patrick.net

The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi wrote a piece in May striving to describe and trace the genesis of Pepe in the alt-right scene, a nascent, illiberal political movement focused on preserving white identity and Western civilization.

In the process, Nuzzi just ended up repeating various made-up stories from the only two people she interviewed from “Frog Twitter”: Paul Town (@PaulTown_) and Jared Taylor Swift (@JaredTSwift). …

“[I]n recent months, Pepe’s been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the ‘alt-right.’ They’ve decided to take back Pepe by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-Semitism and white supremacy,” Hillary Clinton’s explainer notes, quoting “prominent white supremacist” Swift from Nuzzi’s article: “We basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association.”

Months after flippantly giving that quote to Nuzzi, Swift is still having a good laugh about it.

“I think the most ridiculous thing is that a random guy on the internet who trolled a journalist once is now a ‘prominent white supremacist.’ …

Swift, this apparently prominent white supremacist, created his Twitter account in November 2015. His Twitter name is a tribute to Jared Taylor, a leading intellectual influence on the alt-right and founder of the magazine American Renaissance. Paul Town created his account in January 2016.

The troll consisted of Town and Swift feeding an outrageous narrative to Nuzzi in the hopes she would scoop it up and feature as many quotes as possible, which is a fairly common practice among various alt-right groups to gain in-group status.

...

“Basically, I interspersed various nuggets of truth and exaggerated a lot of things, and sometimes outright lied — in the interest of making a journalist believe that online Trump supporters are largely a group of meme-jihadis who use a cartoon frog to push Nazi propaganda. Because this was funny to me,” Swift told TheDCNF.

Swift started Olivia’s interview with a hilarious, nonsensical and over-the-top description of Pepe, namely that “Most memes are ephemeral by nature, but Pepe is not. He’s a reflection of our souls, to most of us. It’s disgusting to see people (‘normies,’ if you will) use him so trivially. He belongs to us. And we’ll make him toxic if we have to.”

#TopKek #PepeIsTheNewNazism

Olivia Nuzzi was a former Weiner Staffer. Google her pic to see why.

TL;DR: The whole Pepe=Nazi thing was the creation of a West Coast Kid with a parody Twitter account was taken seriously by a Social Elite Member, then picked up by the out-of-touch DC Insiders working for the Clinton Campaign.

Don't expect to see any "Fact Checking" on the falsehood Nuzzi was duped into spreading, and by extention, that a Cartoon Frog is the new swastika.