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Frogtwitter is a network of loosely-connected pseudonymous X accounts characterized by promoting dissident ideas and policies associated with the alt-right [1] that formed around writer and online personality Costin Alamariu. [2]
The name itself is likely to have derived from either the Pepe the Frog meme [3] [4] or from Aristophanes' comedy The Frogs , as speculated by Josh Vandiver. [5] There was a wave of Twitter suspensions for Frogtwitter members in early 2017, [6] followed by a one-off art exhibition in Dalston (a neighborhood of London) open until that May. [7]
Definitions and descriptions of Frogtwitter vary depending by source and perspective. BuzzFeed simply refers to it as "Alt Right on Twitter." [3] Jacob Siegel, writing for The Baffler, calls it a group "with a similar blend of reactionary and post-libertarian thinking" [8] to Cody Wilson. Siegel also interviewed a member of Frogtwitter, who states, "a lot of it is just having fun with words on the internet... intellectualizing while wanting to communicate serious ideas in a very high-noise environment", and that the group's main thesis is that "there's a decadence, a decline and eventually it will be followed by something else." [8] Ben Schreckinger, writing for Politico , described it as "a network [...] that revel[s] in mythic, aristocratic pasts while trafficking in racism and anti-Semitism." [9]
Andrew Sabisky, writing for International Business Times UK , quoted "Kantbot" summarising Frogtwitter as "the last bastion of indiscriminate and all-embracing cultural criticism; a space not for ideology, but for pure, truly unfiltered critique. It is an anti-political sphere, in many ways, or perhaps one of a politics of pure aesthetics." [7] Sabisky himself lauds Frogtwitter for "the magic of frogtwitter [that] lies in the balance between the darkness of their nihilism and the joyous, majestic, life-affirming vitality with which they express it, buttressed by a fierce intelligence." [7] Ben Sixsmith writing for The American Conservative notes that trying to define Frogtwitter could lead to embarrassment, but he tries by saying "its inhabitants tend to be young, male, white, and nationalistic, but also less fixated on race than the alt-right and more cynical, literary, esoteric, and mischievous. They love to walk the line between satire and seriousness, to get a reaction as with other trolls, but also to deconstruct what they see as artificial forms of social meaning." [10] Dan DeCarlo writing for Claremont Institute's American Mind sums up Frogtwitter as a short-lived, bizarro right-wing avant-garde, and lauds it as a nihilistic collective art project that struggles with the end of liberalism and "a spiritual mutiny against the religion of progressive liberalism." [11]
According to popular member "Bronze Age Pervert", as quoted by Tara Isabella Burton for Vox , Frogtwitter does not advocate for a particular political project but is rather a "dissatisfaction with modern life in many ways for the same reasons liberals were dissatisfied before... It's a world that's tightly controlled, repressive, ugly, extremely polluted." [12] Jacob Siegel notes that Frogtwitter limits its "activism" to tweets alone, [8] but that may not be without consequence, troll and noted 2016 election influencer [13] "Ricky Vaughn" is being sued for the spreading of misinformation and election interference. [14]
Ben Schreckinger did a brief survey of some of the themes occupying the minds of Frogtwitter: "Figures in this space frequently refer to their belief that elite media is preparing Americans for a future in which their quality of life is greatly diminished and people are reduced to eating insects for protein". [9] And "because this corner of the internet fixates on population genetics and has a high affinity for Slavic and northern European cultures, there is a fascination with the Udmurt people, a small ethnic group that lives mostly in Russia, and the fact that a high proportion of its members have red hair." [9] The accounts also "oppose mass migration, echoing the themes of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory (...) [which] claims that European elites are secretly conspiring to replace their countries' white majorities with immigrants from Africa and the Middle East." [9]
GNET researchers Joshua Molloy and Eviane Leidig highlight particular aspects of Frogtwitter's affection for raw food diets and its distaste for PUFAs, seed oils and soy products. [15]
Andrew Sabisky describes a viral tweet, retweeted by Ann Coulter, by user "menaquinone4" as typical Frogtwitter output which both affirmed and mocked the "Deep state" conspiracy theory by contrasting two pictures, one of a movie star playing a spy holding a sniper rifle next to a picture of former CIA member and 2016 presidential candidate Evan McMullin eating a snack, headed by the caption: "deep state: what you think ur getting vs. what you're actually getting". [6]
"Kantbot"'s viral moment in late 2016 exemplifies some of Frogtwitter's more esoteric themes. Jacob Siegel describes the event in The Baffler: "you may have encountered the viral video of a portly, curly-haired young man in glasses and peacoat going on about Thule. He is holding forth at an anti-Trump rally to an amused reporter and an agitated crowd, explaining that president [Trump] is going to resurrect the lost city of Atlantis and do what Hegel and Fichte could not, by completing the system of German idealism." [8]
Prominent members of Frogtwitter mentioned in the media were:
These personalities often boast many thousands of online followers. [17]
Anarchist Cody Wilson is said to engage with Frogtwitter, [8] and, according to Jacobin , Frogtwitter is adjacent to incel subculture. [21] The Baffler brings up Frogtwitter's adjacency to the neoreactionary movement. [8] Joshua Molloy and Eviane Leidig make note of the close relationship between the Right Wing Bodybuilder (RWBB) movement and Frogtwitter. [15] [22] According to a friend of Spectator writer Grayson Quay, Tucker Carlson's writers 'literally live' on frogtwitter. [18]
Frogs play a variety of roles in culture, appearing in folklore and fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm story of The Frog Prince. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, frogs symbolized fertility, while in classical antiquity, the Greeks and Romans associated frogs with fertility, harmony, and licentiousness.
