They're even coming up with new terms. Terms like "multiracial whiteness" to fit the new narrative. Who knows how many lists I'm on now.

Even if it is used extensively as a political symbol, it doesn't represent white power. It represents a political sub-group disrespecting their opposition for being gullible.

Insofar as it even could represent white power - white power to do what? Have political opinions? It isn't seriously associated with anything heinous.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_(gesture)#White_power_symbo...

It might have started as an ironic joke, but if it gets adopted earnestly by actual white supremacists (see the Christchurch shooter using it in court), then in some contexts it can be interpreted as a genuine symbol of white supremacy.

If he thought he could get people to stop using Islamic symbols by displaying them, he would have been festooned with them.

As for white power not being associated with anything heinous, yeah "Hail victory" also sounds good. Who doesn't want victory?

I don’t think I’ve used this symbol since I was a kid to mean “ok,” and I certainly won’t use it now due to potential association.

But it is nice to be able to easily tell if someone is either stupid or duplicitous by reading them talk about this symbol always meaning white power.

I’m sure if I went looking on nazi sites I would see it used in hate, but every story I’ve read about it has been a waste of time. I only see a few come through threads like this but when I read the link it’s usually someone trolling or ambiguous.

When someone is standing next to Steve Bannon posing intentionally with a symbol that could refer to white supremacy, being able to laugh it off as "haha, I just meant OK" gains them the benefits of deniability. (But not very plausible, I think)

People use it precisely for this reason - because it identifies them as a white supremacy sympathiser without being actionable: they keep a trolling or ambiguity defence in their back pocket, wherever that is needed.

Are you going to flash a hand signal that might derail your career if someone "misinterprets the context"?

The sedition just happened, and it was because of exactly this kind of manipulative messaging by the same exact people. Breitbart's former editor Bannon even came out of hiding for helping with the riot's speeches and got a pardon in return. I'm hoping that will have been the last straw for most people for tolerating racist double talk and those promoting it.

White supremacists - Nazis, the KKK, Evropa - love Trump. They use this symbol. Who cares whether someone is "ironically" using a symbol indicating their support for that cause or sincerely?

[0] https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-am...

Even though this new origin is a bit of the tail wagging the dog (it started as a joke on 4chan), the ok sign has taken on the meaning of a white power sign in certain situations.

Unfortunately, people have trawled old pics and attacked people for using normal hand gestures. Context and nuance appears to be completely lost on many.

The rules were: if you look through the loop, you are punched in the upper arm. The puncher has to draw a bull's eye first, then punch, then the recipient must say "thank you" and the puncher must reply "you're welcome" (of course in German, i.e. bitte, danke). Any deviation from the rules is punished by a punch, to be administered in accordance with aforementioned ceremony.

Where did you grow up?

If I recall, there was an additional requirement where the ok hand had to be held below your waist, though.

I have relatives my age in new zealand, and it was also common there.

Memes have an amazing power to spread, huh?

- the person had to look directly at the ok sign

- the ok sign had to be below the waist

Played it in Ireland too!

>> When done when posing with Steve Bannon it probably means white power sign.

When a no-kidding, self-admitted, non-LARPing, Stormfront-reading, Klan- or Nazi-party member says "Yeah we've been using the OK symbol for years" then I'll believe it.

But all I've ever seen about this is leftists of a certain type asserting that it's true, with some variation of "I know it's true because all my friends and thought leaders say it's true, and you can see yourself that such people as Steve Bannon use it, and people have even been fired for doing it. Definitely true. Your move, white-supremacy-denier!"

So, no. It's a conspiracy theory, in which denial of the conspiracy is yet more evidence of the conspiracy.

On a more lighthearted issue, Ray Bradbury once abruptly left a guest lecture because students wouldn't agree on themes for his novel. Does a man own his own words? And does a man's meaning belong to him as well? Or is it like sand through one's fingers?

