Rep. Adam Kinzinger beset by Pepe the Frog memes after suggesting Elon Musk is anti-Semitic

As Twitchy reported earlier, Rep. Adam Kinzinger suggested that Twitter owner Elon Musk was anti-Semitic after he asked who’s pulling Alexander Vindman’s strings after a whole bunch of ostensibly unrelated Twitter accounts just so happened to tweet the exact same message as Vindman: “Kinda weird that @elonmusk gets to decide how like a half-billion people communicate. Way too much power for one erratic individual to wield, don’t you think?” read the tweets. When Musk suggested that bots were amplifying Vindman’s message, Kinzinger took it as anti-Semitism.

You mean, like, the Jews or something?

Is that what this is? https://t.co/WItmiDu5T9

— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) November 28, 2022

We’ve no doubt Kinzinger has developed a long reach in his time on the January 6 select committee, but he had even more proof: Musk had once retweeted a Pepe the Frog meme.

Google Pepe the Frog. You’ll see that this is an alt right meme since 2016, with links to anti semetism and authoritarianism.

Cool Elon. https://t.co/TP2F4nEvbI

— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) November 28, 2022

Pepe the Frog does indeed appear on the Anti-Defamation League’s list of hate symbols:

Pepe the Frog is a cartoon character that has become a popular Internet meme (often referred to as the “sad frog meme” by people unfamiliar with the name of the character). The character first appeared in 2005 in the on-line cartoon Boy’s Club. In that appearance, the character also first used its catchphrase, “feels good, man.”

The Pepe the Frog character did not originally have racist or anti-Semitic connotations. Internet users appropriated the character and turned him into a meme, placing the frog in a variety of circumstances and saying many different things. Many variations of the meme became rather esoteric, resulting in the phenomenon of so-called “rare Pepes.”

The majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted….

…

However, because so many Pepe the Frog memes are not bigoted in nature, it is important to examine use of the meme only in context. The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist.