Pepe the Frog

Pepe the Frog (emojified as 🐸 and formerly known as "Feels Good Man") is a green anthropomorphic frog used as an Internet meme. The character was created by artist Matt Furie in his comic Boy's Club. In 2008, its popularity steadily grew across Myspace and being popularized by 4chan in the same period. By 2015, it had become one of the most popular memes on Tumblr, the residence of 4chan's current nemesis, the SJW.

While originally without political associations, he became associated with the alt-right, white nationalism, and Donald Trump in 2015 (although it doesn't mean everyone who uses or likes the meme is a nationalist). Hillary Clinton's campaign condemned both Trump and his son for posting images of Pepe on Twitter.

The Anti-Defamation League has listed Pepe as a hate symbol, but noted that most instances of the character were not used in a hateful context. Matt Furie tried getting his frog back, but with little success. In May 2017, he killed off the character, but Pepe could not be so easily and permanently slain, and has returned to us. Furie later launched his #SavePepe campaign on Kickstarter and social media to fund a new Boy's Club issue and reclaim the character. He has since taken legal action against various websites, as well as prominent alt-right figures such as Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich and Baked Alaska, for appropriating Pepe. In 2019, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones settled a copyright violation lawsuit with Furie after Jones used Pepe without permission on a promotional poster.

Some claim that Pepe is the incarnation of the ancient Egyptian god Kek (also known as Kuk or Keku), and worship him as such as part of another 4chan in-joke called the "Cult of Kek", which has been defined by the "experts" at Wikipedia as a parody religion. The connection between Pepe and Kek has been endorsed by neoreactionary philosopher Nick Land and by Davis Aurini.

As a result of widespread DMCA take-downs instigated by Furie's attorneys in 2017 (including against The Daily Stormer), the alt-right appears to have a newer fascist frog mascot named Groyper, who is derived from Pepe but is fatter and more grotesque in appearance.

Re-cooptation
In 2019, Pepe was repurposed by the certain sections of the progressive, anti-authoritarian protests in Hong Kong as a symbol of their struggle to maintain the one country, two systems that had been agreed upon when Britain returned Hong Kong to China. However, this was not supported by all protesters due to its prior association with the alt-right.