If I'm Don Jr. or Charlie Kirk or whoever, my prerogative is to invoke liberal "tears" so yeah I'm gonna use all the dog whistle words like "thugs" and flash the OK symbol, because it scores them points with the right, multiplied by the amount of outrage it causes from the left.

Of course this dynamic only really exists in political contexts. Elsewhere it just means "OK" as always. However, it would be equally absurd to assume that politicians haven't caught on to public perception of this kind of stuff and are exploiting it for their advantage (via democrats clutching their pearls and republicans trying to induce said pearl-clutching)

> Use of the okay symbol in most contexts is entirely innocuous and harmless.

> In 2017, the “okay” hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters “wp,” for “white power.” The “okay” gesture hoax was merely the latest in a series of similar 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.

> In the case of the “okay” gesture, 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.

> Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

> The overwhelming usage of the “okay” hand gesture today is still its traditional purpose as a gesture signifying assent or approval. As a result, someone who uses the symbol cannot be assumed to be using the symbol in either a trolling or, especially, white supremacist context unless other contextual evidence exists to support the contention. Since 2017, many people have been falsely accused of being racist or white supremacist for using the “okay” gesture in its traditional and innocuous sense.

[1] https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/okay-h...

The key is to use context. A swastika on a temple that's older than nazism? Yeah, not a nazi symbol. A swastika on a flag at a right-wing protest in America in 2020? Probably not a religious symbol.

What about an Indian student with a swastika tatoo passing by a right-wing protest? Is it a religious or political symbol then?

I think you're the butt of the joke here...

In politics? I think people are pretty bad at understanding context about people they see as having different values. The way you handle uncertainty is to fill in the blanks with prior knowledge, also known as bias. When someone has a bias against the person, that turns quite ugly.

The same applies to the OK sign.

Flashing it surrounded by notorious racists after the 4chan hoax leaves no doubt about the intended meaning.

Also, given that's it's now been coopted by nazis, you may want to be careful when flashing it if you want to avoid embarrassing ambiguities, yes. It was probably a fad in these circles, not sure it is still used, but still.

Trolling is a meaning. I think in that situation it’s even more ambiguous since the “troll power” is so much greater then.

I think it’s unambiguous that the user is a shit-stirrer certainly, probably an asshole. But not necessarily racist. Or no more so than your average run of the mill “everyone is racist subconsciously” racist.

I think what’s hard is that it’s a negative thing to do that brings more chaos and harm into the world. It could be racist/white power that is super bad, let’s say 100 on the bad-o-meter. Or it could be trolling the pearl clutchers that is mildly bad, let’s say 11 on the bad-o-meter. And for scale, punching someone in the face is 200 and murdering someone is 1000.

Haha, only serious...

Hence, ultimately, a racist (if layered) symbol in this context. It's not been flashed as a joke by non-racist people.

It would only be an issue if you were SCUBA diving with a white supremacist and doing the hand sign.

I think out-of-context interpretation is the major issue of our times: we got used to the idea that it's perfectly fine to report the most damning combination of words in a sentence as if it were the original full sentence; that a joke made on twitter is the same as a political manifesto sent to the press; and that a hand gesture can get the meaning it would have in its worst possible case. This has to stop.

If you borrowed Occam's razor, you may need to sharpen it a bit before using it.

To this day, the swastika is still a religious sign in Hindu and Buddhist cultures. It also carries a nefarious meaning in other contexts.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-...

Someone creates a weak troll, like "the OK symbol is now an alt-right symbol" and people go crazy over it.

"Oh it's a dog whistle" no, it's an internet meme that got gratuitously amplified for free (this phrase could also be a summary of the Trump campaign).

(Also "true" dog whistles are not explained - their meaning is extrapolated from context. Kinda like saying "yaml lovers" to indicate k8s users)

It's like you being furious at black people because your great grandparents used to always win their Halloween contest with their pointy hat ghost costume and you're not going to let stupid guillable people keep you from wearing it at parties.

