Members of the white nationalist group American Identity Movement hold a protest outside a New Orleans library while dressed as clowns. Image by AIM/YouTube

By Aiden Pink May 6, 2019

Last month, my colleague Ari Feldman received a strange email from an anonymous source. That normally wouldn’t be very notable – the Forward gets unsolicited emails all the time, ranging from news tips to complaints to apocalyptic prophecies – except for the unexpected closing line: “Honk honk, motherfucker!”

At first, we thought it was just a creative coulrological insult – more original than the “kapos” we normally get over the transom. But as it turns out, there may be a more sinister motive: White nationalists are trying to appropriate clowns for their own ends.

As Right Wing Watch reported on April 4, users of the online message board 4chan, which is popular among white nationalists, have been trying to popularize a character called “Honkler” – an image of Pepe the Frog, the cartoon mascot of the so-called “alt-right,” wearing a clown nose and colorful wig.

Honkler, a new white nationalist meme. Image by 4chan/Right Wing Watch

Other online anti-Semites have built upon the Honkler imagery when citing news that confirms their nihilistic worldview. When describing what they see as the illogic of a liberal, non-racist society, they write that they are living in a “clown world,” or just write “honk honk” as a shorthand to get that point across.

Prominent far-right online platforms, including the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer and the increasingly-popular white nationalist podcast “Goy Talk,” have used these memes in their posts. And many anonymous troll accounts have changed their profile pictures to photos of clowns or their pseudonyms to things like “Honkler Honklersen.”

For example, in response to an article about the Florida state legislature passing a law strengthening bans on anti-Semitism in public schools, a user with the avatar of an anime cartoon with a rainbow wig and red nose wrote, “Meanwhile they will let them [Jews] continue to lie to make slavery and the treatment of native americans seem worse to incite hatred against whites. honk honk.”

While some users depict themselves as clowns who are “in” on the “joke” of the alleged downfall of white society in a multiracial country, others have targeted their supposed enemies by depicting them as clowns. Goy Talk tweeted an image last month of a stereotypical scheming Jew in clown garb; one of the current top posts on R/The_Donald, the popular pro-Trump Reddit page that is the frequent source of racist and anti-Semitic invective, features an image that appears to be the Prophet Muhammad in a clown wig.

While much of this behavior is confined to the internet, some has extended itself to the physical world as well. On April 22, two members of the American Identity Movement – the white nationalist group formerly known as Identity Evropa – dressed as clowns and entered a New Orleans public library to disrupt a children’s story time program being led by local drag queens. “Welcome to clown world, honk honk,” their sign said.

Later that month, members of the same group stormed a Washington bookstore to protest a lecture about whiteness, chanting “this land is our land.”

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter at @aidenpink.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount