That Is Really Meme: Nazi Pepe the Frog and the Subversion of Anglo-American Holocaust Remembrance

Demsky, Jeffrey

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_7

Jeffrey Demsky⁵

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict ((PSCHC))

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Abstract

Demsky investigates Internet memes subverting contemporary Anglo-American Holocaust memorialization. Focusing on an erstwhile apolitical cartoon character named Pepe the Frog, this chapter explains how MAGA nationalists Nazified Pepe as part of a Holocaust mocking campaign. Demsky posits that Pepe’s saboteurs did not stumble onto this subject focus. Undermining Holocaust memorialization reflects a confluence of long-standing American political impulses, namely, anti-globalism, anti-liberalism, and antisemitism. Pepe serves a related role in the UK. Brexit supporters do not direct Pepe specifically toward Holocaust derision. Rather, they employ him as a nationalist symbol rejecting liberalized calls for ethno-racial tolerance and transnationalism. As Demsky’s analysis notes, however, these impulses subvert Holocaust remembrance by honoring the very obstacles that enabled the Nazis’ European Jewish destruction.

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Notes

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Political Science and History, San Bernardino Valley College, San Bernardino, CA, USA
Jeffrey Demsky

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Demsky, J. (2021). That Is Really Meme: Nazi Pepe the Frog and the Subversion of Anglo-American Holocaust Remembrance. In: Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_7
Published: 18 August 2021
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-79220-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-79221-3
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