Ku Klux Klan logo.
Fans of Pepe the Frog have since rebelled against the mislabeling online, branding it a War on Memes, with SourceFed founder and popular YouTuber Philip DeFranco even joining in.
“I just think this is all a product of our insane political season,” Anthony Fantano told Breitbart Tech, before blaming Pepe’s recent branding on notorious troll @JaredTSwift.
“This is the guy the Hillary Pepe explainer labeled as ‘a prominent white supremacist’ when he’s literally just an internet troll whose ilk are associating Pepe with right-wing imagery in order to take Pepe out of the mainstream and make him a more authentic, underground meme,” he explained.
“Not a mission I agree with, because that’s not really how memes work, but those on the left who are taking the bait don’t seem to get it either,” he continued. “A cartoon frog that’s been shared countless times on the Internet for years and years cannot suddenly become a symbol of hate. Especially not with the trolls actively ‘rebranding’ the meme are so few in number.”
“However, now that the mainstream media is selling this narrative that Pepe is racist, more people are jumping on the bandwagon because Pepe being a symbol of white nationalism is now becoming a meme itself,” Fantano claimed. “This was basically just the spark of a dumb idea being doused in gasoline by the left’s never-ending search for anything they can label as ‘racist.'”
“And since there had previously been associations between Trump and Pepe, that gave them reason to take this edgy internet trolling seriously,” he concluded. “It was another opportunity to link Trump to bigots.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.
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