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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Not the original commenter, but my guess is because—supposedly—they inspired "kick a ginger day." (Wikipedia) They also pissed off a lot of religious folk by making fun of the absurd beliefs held by various mainstream religions, but I imagine the only people who would take offense to that would be members of said religions who take themselves a bit too seriously.
On the other hand...
A lot of their episodes are comedic criticisms of the corrupt institutions in the United States, and they do a good job demonstrating the consequences to people who would otherwise be politically apathetic. But then again, a bunch of people took the wrong messages away and ended up being inspired by Eric Cartman.
It's a mixed bag, but in my opinion, the show has probably done more good than harm.
Besides of the whole "kick a ginger day" thing, they also made "Death Camp of Tolerance", and bigots to this day are using arguments from it to support whatever movement they came up with to dismantle progressivism in the name of "fairness and balancedness", which usually boils down to painting progressives as unreasonable radicals (as their views are not always held by others, the whole "why you don't tolerate intolerance?" stuff, etc.), and bigots as more reasonable than they actually are as long as they have some "reason" behind their bigotry.
Also an episode of South Park is currently used by transhpobes to strip trans people of their rights, because "what if a man will pretend to be a trans woman".
While I'm not the biggest fan of the South Park creators' political views, I'm more inclined to say that people using South Park to double down on their bigotry is more of a reflection of themselves than the show.
South Park has undoubtedly made some very fucked-up and politically charged episodes in its 20-something year run. For better or worse, it's their bread and butter to intentionally piss people off by parodying various groups, current events, and American society as a whole. I don't really get the impression that the show is malicious, though. More so that they're immaturely edgy and willing to push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable discourse.
I'm not going to claim that the episodes mentioned here were without negative consequences to already-marginalized groups (or even any good), but my opinion is that if someone is going to cherry-pick an episode out of a show known for coming up with absurd and over-the-top shit, they were going to look for something to reaffirm their bigoted perspective regardless of whether it came from South Park or some other exaggerated media like Alex Jones. The problem isn't so much that there exists fiction that bigots can point at to demonstrate their views, as much as its that they held those views in the first place.