Russian embassy tweets an alt-right meme to troll the British government

The Russian Embassy in the UK is really stepping up its online trolling game.
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The Russian Embassy in the UK is really stepping up its online trolling game.

After using a meme of a duckling with the word "Lame" in response to U.S. President Barack Obama's sanctions against Russia, the embassy's verified UK Twitter account had a go at pundits who criticised a possible Russia-U.S. thaw in relations.

In doing so, the embassy used the infamous Pepe the Frog cartoon, which in September was added to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)'s database of hate symbols:

The internet meme, created by cartoonist Matt Furie back in 2005, was adopted by neo-Nazis and serves as an icon of the so-called alt-right movement.

The ADL identified the image as a cartoon character "used by haters on social media to suggest racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted notions, as a hate symbol."

Though the image did not originally represent hateful views, it eventually evolved into depictions of the frog portrayed with a "Hitler-like moustache, wearing a yarmulke or a Klan hood." 

While Trump disavowed the alt-right, he did re-tweet a caricature depicting him as Pepe the Frog in October 2015, with the caption "You Can't Stump the Trump":

While the Russian embassy has been particularly active in their trolling of the Western governments, people on Twitter were stunned to see an alt-right symbol used by an official embassy's Twitter account:

Topics Social Media

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