“Feels Good Man” Pepe the Frog Ep.

Billed as comic artist Matt Furie’s effort to reclaim his Pepe character’s image from “white supremacists” who had appropriated it.

I thought a weakness of the program was its conflation of groups like 4-Chan trolls, Trump supporters, the alt-right and white supremacists. There’s undoubtedly overlap among these groups but they are still quite distinct. As the show made clear, the original appropriation was by 4Chan dwellers who tend to be nihilists who just want to amuse one another at the expense of “normies,” normal members of society and, especially, establishment types. They are in it for the ”lulz”. Many probably emblazoned Pepe with hate symbols or associated him with Trump to demonstrate their anti-social cred with in-group members and get a rise out of out-group members, not because they espouse neo-Nazi or white supremacists views themselves. Indeed, they seemed to favor Trump because they saw him as a “wrecking ball.”

Another weakness of the program was a lack of interviews with members of the groups who have reputedly appropriated the Pepe symbol. We only hear from critics from the left ascribing meaning to the Pepe icon and see out-of-context video snippets of alleged racists displaying a Pepe symbol or saying his name. Would have been good to hear from, say, a Pepe mask-wearing demonstrator. What does Pepe symbolize to him?