Source of image: jezebel.com

Here is the exposed liar and Trump attack dog Chuck C. Johnson’s proposed billboard image:

BOOM: 95% DONE! With 25 days left, just $274 to go until we put up a Pepe billboard. PUT IT OVER THE TOP: https://t.co/agaV5bfZFZ Praise Kek pic.twitter.com/VrvpdfPFWG

— WeSearchr (@wesearchr) October 3, 2016

If you thought my headline was talking about Pepe Trump, your guess wouldn’t be far-fetched, considering that Pepe is now in ADL’s hate symbols database.

However, as ADL points out, the “majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted”, and “because so many Pepe the Frog memes are not bigoted in nature, it is important to examine use of the meme only in context”. While the context here hints at violence, that’s not the most outrageous thing about this billboard.

Rather, it’s the small image of the moonman that most people would probably miss in the first place. Originally a McDonald’s ad mascot, it has recently been turned into something much more sinister.

KnowYourMeme explains the recent history of the moonman meme:

Moon Man remained fairly contained to YTMND until 2015, when the character saw a revival with the rise of race-based humor such as that found on 4chan’s Politically Offensive board. A YouTube mirror of the “Hypnotize” YTMND was uploaded on May 24, where it was viewed over 200,000 times in the following two months before being removed from the site for violating hate speech rules. On June 1, an album of Moon Man rap parodies was released under the name WhiteTopia; a YouTube version of the album has been viewed over 130,000 times.

Timothy Burke explains in “Rape, Murder, Violent Racism: The Weirdest McDonald’s Ad Campaign Ever”:

Something Awful/4chan spinoff YTMND is responsible for dozens, if not hundreds, of the Internet’s best-known memes. But much like 4chan’s /b/ board, it’s also home to some of the most repulsive, violent, racist content found on the English-language internet. No recurring YTMND character represents this more than the repurposed “Moon Man,” liberated from his YouTube hell into a looping GIF that spews racist and homophobic hatred from atop a Big Mac. Yeah, it’s weird. […]

YTMND Moon Man fads date back to 2007; most have been deleted and their creators banned, though you can still see a few of them. Nearly all of them feature the Moon Man GIF on repeat, accompanied by a robotic, text-to-speech voice repeating the letters “K-K-K.”

According to the YTMND wiki, the Moon Man fad became so notorious that AT&T attempted to modify its online text-to-speech generator to prevent it from being exploited as a tool to put violent, hateful words in the mouth of a frightening old McDonald’s mascot. AT&T appears to have been unsuccessful in this attempt, as new Moon Man sites continue to be created; here’s one from just yesterday.

And the Urban Dictionary sums it up it in its usual coarse style (warning: bigoted language):

Here are just a couple of examples from the moonman-related racist oeuvre (click at your own risk):

Chuck is knowingly using a racist meme. His Wesearchr page even explicitly mentions it in the tags:

And his readers understand this, even if their reactions differ.

@wesearchr Dudes, is it really going to include moonman? If so I’m donating right now.

— Trumplicator (@bebebebender) October 3, 2016

wesearchr.com

@wesearchr @FacMagnaAmerica
>moonman

Oh my fuck

— Deplorable Reiss 🐸 (@reissdjo) October 3, 2016

Meanwhile Chuck has been caught supporting German neo-Nazis beating up a German mayor, writing “Beat him again”. His post has since been removed by facebook.

Further reading: Chuck C. Johnson and His Neo-Nazi Friends