How frogs went from right-wing meme to anti-ICE protest symbol

The revolution won't be televised, but it may have webbed feet and bulging eyes.

He may also have a unicorn horn or chicken feathers.

As protests against the Trump administration continue in U.S. cities, demonstrators are taking on the energy of a community costume parade or block party. They taught salsa lessons, handed out snacks and rode unicycles under the supervision of armed law enforcement.

Mixing humor and politics—a tactic that social scientists call “tactical levity”—is nothing new. But it has become a defining feature of American protest in the Trump era, embraced by both the left and the right.

And one symbol became especially noticeable – the frog. It all started when video footage of an encounter between a man in a frog suit and immigration agents in Portland, Oregon, went viral and has since spread across the country.

“There’s a lot going on with this little inflatable frog,” says L.M. Bogad, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and a Guggenheim Fellow specializing in performance.

It's hard to talk about protests and frogs without talking about Pepe, the cartoon character who was endorsed by far-right groups during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

When the meme first appeared online, the image was used to represent certain emotions. It was later used to show support for Trump, including one notable meme, retweeted by Trump himself, depicting Pepe in Trump's signature suit and hairstyle.

Pepe has also been portrayed in right-wing online communities on 4chan, 8chan and Reddit in darker contexts, as Adolf Hitler or a member of the violent white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. Internet conservatives traded “rare Pepes” and created a cryptocurrency in his name. His catchphrase “feels good, man” was used as an inside joke.

But Pepe's start was not so controversial.

Its creator, artist Matt Fury, has openly stated his disgust at the way the image has been used. Pepe was supposed to just be the “chill frog dude” in this artist's universe of characters.

The frog first appeared in the comic book series in 2005 – apolitical and best known for pulling his pants all the way down to pee. In the 2020 documentary Feel Like a Good Man, which chronicled Mr. Furey's attempts to regain control of his work, he said his drawing of Pepe was inspired by his experiences with friends and roommates when he was 20 years old.

Early in his career, Fury experimented with uploading his work to the nascent social network, where other users began borrowing, reworking and reinventing his character. As Pepe spread to the furthest corners of the Internet, Mr. Fury attempted to disown the frog, even killing him in the comic.

But Pepe continued to live.

“This shows that we do not control the symbols,” says Professor Bogad. “They can change and change and be remade.”

Until recently, Pepe's popularity meant that frogs were largely associated with the right. But that changed on October 2, when a confrontation between a protester wearing an inflatable frog costume and a blue neck scarf and an immigration officer went viral.

The moment comes just days after Trump sent the National Guard to Portland, calling the city “war-torn.” Protesters began gathering in crowds one block away from the immigration checkpoint.

Tensions were high, and an immigration officer sprayed a chemical agent on a protester, aiming directly at the air intake fan of the plump frog suit.

Protester Seth Todd responded with a joke, saying he had tried “spicier tamales.” But the incident nevertheless went viral.

Mr. Todd's attire was not too unusual for Portland, known for its quirky culture and left-wing protests that revel in the absurd – '80s-style public yoga and aerobics classes and groups of naked cyclists. The city's unofficial motto is “Keep Portland Weird.”

The frog even played a role in the ensuing legal battle between the Trump administration and the city, which argued that the deployment of the National Guard was illegal.

Although the court ruled in October that Trump had the right to send in troops, one justice dissented, citing in her minority decision “protesters' known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog suits, or nothing at all to express their opposition to ICE's practices.”

“Observers may be tempted to view the majority's decision that the government characterize Portland as a war zone as simply absurd,” Justice Susan Graber wrote. “But today’s decision is not just absurd.”

Trump's deployment was “permanently” blocked by the courts just a month later, and troops reportedly left the area.

But by then the frog had become a powerful anti-government symbol for the left.

The costume was spotted across the country during the No Kings protests last fall. Frogs, unicorns, axolotls and dinosaurs lived in San Diego, Atlanta and Boston. They were in small towns such as Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and in large international cities such as Tokyo and London.

The frog costume was ordered from Amazon and the price went up.

What both frogs—Pepe and the Portland Frog—have in common is the interplay of humorous, kind-hearted cartoon amphibianism and deeper political meaning. This is what political scientists call “tactical frivolity.”

The strategy relies on what Professor Bogad calls “compelling imagery”—often silly, a “disarming and charming” sight that draws attention to your ideas without explicitly explaining them to the viewer. It's the stupid costume you wear, or the symbol you draw, or the meme you share.

Professor Bogad is both an expert in this field and an experienced practitioner. He wrote a book on the subject, Tactical Execution: The Theory and Practice of the Serious Game, and has conducted seminars around the world.

“You can go back to the Middle Ages – when people are dominated, they use absurdity to tell a little truth, and still maintain plausible deniability.”

According to Professor Bogad, the idea behind this approach is threefold.

As protesters battle powerful opposition, a wacky suit takes control of the optics. “If you respond with violence, the situation will look even worse,” he says.

Secondly, the image can set a certain tone for the participants of the movement and its potential supporters. In Portland, “it was like a radical costume ball, and we were all invited,” says Professor Bogad.

It is important to note that such tactics can provide political cover for criticism. This sometimes manifests itself in claims that political memes are “just a joke”—a defense against critics who will label your views as dangerous. But it is particularly useful in circumstances where government criticism can be dangerous, says Professor Bogad.

He points to Otpor, the Serbian pro-democracy protest movement that supported efforts to overthrow Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 through pranks and street comedy. For years, critics of Chinese President Xi Jinping have shared images of Winnie the Pooh to signal their opposition online, where bolder criticism can face censorship.

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong also supported Pepe, unaware of his political affiliation in the US.

“Of course, authoritarians don’t like to be laughed at,” says Professor Bogad. Such symbolism works because “even without giving a speech, you undermine the authoritarian script.”

Back home in Oregon, a group of Portlanders have doubled down on their viral fame and banded together to organize “Operation Inflation,” which collects and distributes inflatable suits to protesters.

They've launched a website where supporters can donate $35 to purchase costumes “that community members will wear at ICE protest sites to help de-escalate (pun intended) tensions around the protests.”

Brooks Brown, co-founder of Operation Inflation, says the goal is to “change the story that is being told” by the Trump administration, that all protesters are part of a violent mob.

“Our job is to build another stage and get them to come to ours,” he says.

Mr. Brown says the inflatables bear similarities to the civil rights era of the 1960s, when protesters often dressed in their Sunday best and sat motionless, harassed by counter-protesters and arrested by aggressive police.

Pepe, Mr. Brown says, “was a fascist symbol for 4chan. And now we're being reinstated. Feels good, man.”

By the end of October, his group had purchased more than 350 items of clothing and plans to create a “pipeline” to send supplies to other cities where inflatable boats were used during protests.

Once considered synonymous with the right, the Portland frog is now sometimes referred to online as the “Antifa frog” – a reference to the decentralized left-wing movement that opposes far-right movements and which Trump has labeled a domestic terrorist group.

Memes depict him battling Pepe, two frogs vying for the nation's attention.