Jeremy Bernstein, a 42-year-old who spends half the year in Miami Beach, says he has lost about $4,000 trying to sell Pepe the Frog-themed hot sauce to the racists and neo-Nazis on 4chan, Twitter, and the rest of the dark, sweaty armpits of the internet who worship the alt-right meme. The biggest reaction he's gotten, he says, has not come from alt-righters but instead from Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie, who sent Bernstein a cease-and-desist letter two months ago to demand he stop his venture.

But Bernstein is adamant that Furie can't stop him from selling his St. Augustine, Florida-made hot sauce, which he writes online is "approved by nationalists everywhere" and "guaranteed to produce Regressive Liberal and SJW tears."

[...]

A single bottle of Hot Pepe's "Over the Wall" Hot Sauce retails for $9.95 online. The eponymous frog on the label is wearing fairly offensive, stereotypically Mexican accessories — a sombrero and thick black mustache — and holding a taco.

But Bernstein insists he began making the hot sauce to prove that Pepe isn't a symbol of intolerance.

"Calling a frog a racist symbol is the most ridiculous thing on the planet," he says. "Fortunately, we have the First Amendment." Mostly, though, he claims he created the sauce "for fun" and chose the name "Hot Pepe's" simply because "the domain name was available."

[...]

"I'm 42, so I have no connection to any of these guys online or anything," he says of websites such as Reddit and 4chan, which serve as hubs for the alt-right. He says the sauce was intended to be used on chicken tenders, in reference to the 4chan "chicken tendies" meme, wherein users write stories about an autistic, overweight character complaining about "normie" people and demanding chicken "tendies." (It's entirely possible to spend an unhealthy amount of time online and still barely understand this meme. Don't feel bad if you're confused.)

Bernstein elaborates, "So it was originally intended to be a chicken-tendie sauce, like, you know, 'These autistic kids go crazy about chicken tendies.' So it's a spicy tendie sauce. But it's actually a very tasty hot sauce." He offers to ship New Times a free sample. No thanks.