DC Police are investigating the vandalizing of Senator Bernie Sanders’ mural with Pepe the Frog cartoon as a hate crime.
The mural artwork is performed onto a concrete façade beneath Interstate 395 located in the 100 block of H Street in DC’s Navy Yard section with the caption “Bern the System.”
On Saturday, officers were called to the scene by the artists who were trying to fix the vandalism reporting the act as “motivated by hate or bias of political or religious affiliation.”
The “suspected hate crime” is being investigated as an “anti-Jewish” message targeting the 79-year-old independent senator who is Jewish.
“The appropriation of that symbol somehow became an expression of power by the individuals that were doing it and then it spread over the internet and different chat rooms and 8chan and Reddit and some of the places where alt-right and white supremacists folks find each other and share ideas and share strategies,” official Doron Ezickson said.
The artists added a new message near the politician’s head that says: “Hate has no home here.”
