I’ve been watching the rise of Kek & Kekistan for the last several months with what can best be described as “bemusement.” If you are unaware of Kek/Kekistan… first, where the hell have you been? Second, the easiest way to think of Kek it to think back to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. FSM and the Church of the FSM were created as satire, a way to poke creationists with a pointy stick. They use they same lame-brained arguments in favor of teaching “intelligent design” by introducing a wholly ridiculous pseudo-religion that is just as valid an explanation at the traditional “creationist” explanations.
Kek/Kekistan is the same sort of idea, but instead of aimed at creationism, it’s aimed at political correctness and current Leftist extremism. The idea seemed to have arisen after it was pointed out that online trolls -specifically “sh*tposters” who tend to go after social justice warriors – qualify as an ethnic group under British law. What seems to typify Kekistanis is a willingness, nay, a gleeful enthusiasm, to poke the PC talking point of the day, to take the big scary moral panic and wear it like a party hat. The biggest symbol of this is Pepe The Frog. Originally a conventional cartoon character, it was turned into a meme For All Purposes. But since it was *also* sometimes used by members of the alt-Right, many on the far left freaked directly out and declared that Pepe was a symbol of white supremacy/nationalism. If the Left had ignored it, Pepe would have faded away. But they couldn’t let it go, so the alt-Right took it and ran with it. And now Pepe has gone through an apotheosis, turning into Kek (a frog-headed Egyptian god and symbol of the Kekistanis). This is a defining feature of the Kekistanis; the thing you freak out about the most is the thing they’re going to proudly wave as a banner. Call them Nazis and they will start waving swastikas around. Scream at them that they’re racist, and you’ll be bombarded with a million racist memes. The flag of Kekistan is now a green, modified version of a Nazi-era German military flag. The motive isn’t, I think, to actually be racist, but to irritate the hell out of the people who too easily toss such accusations about. The moment you see something and say “that’s not funny,” they’ll take it as a challenge. Too soon for Hitler jokes? Guess what’s coming.
If nothing else, Kekistan is a stellar example of basic human nature. The left demands that certain ideas, thoughts, images and symbols be never allowed. They demand that identity politics be held up as inviolable and divine. And the Kekistanis, being human, respond to such demands as the best of all humans do… with an upraised middle finger. For decades the PC brigade has used beratement and browbeating to bully people into not speaking up, and this sort of thing – and the election of the idiot buffoon Trump – is the natural response. And at least unlike the anti-Trumpers, the Kekistanis are generally funny and non-violent.
On my recent trip to the USAF Museum in Dayton, somewhere along the line I stopped and had a Kek spotting out in the wild:
The video below is a satire of the sort of thing MSNBC would put out about Kekistan. And it takes a good long while to be obvious that it’s *not* straight outta MSNBC.
Insofar as there is an ideology, it seems to be something that was virtually inevitable. For my entire adult life I’ve seen the PC fascists trying to control actions, thought and speech; the lefties should be damned grateful that the result seems to be this satirical response rather than a boot to the head.
Here’s a description of the Kekistanis from the guy who essentially created ’em, YouTuber Sargon of Akkad: