Can I just add that I've been on Internet boards, social media, and various communities (both gaming and not) for two decades, and my first exposure to Pepe the frog was in 2016 and popularized by the alt-right. Now if I, someone fairly well-versed in the Internet and Internet culture can miss all the other versions of that stupid-looking frog cartoon, I guarantee that the vast majority of the general public has too.
Symbols are determined by exposure. As The E pointed out, the swastika had quite a number of very specific meanings that were more or less run over by a truck after it was adopted by the Nazi Party. That's a prominent example, but not the only one. I mean, the cross wasn't originally a Christian symbol. Christ wasn't actually born in December, either, yet somehow we all celebrate Christmas on December 25th instead of Saturnalia. 80 years ago, a rainbow was just a rainbow.
No matter what a symbol was, once adopted and sufficiently popularized in a particular meaning by the public who don't know any better, it does actually start to mean something else. That doesn't mean its original uses are wrong, just that their nuance is no longer understood by the public at large.
