
Pepe the Frog’s Creator Goes Legally Nuclear Against the Alt-Right - gridscomputing
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x8gaa/pepe-the-frogs-creator-lawsuits-dmca-matt-furie-alt-right
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LyndsySimon
I'm skeptical that a copyright can be pressed at this point, seeing as no
action was taken for years as Pepe memes were created and used on 4chan and
elsewhere. The creator is on record as having knowledge of their use for quite
some time, if I'm remembering correctly.

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tatersolid
Couldn't this backfire? The more the author protests exclusively against "alt-
right" usage of his creation, doesn't the use of the logo become fair use as
political satire?

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lemagedurage
I've never read the original comics while Pepe as meme is spammed through
chats at compsci uni (because it's fun), it's very popular as meme.

The majority of racist and sexist memes are used as way to ridicule virtue-
signaling of positive discrimination for people of color, women, etc.

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bifrost
I find this pretty funny. I never got the pepe popularity but this is a good
outcome IMHO.

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leifaffles
The careless bundling of everyone under the sun into the "alt-right" category
is getting out of hand.

I don't care what you think about the shitposters on r/The_Donald or Mike
Cernovich, but they aren't anything close to advocates for the white identity
politics advocated by the "alt-right".

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chrishepner
I don't see on what axis you could meaningfully separate Cernovich from the
rest of the "alt-right" \- the hateful conspiracy theory stuff aside, he says
things like "diversity is code for white genocide."

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leifaffles
How about on the axis of "believes in white racial superiority"?

The claim of the "alt-right" is that Western civilization is intimately tied
to the white race. Here's a video of Jared Taylor explaining the "alt right":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhnDm7OxuU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhnDm7OxuU4)

It's also worth noting that alt-right wasn't even well-defined until 2016. As
it became clearer, plenty of people (including Cernovich) publically denounced
and distanced themselves.

None of this is a broader defense of Cernovich, who I maintain is creepy and
lacking in substance, but the careless lumping in of mainstream conservatives,
nationalists, internet trolls, Pepe the Frog, etc into the "alt-right" bucket
is not helpful.

