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Thursday, February 21, 2019

Here’s How Two Twitter Pranksters Convinced The World That Pepe The Frog Meme Is Just A Front For White Nationalism

Pepe the green frog meme’s unmitigated rise into pop culture comes amid hysteria that the internet cartoon is little more than a stand-in for white nationalism. But it turns out the original story that prompted the panic is more or less a complete troll job.

The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi wrote a piece in May striving to describe and trace the genesis of Pepe in the alt-right scene, a nascent, illiberal political movement focused on preserving white identity and Western civilization. In the process, Nuzzi just ended up repeating various made-up stories from the only two people she interviewed from “Frog Twitter”: Paul Town (@PaulTown_) and Jared Taylor Swift (@JaredTSwift).

Read the whole thing.

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