InfoWars founder, conspiracy theorist, and tainted supplement pitchman Alex Jones has settled with artist Matt Furie, creator of the unfathomably widespread Pepe the Frog meme, for $15,000 after InfoWars used the image on an obnoxious poster it sold during the 2016 elections, Vice reported on Monday
In the past few years, the Pepe character—originally designed as a chill, fun-loving bro who just liked to smoke weed and eat pizza with his animal pals—has become widely associated with online neo-Nazis and other far-right activists, largely because fans of both happen to share digital real estate on anonymous imageboards like 4chan and 8chan.
Furie is very much not a fan of this. In 2017, Furie successfully had an Islamophobic, alt-right children’s book using the Pepe character pulled from sale, and he’s sent other cease and desist notices to a number of other noxious racists including the operators of the Daily Stormer and Richard Spencer and his AltRight.com website. In 2018, Furie filed suit against InfoWars over the poster, which featured Pepe alongside prominent right-wing personalities including then-candidate Donald Trump and his confidante Roger Stone.
Read the full article @ Gizmodo
