As early as 2015, a number of Pepe variants were created by
Internet trolls to associate the character with the alt-right movement. Some of the variants produced by this had
Nazi Germany,
Ku Klux Klan, or
white power skinhead themes. Later in the election,
Roger Stone and
Donald Trump Jr. posted a parody movie poster of
The Expendables on Twitter and Instagram titled "The Deplorables", a play on
Hillary Clinton's controversial phrase "
basket of deplorables", which included Pepe's face among those of members of the
Trump family and other figures popular among the alt-right. Also during the election, various news organizations reported associations of the character with
white nationalism and the
alt-right. In May 2016,
Olivia Nuzzi of
The Daily Beast wrote that there was "an actual campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies" and that "turning Pepe into a white nationalist icon" was an explicit goal of some on the alt-right. In August 2016, Clinton denounced the alt-right in a speech. During the speech, a 4chan user who was
liveblogging the event on the site audibly shouted "Pepe!" at the request of another user. In 2020, social scientist
Joan Donovan said of the Clinton campaign's decision to describe Pepe as an alt-right symbol, "If it weren't for Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 trying to [...] name Pepe as a signifier of the Alt-Right, that kind of recognition probably wouldn't have taken hold [...] In doing so, they showed how much of a newbie they were at what it essentially meant to be online, which in turn created a wave of
media attention on which the Alt-Right was ready to coast." In an interview with
Esquire, Furie said of Pepe's usage as a hate symbol, "It sucks, but I can't control it more than anyone can control frogs on the Internet".
Fantagraphics Books, Furie's publisher, issued a statement condemning the "illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character". The
Anti-Defamation League, an American organization opposed to
antisemitism, included Pepe in its hate symbol database but wrote that most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context. Writing in
Time on October 13, 2016, Furie said that "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." The next day, the ADL announced that it had partnered with Furie to launch the #SavePepe (or "Save Pepe") campaign, an attempt to associate the symbol with positivity. As part of that campaign, Furie collected hundreds of "positive or peaceful" versions of Pepe to store in an online "Peace Pepe Database of Love". On October 17, 2016, Furie published a satirical take of Pepe's appropriation by the alt-right movement on
The Nib. This was his first comic for the character since he ended ''Boy's Club'' in 2012.
White supremacist Richard B. Spencer, during a street interview after Trump's inauguration, was preparing to explain the meaning of a Pepe pin on his jacket when he was punched in the face, with the resulting video itself becoming the source of many memes. On May 6, 2017, on
Free Comic Book Day, it was announced that Furie had killed Pepe off in response to the character's continued use as a hate symbol. However, in an interview with
Carol Off on her show
As It Happens Furie said that despite news of Pepe's death, he will eventually return: "The end is a chance for a new beginning ... I got some plans for Pepe that I can't really discuss, but he's going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix ... in a puff of marijuana smoke." Soon thereafter, Furie announced his intention to "resurrect" Pepe, launching a crowdfunding campaign for a new comic book featuring Pepe. In a July 2017 interview with
The Outline, Furie spoke about the comic in which he "killed" Pepe the Frog. He said, "This comic was just kind of my own kind of
art therapy and dealing with the fact that Trump got elected and the new twist on Pepe that ensued. I decided to lay him to rest. But really it was just a joke, and a way for me to deal with the weirdness that was happening." In June 2017, a proposed
app and
Flappy Bird clone called "Pepe Scream" was rejected from the
Apple App Store due to its depiction of Pepe the Frog. The app's developer, under the name "MrSnrhms", posted a screenshot of his rejection letter on
r/The Donald. The app is available on the
Google Play Store. A children's book appropriating the Pepe character,
The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, advanced "racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes", according to a federal lawsuit Furie filed. The suit was settled out of court in August 2017, with terms including the withdrawal of the book from publication and the profits being donated to the nonprofit
Council on American-Islamic Relations. Initially self-published, the book was subsequently published by
Post Hill Press. The book's author, a vice-principal with the
Denton Independent School District, was reassigned after the publicity. Until September 2018, Social media service
Gab used a Pepe-like illustration of a frog (named "Gabby") as its logo. The site is popular with the alt-right. In 2018, Furie succeeded in having images of Pepe removed from
The Daily Stormer website. In June 2019, Furie received a $15,000 out of court settlement in a copyright infringement case against
Infowars and
Alex Jones concerning unlicensed use of the image of Pepe the Frog on far-right themed posters. Furie stated that he would continue to "enforce his copyrights aggressively to make sure nobody else is profiting off associating Pepe the Frog with hateful imagery."
Kek "Kek", from ""/"", a Korean-language
onomatopoeia of laughter used similarly to "
LOL", is the Korean equivalent of the English "
haha". Since this is often used in
StarCraft matches,
Blizzard,
StarCrafts developers, decided to reference it in
World of Warcraft (2004): when a player of the Horde faction types "
lol" using the
/say messaging command, members of the opposing faction see it as "kek". A common misconception is that "kek" originated as a variation of "lel", itself a variation of "
lol". During the
2016 United States presidential election, Kek became associated with
alt-right politics. Kek is associated with the occurrence of repeating digits, known as "dubs", "trips", "quads", among other terms, in the sequential codes assigned to posts made on 4chan, as if he had the ability to influence reality through Internet memes. Online message boards such as 4chan first noted a similarity between Kek and Pepe. The phrase is widely used The phrase then became associated with the Egyptian deity
Kek. Esoteric Kekism, also called "the Cult of Kek", is a
parody religion worshipping Pepe the Frog, which sprang from the similarity of the slang term for laughter, "kek", and the name of the ancient Egyptian frog god of darkness,
Kek. This deity, in turn, was associated with Pepe the Frog on internet forums. The Internet meme has its origin on the internet message forum
4chan and other chans, and the board
/pol/ in particular. Kek references are closely associated with Trump and the alt-right, and the Kek-Flag was spotted at the
2021 storming of the Capitol. In January 2025,
Elon Musk briefly changed his username on
X to Kekius Maximus, with a profile image of Pepe in Roman military dress, and sent up the value of the memecoin.
Kekistan Kekistan is a
fictional country created by 4chan users that has become a political meme and online movement. The Kekistani flag was prominently displayed at the
2017 Berkeley protests in mid-April, and the
Unite the Right rally in August 2017, and was carried by supporters of
Donald Trump during the
January 6 United States Capitol attack. Self-identified Kekistanis have created a fictional history around the meme, including the invasion and overthrow of other fictional countries such as "Normistan" and "Cuckistan". The record gained attention from the group in September 2016 because of the name of the group (P.E.P.E.) and art on the record depicting a frog holding a magic wand. a different character from Pepe but of the same species, or a
toad. ==Use in Hong Kong protests==