The Daily Stormer is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the alt-right movement. Its editor, Andrew Anglin, founded the outlet on July 4, 2013, as a faster-paced replacement for his previous website Total Fascism, which had focused on his own long-form essays on fascism, race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. In contrast, The Daily Stormer relies heavily on quoted material with exaggerated headlines.
/pol/, short for Politically Incorrect, is an anonymous political discussion imageboard on 4chan. As of 2022, it is the most active board on the site. It has had a substantial impact on Internet culture. It has acted as a platform for far-right extremism; the board is notable for its widespread racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, misogynist, and anti-LGBT content. /pol/ has been linked to various acts of real-world extremist violence. It has been described as one of the "[centers] of 4chan mobilization", a title also ascribed to /b/.
Charles Carlisle Johnson is an American political activist who was a public figure in the years 2013 to 2019. A self-described "investigative journalist", Johnson is often described as an internet troll and has been repeatedly involved in the proliferation and spread of multiple fake news stories. Johnson was owner of the alt-right websites GotNews.com, WeSearchr.com, and Freestartr.com, all of which were short-lived. He wrote two books, both published by Encounter Books in 2013.
Pepe the Frog is a comic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie. Designed as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe originated in Furie's 2005 comic Boy's Club. The character became an Internet meme when his popularity steadily grew across websites such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, he had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe memes include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, "§ Rare Pepes" have been posted on the "meme market" as if they were trading cards.
Matt Furie is an American comics artist and also illustrator. He is known for creating Pepe the Frog, a character from his Boy's Club series that debuted in 2005. The anthropomorphic character became a popular Internet meme in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
The alt-right was a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity and establishing a presence in other countries during the mid-2010s, and has largely declined since 2017. The term is ill-defined and has been used in different ways by academics, journalists, media commentators, and alt-right members themselves.
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The DeploraBall was an unofficial inaugural ball event organized by GOTV group MAGA3X and held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on the evening of January 19, 2017, to celebrate the victory and inauguration of Donald Trump. The event fomented controversy due to its alleged association with members of the alt-right, and triggered violent protests outside the venue while the event went on as scheduled inside. In addition to the MAGA3X event, the "DeploraBall" name has also been used to refer to additional events for Trump supporters in Washington, D.C., and other locations. The name is a play on Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment made during her 2016 presidential election campaign.
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"Shadilay" is an Italo disco song by the Italian band P.E.P.E., released in 1986 by the music label Magic Sound. It was written by Italian singer-songwriter Marco Ceramicola, who sang under the pseudonym of Manuele Pepe.
Feels Good Man is a 2020 American documentary film about the Internet meme Pepe the Frog. Marking the directorial debut of Arthur Jones, the film stars artist Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe. The film follows Furie as he struggles to reclaim control of Pepe from members of the alt-right who have co-opted the image for their own purposes. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker. It was also nominated in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance. Sometime in the 2020s, ranging from 2023 to 2024, the film was added to FAST service Pluto TV in Canada.
Groypers, sometimes called the Groyper Army, are a group of alt-right and white nationalist activists, provocateurs, and Internet trolls led by Nick Fuentes. They are notable for their attempts to introduce alt-right politics into mainstream conservatism in the United States, their participation in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and the protests leading up to it, and their extremist views. They have targeted other conservative groups and individuals whose agendas they view as too moderate and insufficiently nationalist. The Groyper movement has been described as white nationalist, homophobic, nativist, fascist, sexist, antisemitic, and an attempt to rebrand the declining alt-right movement.
Jeff Giesea is an American entrepreneur, communications specialist, and national security writer who was a business affiliate of several of Peter Thiel's companies and venture capital groups.
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Charles Cornish-Dale, better known by his online alias Raw Egg Nationalist (REN), is a British far-right influencer. He is the editor of the magazine Man's World, published in print by Passage Press. In 2022 he appeared on Tucker Carlson's documentary The End of Men, increasing his popularity. While a pseudonymous writer, in 2024 his identity was disclosed by the British advocacy group Hope not Hate.
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