Iirc, when the ADL put out their guidance on Pepe, it was during the 2016 election when Pepe was being actively coopted by alt-rightera and neo Nazis. One of those "take something innocuous and poison it by using it as a pseudo secret signal to other bigots.
I vaguely recall them saying that Pepe was a hate symbol only insofar as it was being used for that purpose. I wonder if that changed, or if this investigation is ignoring that nuance to hamfist a “hate speech” argument.
I fear it is the latter. Nuance seems to get lost over time. It’s maybe the opposite of black people in the US using the N word amongst themselves in an attempt to take it back… I don’t think that this was successful by any measure as it just caused the racist to point at it and say… see they even say it about themselves because only hoodlums (what a word) use it…
Iirc, when the ADL put out their guidance on Pepe, it was during the 2016 election when Pepe was being actively coopted by alt-rightera and neo Nazis. One of those "take something innocuous and poison it by using it as a pseudo secret signal to other bigots.
I vaguely recall them saying that Pepe was a hate symbol only insofar as it was being used for that purpose. I wonder if that changed, or if this investigation is ignoring that nuance to hamfist a “hate speech” argument.
I fear it is the latter. Nuance seems to get lost over time. It’s maybe the opposite of black people in the US using the N word amongst themselves in an attempt to take it back… I don’t think that this was successful by any measure as it just caused the racist to point at it and say… see they even say it about themselves because only hoodlums (what a word) use it…