Snoopy at a Memorial Day observation in Minnesota.
Photo: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The crisis in the online community of Snoopy-loving fan accounts began, naturally enough, with a cartoon. Over the weekend, @Snoopyweekly, an account devoted to Charlie Brown’s beloved dog from Charles M. Schulz’s beloved Peanuts series, posted a drawing of Snoopy and a Peanuts-like version of Donald Trump on X as an endorsement of the Republican in the 2024 election. “We started this profile last year as a distraction from the difficult economic times,” the accompanying statement read, along with some complaints about a “secure border” and the current administration prioritizing “illegal immigrants” over “prosperity for its tax paying citizens.”
Other Snoopy-heads were not happy about the politicization of their canine idol. “Snoopy hates you,” one fan wrote. “FUCK SNOOPYWEEKLY,” wrote another. “For those outside the snoopy community, snoopyweekly recently made an aggressive fascistic push,” explained the writer Jamie Loftus, adding that “Dailysnoopys is the way to go.” That account, aside from offering a more reliable product, also posts fundraisers for Palestinians trapped in Gaza. After a McCarthy-like blocking-fiesta of leftist accounts, @Snoopyweekly posted a rendering of the dog as Uncle Sam, encouraging followers in swing states to register to vote.
As Snoopy fans split into camps on social media, it’s easy enough to ask: Why don’t we just leave the cartoon dog out of it? Is he not adored by millions of hard-working Americans of all backgrounds who believe in the enduring power of Snoopy’s ideals: liberty, opportunity, clowning on Charlie Brown, and unyielding swag? Unfortunately for any apolitical fans, Americans have been arguing about the place of politics in Peanuts for decades, largely thanks to the vision of its maker.
“He did not stay away from controversial issues like population control or civil rights or the Vietnam War. He would introduce those issues, but more as a conversation starter,” said Blake Scott Ball, historian and author of Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts. “So there was a skillful ambiguity in his art, but it also had to do with the fact that Peanuts was right there in the newspaper, pages over from the headline events. It is read in that context by an audience who was already consuming that media, which in my mind makes sense why Twitter is the spot where this fight’s going down.”
As for Snoopy, the beagle was drafted into politics in the 1972 election, with a proto-viral Snoopy for President bumper-sticker campaign, popular among “people who weren’t happy with McGovern or Nixon,” said Ball. “That was sort of a statement that they wanted a peaceful, uncontroversial candidate.” (Snoopy was also, less consensually, drafted into Vietnam by soldiers who adopted him for their battle insignia or etched him with nihilistic sayings on their Zippo lighters.)
Schulz himself made his personal politics known throughout his life. While he expressed some admiration for Democrats like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, the cartoonist and World War II veteran was a long-standing Republican voter — influential enough to sway Ronald Reagan on defining issues. In 1970, three years after the California legislature legalized abortion, Governor Ronald Reagan wrote to Schulz about “one of your strips a few weeks ago which continues to haunt me … Charlie was asking Lucy about what happens to a very nice baby waiting in heaven to be born when the mother and father decide they don’t want it. Lucy of course put him down severely, Charlie finished simply remarking he still thought it was a good question.” But Schulz made an easy red-or-blue designation difficult, saying later in life that he was “very liberal.”
“He’s still around in the ’90s when the Pat Buchanans of the Republican Party are emerging, and he’s not a fan of that,” said Ball. “So I don’t think in any way he would be a fan of Donald Trump or the direction of the current Republican Party — not that we can know.” Schulz died in February 2000.
Now that Schulz is pretty squared away ideologically, what about Snoopy? The Peanuts comic strip has been around long enough that you could find points for either side of the argument. A patriot, he loves football, fighter jets, and Uncle Sam. He hates the Internal Revenue Service, according to this very fake Peanuts cartoon meme that crops up online a lot. But he was also in favor of Title IX and believed in “paw power” in the tumultuous late ’60s.
Perhaps the answer is beyond the comic strip and in the financial records. More than many other icons of intellectual property, Schulz and his estate have been keen to license out Snoopy’s likeness, keeping him in the hearts — and on the T-shirts — of new generations who fall for the old rascal. Ball notes that Schulz’s estate is consistently in the top five of Forbes’ list of the top-earning estates of deceased celebrities. “I lean over backwards to keep from offending anybody,” Schulz once said, a polite practice that also happens to be quite lucrative. Snoopy is neither Republican or Democrat; Snoopy is a businessman.