Because they aren't against racist people. They are pro-idiocy. They're only pro a good thing (being non-racist) by an accident of history and circumstance, certainly not because of sober reflection and empathy. These are the same idiots who would be all in on bullying the Satanic Panic preschool teachers in the 80s, or burning witches ye olden days, or hunting Communists in the 50s

a) A group of people (e.g. white supremacists) do not already know that the dog-whistler (e.g. a politician) is a member or sympathizer of their group

b) That this person who sympathizes with this secret group wants to signal sympathy with this secret group, but cannot do it directly (that is, by email or letter or direct contact), and so must somehow signal through public words and deeds

c) This signal will somehow, hopefully, be invisible to everyone who is listening except for members of the secret group

The prototypical example is politicians talking about "thugs" and "welfare queens" as dog-whistling a racist contempt for black people. I can definitely accept that using such language could be such a signal, especially with the context of aligned policy pronouncements, but it's pretty blatant and not a dog-whistle.

>Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences!

How is that false? You can say what you want, outside of threats and the like, but you also get to live with the outcome of saying whatever it is.

I don't see how that's puritanical. It's a statement of fact. I can tell my boss to go f** himself. I can also get fired for doing that.

I think the point isn’t that speech should have no impact, but that the response to speech should be proportional and what proportional means. The Puritans in Hawthorne’s novel thought that making someone a pariah was a proportional response. They were wrong, I think.

But the lesson, I think, is not that we should be more precise in meting out moral judgement, but that we should judge less.

The Christchurch shooter, whilst likely in on the "joke", made the gesture in court. At that point, the difference between it being a joke made by a white supremacist, or a symbol of white supremacism evaporates. It is a symbol used by a white supremacist, therefore it is a white supremacist symbol.

Context matters of course, but I don't feel you can truly deny it has taken on meaning outside of the original joke

It hasn't. The supremacist using it in court room is using it entirely within the context of the original joke. Within the context of the joke, that is, but not within the joke. He's using it knowingly. The original joke is "get people to see the OK gesture as a racist symbol, so that people are then pranked in situations in which someone who fell for the hoax embarasses himself by calling out someone else who uses the gesture in the usual way and has no idea about the hoax. Hardy har har, hoo hoo."

I'm not a white supremacist or neo-nazi. Can I put a swastika on my jacket, such that everyone understands it's not a symbol of nazism, because I'm not a confirmed nazi, not standing in a court room for crimes connected with my ideology?

You have to start a war and kill at least a few hundred thousand people before you get to hijack a common hand gesture for your ideology.

Oh I do deny. Nearly every example ever shown is indistinguishable from accident or people using it for other purposes. Mexican workers "flashes" it while driving around: fired. West Point cadets goofing off, punching each other: sanctioned. Random individuals in photos: obviously white supremacist.

to inflate this non-issue, and then use the very fact of its inflation as justification for its further inflation is reprehensible, and then get actual innocent people labeled as racist. Truly despicable

/shrug

Come on. Does it really need to be speculated on? That "one guy" is a white supremacist who killed 50+ people - I think it's pretty clear what his intentions were. On top of that, his written manifesto was a) steeped in 4chan memes and winks to those in the know, b) released on either 8chan or 4chan itself. So it is clear he would know the origins and was playing it up

I wouldn't ordinarily expect that of anyone, except that you had already replied.

Perhaps we should define terms. When people use the term "white supremacist symbol" I hear something that is used by everyone including white supremacists to unambiguously signal white supremacy. A Nazi flag. A burning cross. Shaved head, bomber jacket, combat boots, and most importantly, white laces.

The content of these particular symbols stem self-consciously from their progenitors: putative Aryan heritage in the case of the swastika, the purity of Protestant Christian values for the burning cross, etc

A symbol that everyone uses - including white supremacists - to mean something else - "OK" - is not a white supremacist symbol by that definition.

