"The cartoonist who created Pepe the Frog has killed off the character in a rebuke to far-right extremists who transformed a benevolent internet meme into a racist, anti-Semitic symbol.
A Pepe cartoon released on Saturday in comic bookstores shows Matt Furie's creation in an open casket.
In a Time magazine essay last year, Furie described Pepe as "chill frog-dude" who debuted in a 2006 comic book called Boy's Club and became a popular online subject for user-generated mutations.
But internet trolls hijacked the character and began flooding social media with hateful Pepe memes more than a year before the 2016 presidential election.
Pepe became a tongue-in-cheek symbol of the "alt-right" fringe movement and its loosely connected brand of white nationalism, neo-Nazism and anti-immigration.
Pepe memes promoting Donald Trump's presidential campaign became so ubiquitous that Mr Trump himself tweeted an image blending his likeness with the cartoon frog in October 2015.
Furie was not amused by how his creation became an "icon of hate", calling it a "nightmare" in his Time essay.
"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," Furie wrote."
A Pepe cartoon released on Saturday in comic bookstores shows Matt Furie's creation in an open casket.
In a Time magazine essay last year, Furie described Pepe as "chill frog-dude" who debuted in a 2006 comic book called Boy's Club and became a popular online subject for user-generated mutations.
But internet trolls hijacked the character and began flooding social media with hateful Pepe memes more than a year before the 2016 presidential election.
Pepe became a tongue-in-cheek symbol of the "alt-right" fringe movement and its loosely connected brand of white nationalism, neo-Nazism and anti-immigration.
Pepe memes promoting Donald Trump's presidential campaign became so ubiquitous that Mr Trump himself tweeted an image blending his likeness with the cartoon frog in October 2015.
Furie was not amused by how his creation became an "icon of hate", calling it a "nightmare" in his Time essay.
"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," Furie wrote."
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