this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
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[โ€“] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago

No. Some time ago on Lemmy I had to explain the same thing to someone who was trying to make the claim that "glowie" was a racist term because it was used next to the N word in it's first use by Terry A. Davis even though the context showed that "glowie" was being used as a derogatory term for members of the CIA and not people of color.

I had to explain that if someone used the F slur next to the word "rainbow" that does not make "rainbow" derogatory, and if it did, we would have a big problem with many, many more words.

The mistake people make here seems to be related to a composition/division logical fallacy in which they think that just because one thing is associated with another thing in specific context, the context of the second thing must be applied to the entirety of the first thing without exception, when this is not the case at all.

The exact same idea applies to Pepe. Pepe was not made as a hate symbol, but under some contexts has been used as one. This does not mean that Pepe is always a symbol of hate without exception.