This became the preferred narrative about the hand signal’s meaning. (The piece has since been updated with a more nuanced analysis.) Somewhat in reaction, the Anti-Defamation League published a piece dismissing the whole question as a product of the 4chan hoax. We must force to dig more, until the rest of society ain’t going anywhere near that shit.”Ī number of media outlets bit, running credulous pieces warning that the old “OK” sign now had a darker connotation as an alt-right symbol. The intent: “Leftists have dug so deep down into their lunacy. Make fake accounts with basic white girl names and type shit like: OMG that’s so truuuuu…” In early 2017, after a controversy arose over whether Gateway Pundit publisher Jim Hoft and a writer for his site flashed the “white power sign” at the White House Press Briefing Room, the trolls at 4chan responded with a hoax they titled “Operation O-KKK.” The plan? “We must flood twitter and other social media websites with spam, claiming that the OK hand signal is a symbol of white supremacy. The original "Operation O-KKK" post at 4chan. Milo Yiannopoulos adopted the symbol on social media as early as 2015.īut by then, the alt-right had already long weaponized the trolling culture and its use of irony to create a hall of mirrors surrounding such “memes.” These can easily be found in other alt-right “ironic” constructs, such as the hoax religion of “Kek” (and its home country, Kekistan), or its adoption of Pepe the Frog as a mascot. A number of alt-right figures, notably white-nationalist guru Richard Spencer, published photographs of themselves using the symbol as early as 2016. This use of the signal preceded the 4chan hoax that made it go viral. To them, the configuration means WP, for “white power.” The problem, of course, is that there are white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Klansmen who have increasingly begun using the use of the symbol both to signal their presence to the like-minded, as well as to identify potentially sympathetic recruits among young trolling artists flashing it. So when it gets flashed during a national broadcast, or during a video being shot to promote the Coast Guard, or by a cluster of Proud Boys and “Patriots,” what it’s about most of the time is a deliberate attempt to “trigger liberals” into overreacting to a gesture so widely used that virtually anyone has plausible deniability built into their use of it in the first place. The social-media-driven controversy over the meaning of the well-known hand sign has arisen in part as the result of a deliberate hoax concocted on the internet message board 4chan, which in addition to its well-earned reputation as a gateway to the racist “alt-right” is perhaps more broadly known as the home of trolling culture. The smirk gives away the proper answer: You’re being trolled. The smirk that almost inevitably accompanies the “OK” sign, that simplest of hand signals, is the dead giveaway in the shroud of internet-age befuddlement: Does the sign, the thumb and forefinger joined together in a circle, the remaining three fingers splayed out behind, mean “all’s good?” Or does it mean “white power” instead?
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