Inside the Alt-Furry’s Online Zoo

Does it come as a surprise that the alt-right would identify themselves with beasts?

By now Pepe the frog, grotesque comic muse and focal point of widespread “meme magic,” has become something of a household name. But a closer look at the alt-right reveals conservative animals of all stripes, a veritable zoo of foxes and wolves, mythical creatures and pastel-colored ponies led by a furry Trump, cast as an extremely smug-looking anthropomorphized lion.

I’m talking, of course, about alt-furries and alt-bronies, the mere mention of which is enough to provoke eye rolling and wholehearted despair in members of both the political left and right.

Personally I was baffled by the contradictions within a movement which preaches tolerance for fursuits and “yiffing” (furry sex), but which rails against Islam and Black Lives Matter. I also worried that I’d be offering the furry alt-right a free pass, by inviting them to explain themselves. Still, this unlikely faction goes some way to explaining absurdities of the broader movement, which—for all its gross-out humor and ragged edges—appears to be gaining mainstream credibility.

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