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It’s official. If you make the “OK” hand gesture you might be a racist.
So says the Anti-Defamation League, which has added the innocent gesture to its database of hate symbols. Also added are the Dylann Roof bowl haircut, the Moon Man symbol, and 33 others.
The Hate Symbols Database is a collection of words, numbers, signs, and symbols, some well known and others not, that supposedly represent or otherwise symbolize white supremacists and “other far-right extremists,” as a report from The Associated Press put it.
Not OK To Sign OK
The idea that the “OK” sign means “white power” was orginally a hoax, but white supremacists, ADL explains at its website, have added it to their vast inventory of not-so-secret messages. The thumb and forefinger form the bowl of “p” and an imaginary line running down the palm its descender, while the middle, ring, and pinky fingers form a “W.”
The ADL, though, only added the “OK” sign after a lot of thought. The director of ADL’s Center on Extremism, Oren Segal, told AP that the organization hesitated to add the sign “because ‘OK’ has meant just ‘OK’ for so long.” But “at this point, there is enough of a volume of use for hateful purposes that we felt it was important to add,” he said.
The “OK” sign, ADL says, is just one of many “4chan hoaxes using various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a common image as white supremacist.”
Problem was, “the hoax was so successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post photos to social media of themselves posing while making the ‘okay’ gesture.”
Now, white supremacists use it seriously, ADL says, an example being Brenton Tarrant, who flashed it in court after his arrest in connection with the murder of 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Tarrant had another hate symbol, 14, written on the rifle he used, AP reported. That might refer to The 14 Words, a symbol most people know nothing about: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
Presumably, when one white supremacist utters The 14 Words in the right place, another will flash the “OK” sign. Still, ADL admits, “caution must be used when evaluating this symbol.”
The Dylann Roof bowl haircut is also popular apparently, Roof being the nut who murdered nine people at a church in South Carolina in 2015.
“Roof venerators often use Roof’s distinctive bowl-shaped haircut to refer to themselves and like-minded fans,” the entry at the database explains. Roof’s admirers use screen names such as “Bowltrash,” and slang such as “disrespect the bowl, pay the toll.” “DC Bowl Gang” was the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s name on Gab, the social-media platform, AP noted.
The Moon Man features a crescent moon in sunglasses with the words “Late Night, Alt Right.” That one, ADL avers, riffs off a McDonald’s advertising campaign from the 1980s. White supremacists and alt-rightists “attach it to racist songs, language and imagery.”
The recently-added “Happy Merchant,” ADL says, is “a very common anti-Semitic meme popularized by the alt right, featuring a person with exaggerated stereotypically Jewish features and grasping hands, meant to convey a ‘greedy Jew.’”
Anti-Antifa Sign Is Racist
Other symbols the ADL has unilaterally declared “white supremacist” are, like the “OK” sign, a matter of opinion.
The Anti-Antifa symbol — the universal No sign over an Antifa flag — is one of them. Those images “are white supremacist symbols and memes directed against antifa activists. Antifa (short for “anti-fascist”) are left-wing and anarchist activists who focus on directly confronting white supremacists.”
The ADL’s long entry does not explain that the FBI has labeled the outfit’s activities as domestic terrorism, or that its members are armed and dangerous thugs who have started riots, viciously beaten President Trump’s supporters, attacked U.S. Marines, and terrorized Tucker Carlson’s family. A top Antifa thug in Washington, D.C., advocated outright murder.
Another so-called hate symbol is the phrase “anti-racist means anti-white.” ADL’s entry connects the symbol to white supremacists, but does not admit the truth or even the possibility that many “anti-racists” are, indeed, racial supremacists with an extreme hatred for whites, particularly Christians.
Image: Deagreez via iStock / Getty Images Plus
