According to an article by Ian Mills Cheng on the
Heat Street website , the name "Kekistan" is a combination of the word "kek" and the suffix -stan ,
which in Persian means "place for..." (and is also the ending of some names in existing
Central Asian countries)
[ 3 ] [ 4 ] .
The meme features the term "
Shadilay " used as a greeting, referencing the 1986 PEPE album, which features a green frog on its cover .
[ 3 ] The song has also been used as
the national anthem for a fictional country .
[ 4 ] The song gained public attention in September 2016 due to the band's name (PEPE) and the artwork on the record, which depicts a frog holding a magic wand .
[ 5 ] The satirical ethos soon gained political resonance in the United States as a sign
of alt-right protests against political correctness in late 2016 and 2017.
[ 2 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] Kekistan originated as a meme on 4chan in December 2017.
[ 1 ] In 2017, a group of Trump supporters, united by
a dark sense of humor , imagined themselves as citizens of the fictional nation-state of Kekistan, fighting the forces of liberal political correctness. Initially developed on 4chan, dozens of Kekistan-themed
YouTube channels sprang up, such as “protest role-playing” videos in which Trump supporters confronted their opponents by raising the Kekistan flag
[ 9 ] .