Some Snoopy fans are enraged that an account dedicated to the beloved character is engaging with politics.
Snoopy Weekly, a now-deleted popular X account unaffiliated with the “Peanuts” comic, got backlash for a post that endorsed former President Donald Trump in the election next month.
The account, which had more than 19,000 followers, was among several Snoopy fan pages on social media that have amassed large audiences in the last few years amid the beagle’s resurgence in meme culture.
The animated pup, who is primarily known as Charlie Brown’s best pal, debuted in comic form in October 1950. But in recent years, he has garnered the love of a new generation of fans, made up of Gen Zers, who post everything from fan edits to memes about him across X, TikTok and Instagram.
“Snoopy hates you btw,” a fan of the cartoon wrote in response to the Snoopy Weekly endorsement, sharing a screenshot of the now-removed post.
“Snoopyweekly recently made an aggressive fascistic push,” another X user wrote, encouraging fans of Snoopy to instead check a different unaffiliated account, dailysnoopys. That account, which has 123,000 followers on X, appears to be more left-leaning. It advocates for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
NBC News could not reach the people behind Snoopy Weekly or Dailysnoopys for comment. The Snoopy Weekly account appears to have been deleted as of Monday evening.
Before it was removed from X, the account encouraged people to register to vote in Arizona and Georgia, two swing states. The post featured an image of Snoopy doing a thumbs-up in front of a voting box while standing next to the American flag.
Other Snoopy fan accounts, like badsnoopy__, have also showcased some political leanings in their posts.
Snoopy Weekly’s post came a month ahead of Election Day amid a divisive campaign season, prompting more widespread scrutiny from engaged followers of the character.
It’s unclear whether Snoopy, if he were real, would endorse any candidate.
But Charles M. Schulz, the creator behind the “Peanuts” series, who died in 2000, did not shy away from politics, according to historian Blake Scott Ball’s book “Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts.”
“I think for a lot of people, Peanuts was kind of viewed as so universal, so inoffensive, that I think a lot of people imagine it as apolitical,” Ball said in a phone interview. “When in fact, Shulz was really good at asking questions that challenged people on both sides about controversial issues, including school prayer, the draft in Vietnam and women’s rights.”
Even Snoopy the character has been political. For example, in 1972, there was a popular bumper sticker that said “Snoopy For President.”
“Snoopy has always been, in one way or another, sort of in the political discourse,” Ball said.
In posts on his Medium blog, Ball elaborating further, writing that “Schulz believed that given a fair shot, Americans would find (and make) the right choice.”
Schultz, according to Ball, was a soldier in World War II who throughout his cartooning career “kept fighting for a fair shot for all Americans like his friends Mortie Turner, a Black cartoonist in Oakland whom Schulz constantly promoted, or Billie Jean King, the tennis phenom and advocate for women’s rights whom Schulz supported with both his time and money for years.”
“He elevated characters like Franklin, the first Black character in a mainstream comic strip, and Peppermint Patty, a gender-fluid child from a broken home, into the national conversation,” Ball wrote. “Yes, Charles Schulz believed that democracy would guide the way.”
A spokesperson for Peanuts Worldwide LLC, which controls Snoopy intellectual property, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Peanuts.com, the official fan page for the comic, currently directs users on its homepage to another website, Peanuts Rocks the Vote.
There, fans are encouraged to register to vote.
“Scroll through the Peanuts Presidential candidates below to see where they stand and then vote for the character you want to be President!” it says.