So all racists have to do is adopt something as a “inside” symbol, then publicly advertise its “real” meaning, and everyone rushes to avoid it no matter how common it is.

I could see white supremecists doing this for fun.

yeah, it seems we've ended up giving too much power to hate groups instead of reclaiming their symbols.

Have we really got to the point where we talk about “reclaiming” the Ok symbol from white supremcists!?

Amusingly, given the starting point for this discussion, what you've described part of how the "OK" sign became associated with racism. In 2017, someone on 4chan's /pol/ board suggested "Operation O-KKK": flood Twitter etc with warnings about the supposedly racist meaning of the "OK" gesture. The initial target of the hoax was the regular "are you all right?" sign, but the inverted "circle game" version came under fire as well. Later, after the hoax had run its course, those who are wont to "own the libs" used it ironically as a joke. Time passes, only the most dedicated continue to use it, and its meaning becomes less a farce and more a serious signal.

(There is a similar, earlier sign used by a milita group called the "Three Percenters", but that was not the source of the spread. They are an extreme libertarian group, not a white supremacy one. Though one can imagine some overlap. Their hand sign became so closely associated with white supremacy partially because of the 4chan hoax.)

> Think of the "pepe" meme, which is now an alt-right thing and can't be used anymore in a neutral way!

MonkaS dude.

Pepe is fine, even the group that classified it as a hate symbol weren't referring to general usage.

One group of people I watch on Twitch use it all the time in the way it's meant to be used. As a very expressive cartoon frog that can convey emotions extremely succinctly.

And before you assume they're all closet neo-nazis: this group includes members who stopped streaming for about a month after Trump was elected, who frequently talk about eating the rich, and most recently they just ran a charity drive across multiple channels to raise money for BLM.

Context is key here. Lookup racist pepe images, and compare them to a picture of a sad/happy/etc cartoon frog. You won't have much difficulty telling the difference.