The creator of Pepe the Frog has successfully pushed to stop distribution of a children’s book featuring his cartoon, after the character was adopted as a symbol of the “alt-right,” which is strongly associated with white supremacist and neo-Nazi beliefs.
Attorneys representing the cartoon’s creator, Matt Furie, said in a statement on Tuesday that the book, “The Adventures of Pepe and Pede,” “espoused racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes, included allusions to the alt-right movement and was deliberately targeted at children.”
The children’s book features a series of politically controversial characters, including Pepe.
The antagonist in the book is an alligator named “Alkah,” which many have interpreted to be Islamophobic. There is also a centipede named Pede, which is a name that some supporters of President Trump use to refer to each other on Reddit, according to The Washington Post.
{mosads}The book’s author, Eric Hauser, told the Dallas Observer earlier this month that he does not believe he did anything wrong by using the characters in the book, and that while he wanted the book to have a conservative slant, he disagrees with the alt-right’s white nationalist platform.
“I disagree with the [alt-right or white supremacist] label. I think that label was put on Pepe in an attempt to silence conservatives. They put that label on Pepe in an attempt to silence them when that’s not what Pepe was about,” Hauser, who was fired from his job as an assistant principal in the wake of the book’s backlash, said.
Furie has reportedly called for legal action, citing intellectual-property infringement, according to The New York Times.
Pepe the Frog was created by Furie for his Myspace blog in 2005, but was adopted by members of the alt-right during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The Anti-Defamation League officially dubbed the cartoon a “hate symbol” in 2016.