Some members of what’s known as the alt-right have been attracted to Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration message, and Pepe the Frog has become, in creator Matt Furie’s words, “a mascot for their agenda.” | AP Photo 'Pepe the Frog' creator, blaming the election, tries to reclaim his cartoon

The creator of the meme “Pepe the Frog” is speaking out in an attempt to reclaim the cartoon, whose image has been co-opted by fringe Internet trolls to advance white supremacist and anti-Semitic messages online, to the point that it’s been designated a hate symbol.

Matt Furie, the illustrator who came up with the Pepe character in 2006, published an op-ed in Time magazine on Thursday denouncing fringe groups’ use of a “once peaceful frog-dude from my comic book as an icon of hate” as “completely insane.”


In the piece, Furie chronicles Pepe the Frog’s trajectory from harmless cartoon character to viral Internet personality to something more harmful, and he blames, in part, this year’s divisive presidential election for its degeneration.

Some members of what’s known as the alt-right — white nationalists and other fringe groups that congregate online — have been attracted to Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration message, and Pepe the Frog has become, in Furie’s words, “a mascot for their agenda.” Some share images of Pepe dressed up as Trump, while others put out Nazi propaganda, such as images of the cartoon frog wearing a swastika.

Noting that Pepe “began his life as a blissfully stoned frog in my comic book Boy’s Club, where he enjoyed a simple life of snacks, soda and pulling his pants all the way down to go pee,” Furie suggests that everything deteriorated when he was brought into the presidential debate.

Pointing to an instance when Trump shared a “smug Trump-Pepe” meme on Twitter, Furie writes that he had assumed the Republican candidate was attempting to court young voters, but speculates that it could have been a “more sinister nod to some fringe, racist groups” that had already started sharing the meme online.

Furie, for his part, is a Hillary Clinton supporter, he told Esquire.

Of what Pepe has come to symbolize, Furie writes: “It’s a nightmare, and the only thing I can do is see this as an opportunity to speak out against hate.”

“The problem with Pepe is that he’s been stamped a hate symbol by politicians, hate groups, institutions, the media and, because of them, your mom,” Furie concludes. “Before he got wrapped up in politics, Pepe was an inside-joke and a symbol for feeling sad or feeling good and many things in between. I understand that it’s out of my control, but in the end, Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is love.”