In February 2019, racist and anti-Semitic variations of the character named "Honkler" began appearing on 4chan's /pol/ imageboard.
Honkler / Clown World
On February 11th, 2019, a post featuring the image along with the message "Why Honk Honk is the next
OK sign" was posted on /pol/, which called for "taking back the rainbow" (shown below). Meanwhile, a post about "Operation Honk" was created, featuring a screenshot of Clown Pepe illustrations under the Google Image search "Honkler."
[6]
On April 4th, the left-wing news site Right Wing Watch
[7] published an article titled "White Nationalists Adopt Clowns as Their Next Racist Symbol (Yes, Seriously)," which reported that there were "an abundance" of racist Clown Pepe memes performing acts like "lynching black people" and "operating gas chambers." Additionally, the article noted that the term "clown world" had become associated with the character, often represented by the emojis "🤡🌎."