There's a video from Hong Kong that went somewhat viral showing a protester jump kick a police officer in the face who was trying to drag and arrest another protester lying on the ground.
The video was widely shared by protester-friendly accounts celebrating the act because several arrested protesters had recently turned up dead or disappeared.
It's very easy to construct a narrative portraying the protesters as violent criminals if you start from the assumption that all police violence is justified and resisting any form of police violence is not.
EDIT: Oh and the problem with Pepe wasn't that "Pepe is racist because someone used it that way", it's that Pepe became popular on 4chan and was then co-opted for racist imagery and embraced by actual racists who then used it unironically, so it eventually became a calling card.
Likewise the "ok hand" gesture and emote was initially planted as a "hoax" white supremacist symbol by 4chan members but then actual white supremacists started using it, first ironically as a nod to the "hoax", then unironically to demonstrate their affiliations to others.
The problem with these "dog whistles" is that they're intentionally ambiguous and can be entirely innocent in the right context. Of course not everyone posting "funny green frog memes" or using the "ok hand" gesture is a nazi, but if someone who's already suspiciously copying far-right rhetoric randomly flashes the ok hand in a photo op, or uses Pepe (or the less subtle NPC meme) they're most likely trying to say something while retaining plausible deniability.
The video was widely shared by protester-friendly accounts celebrating the act because several arrested protesters had recently turned up dead or disappeared.
It's very easy to construct a narrative portraying the protesters as violent criminals if you start from the assumption that all police violence is justified and resisting any form of police violence is not.
EDIT: Oh and the problem with Pepe wasn't that "Pepe is racist because someone used it that way", it's that Pepe became popular on 4chan and was then co-opted for racist imagery and embraced by actual racists who then used it unironically, so it eventually became a calling card.
Likewise the "ok hand" gesture and emote was initially planted as a "hoax" white supremacist symbol by 4chan members but then actual white supremacists started using it, first ironically as a nod to the "hoax", then unironically to demonstrate their affiliations to others.
The problem with these "dog whistles" is that they're intentionally ambiguous and can be entirely innocent in the right context. Of course not everyone posting "funny green frog memes" or using the "ok hand" gesture is a nazi, but if someone who's already suspiciously copying far-right rhetoric randomly flashes the ok hand in a photo op, or uses Pepe (or the less subtle NPC meme) they're most likely trying to say something while retaining plausible deniability.