Amazon is selling products emblazoned with a far-right, white nationalist meme
Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
- Amazon is selling three products promoting the far-right meme Groyper.
- Groyper, a spinoff of Pepe the Frog, is closely linked with the white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes.
- On Monday, Media Matters for America reported additional items that appear to have been removed.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Amazon is selling books and a sticker set promoting the far-right white nationalist meme Groyper.
Groyper, a toad-like derivative of Pepe the Frog that looks like a giant green amphibian with a wide smirking face resting on intertwined hands, has been linked to far-right activism, including the white nationalist internet personality Nick Fuentes, whose followers call themselves "Groypers" and the "Groyper Army."
Amazon, which has a history of selling products associated with white supremacist and far-right conspiracy theories like the QAnon movement, is currently selling several items emblazoned with the Groyper meme.
The merchandise includes two books - entitled "The Groyper And Frens Coloring Book" and "Who's that_groyper?" - both of which were written by the same person and are marked as children's books. As Media Matters for America, a left-leaning nonprofit that tracks right-wing media, first reported on Monday, the two products' descriptions say that they were "Sold and shipped by Amazon." While this can sometimes mean that Amazon bought inventory to supply to customers, it also applies to books that are self-published via the e-commerce giant's publishing platform.
In addition, Amazon is listing a sticker that features a mashed-up image of Groyper and the wrestler Hulk Hogan, who became an icon among Groypers after the celebrity shared that same meme in a now-deleted 2017 tweet.
Media Matters reported that Amazon was also selling three Groyper-themed T-shirts with the meme creature's face and the text "Groyper" and "Groyper Army" on them, and provided screenshots taken on Thursday of the listed products.
Insider verified the existence of the three T-shirt items like "Groyper Political Meme T-Shirt" on Monday afternoon, but an Amazon search for those titles yielded no results as of Tuesday morning, suggesting Amazon may have removed them.
Although a Google query for "Amazon groyper" shows two of the shirts - "Groyper-Army-Political-Meme-T-Shirt" and "Groyper-Easter-Comfy-Halloween-T-Shirt" - as the first two search options, clicking those links yields Amazon error pages that read, "SORRY we couldn't find that page."
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the meme-information website KnowYourMeme, the Groyper meme format first sprouted on 4chan in 2015 and began to circulate more widely on online forums like 4chan and Reddit after 2017.
In 2019, Fuentes launched what would become known as the "Groyper Wars," in which he encouraged his followers to attend events held by conservatives whom he deemed not far-right enough - including Donald Trump Jr., Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro - and ask them provocative questions manufactured to "expose" the figures as "fake" conservatives. Fuentes, who also appeared at the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, was banned from Twitter last week for violating the platform's rules.
Toward the end of 2020, Fuentes encouraged his so-called Groypers to attend "Stop the Steal" events supporting the false idea that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and suggested followers join the US Capitol insurrection in January. Later that month, the FBI arrested one of those followers, Anthime Gionet, who went by the online pseudonym "Baked Alaska" and has been linked to conspiracy theories and anti-semitism, for his role in storming the US Capitol.
The Anti-Defamation League lists "Groypers" under its Extremism, Terrorism & Bigotry section and defines the "Groyper Army" as a "loose network of alt right figures," many of whom hold "racist and anti-semitic views."
To read more stories like this, check out Insider's digital culture coverage here.
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Wednesday, July 14, 2021
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