For those of you living under a rock, Donald Trump is the new president-elect to replace Barack Obama. Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a close and contentious race, much to the ire of the left-leaning side of the population. This race, like many others spawned many conspiracy theories surrounding both candidates. From the DNC using Donald Trump as a red herring of sorts to entice the populace to vote Clinton, or the myriad of speculations surrounding Clinton's emails. However, none of these conspiracy theories compare in lunacy or complexity to the influence of Kek, an ancient Egyptian chaos god in this election.
Before I explain this conspiracy theory, I want to make it clear that I do not believe this in any way, I simply want to bring this to light because of how simultaneously strange and interesting this all is. It is likely that all of this is a string of curious coincidences that can play into one's own confirmation biases. Therefore, a healthy dose of skepticism is absolutely necessary to proceed.
This story begins on a peculiar image board known as 4chan which began in 2003 as a way for anonymous users to discuss anime. As the site's popularity grew, more topics of discussion were allowed and were relegated to their own "board" on the site. These topics include but are not limited to music, movies and TV, art, literature, the paranormal, LGBT topics, and politics. The final board in that list, the politics board (known as /pol/) is known for it's loud, ornery, and opinionated user base.
The users on /pol/ are typically stereotyped as angry racist and antisemitic voices, using the site's focus on one's ability to discuss their opinions anonymously to its full effect. /pol/ users do not censor themselves and will not hesitate to speak their mind, no matter how vitriolic or frank their opinions are. While most assume most /pol/ users are right wing, this board often seen as the genesis of the deplorable alt-right movement, there is a not significant number of users who are left-leaning.
This mix of anonymous voices combine into a loud, chaotic mess that barely passes the threshold of being called political discourse. Intermixed within this discourse is the sharing of image macros, a quality of 4chan that has been around since the site's inception. On /pol/, the most popular of these macros seems to be Pepe, an anthropomorphic frog character whose numerous iterations are used as reaction images.
Pepe is used by /pol/ so often, a sort of meme-economy has been created surrounding these images. A Pepe that hasn't been used by many people is considered to be a "rare Pepe" and is sought after by members of the community. The point of this is that Pepe is so frequently used on /pol/, the two are almost synonymous with one another.
Another meme of the /pol/ board is the phrase "kek" which is a permutation of the phrase "lol" and comes from the onomatopoeic sound for laughter in Korea. "Kek" is often spammed in in-game chats in games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft.
One final meme that is key to understanding this conspiracy theory is the concept of dubs. On 4chan, and many other anonymous image boards, the only way to refer to a specific post is by the arbitrary number each unique post is assigned. Whenever a post receives a series of repeating numbers (dubs, trips, quads, etc.) these posts are "checked" by other users, acknowledging the amount of luck required to make such a post.
Now, to bring this back to politics, as soon as Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, it piqued the interest of /pol/. Before this election, Trump had been known for his role on the reality show, The Apprentice, as well as some of the absurd sound bites of his that would circulate the internet infrequently, not to mention his ridiculous Twitter antics. But after the first handful of debates, /pol/ had made up its collective mind: Donald Trump is a candidate worth supporting.
To the users of /pol/, Donald Trump represented /pol/ itself. He was loud, brash, unapologetic, unpolished, and chaotic above all else. Trump became the primary focus of posts on /pol/ rather quickly, and some bizarre coincidences began to emerge. These mostly manifested themselves as posts that were pro-Trump getting dubs with almost regularity until something strange happened.
This post almost became a turning point. From here, one anon with an interest in Egyptian mythology pointed out a bizarre set of coincidences. Firstly, that there is a particular god, the Egyptian god of chaos and the bringer of light, with the head of a frog. This chaos god has a name too, Kek.
It should also be noted that the hieroglyphic character for Kek strongly resembles a figure sitting at a computer, seen below.
Thus, the Cult of Kek was born. Forged in the fires of an anonymous anime forum, their numbers were growing and the coincidences were getting stranger. The 15th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy was a particular day of interest as well, a day in which three things of interest occurred within 48 hours of one another.
Firstly, a strange 80's pop track surfaced on YouTube which bore numerous coincidences to our green friend. But the "meme magic" was only just beginning. The second event was Hillary Clinton fainting at the memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.
The third and final event was the Anti-Defamation League declaring Pepe to be a symbol of white supremacy due to its association with the alt-right, a decision which drew the ire of almost everybody on the Internet. The use of Pepe by the alt-right is overall a very slim minority of people who use the meme. Pepe has reached a sort of cultural ubiquity in which major celebrities are tweeting out Pepe memes on occasion, including Donald Trump himself.
To sum all this up, this Cult of Kek born on /pol/ seem to think that they've awakened an Egyptian god of chaos to help them influence the 2016 Presidential Election in the favor of Donald Trump. They feel as though they have a real power through this entity they've awoken.
While this speculation is endlessly entertaining, it simply cannot be true. Such a set of coincidences are simply that, and the invocation of an Egyptian god of chaos is simply not why Hillary Clinton lost the election. However, this rabbit hole of a conspiracy theory is definitely interesting in its own right and I look forward to seeing where the Cult of Kek directs its influence in the future.