Its history as a purported white supremacist symbol, a joke on a trolling board, doesn't follow that of actual such symbols

The movement to turn it into a white supremacist symbol is now driven largely by serious, earnest, white leftists, curiously enough. I point to the people who are constantly pointing it out as evidence as my evidence. Why is this, I wonder? It's curious.

> his written manifesto was a) steeped in 4chan memes and winks to those in the know

Assuming that's true, then it's even more evidence to me that OK is not a "white supremacist symbol" his own white supremacy notwithstanding. He, your best evidence that it is, this fellow who used it, is well versed in its origin as a joke.

I have contempt for all of these people, who insist that "OK" is white supremacist. They promote white supremacy, irrespective of whether they are for it or against it. They turn a stupid joke into a battle cry, because they want to. This is despicable. Reprehensible. Awful.

If you actively insist that OK is white supremacist, you are a bad person and I have zero respect for you. Noam Chomsky talks about how the most violent of two opposing factions gain prestige within their factions by escalating drama and violence with the other faction. That's you. You "fight" white supremacy by promoting it. Contemptible.

Firstly, the OK gesture is a deeply entrenched, familiar, everyday gesture—at least in North American culture. Only a complete moron could think that it suddenly has to do with white supremacy, and accept it for such use to the point of believing that it is a white supremacist symbol and not the OK gesture any more, so that anyone using it is a racist.

Secondly, anyone who has any doubts about it whatsoever can search for it, and learn about the 2017 4chan campaign in seconds.

Therefore, thirdly, the situations in which the gesture refers to the hoax-induced meaning are very narrow, like someone pulling the gesture on camera behind a black man's back or something like that, or a known white supremacist pulling it in courtroom. Then we know "oh, he's referring to that 4chan meme". Where by "we" I mean that minority of people who are informed about this.

And that's all it is; some damned Internet meme, and a minor one. Nobody will remember it in 5, 10, 15 years.

Do you know Dancing Baby? 1996 3D video meme of a 3D rendered dancing baby: probably the world's first viral video.

Do you remember people saying a delayed "...not!" at the end of a sentence to negate it? "I wanna be your friend ... NOT!"

Same thing, only smaller.

Also I am not saying every use is racist or anything that extreme, but it is clear that in some instances there is a connection between this symbol and white supremacy.

Previous to that, it was not a common, everyday symbol used in western culture.

It's not a dumb little joke from 2017 from 4chan.

The Nazis had a hand gesture: the raised arm Roman salute. You can use that salute today without being dubbed a supremacist or Nazi. Just maybe don't shout heil anything while doing it.

“According to the ADL, by 2019 some white supremacists had begun using the OK symbol "as a sincere expression of White Supremacy", and many white supremacists have acknowledged using the symbol as a gesture of White Power.”

Why are you taking the words of 4chan trolls at face value?

Really makes one think what I believe to be true that just aint so.

/s

Of course, the symbol itself carries no white supremacist overtones, just like the swastika in itself does not carry any nazi symbolism (as opposed to, say, a crosssed out star of David, which would be an explicitly anti-semite symbol). However, it's association with and repeated use by Nazi Germany is what gave it a nazi symbolism. Even for such a widely reviled symbol, there are still non-taboo uses. In particular, a left-facing swastika (sauwastika) is a common Buddhist symbol, found often in Asian media with no Nazi connotation. That means that a bald person waving a swastika flag could either be a nazi skin head, or a buddhist monk - context will usually tell you which.

This is similar to "states rights" rhetoric - it has both its literal sense, the discussion of the amount of power states should have vs the federal government; but it also refers more specifically to the "right" to slavery the civil war was fought over. When you hear someone speak about it, you need more context to know which sense is being used.

Human language is complicated like this.

EDIT: Or did I completely miss that this was a joke and "powerful" was playing off "white power".

I have no idea if there is such a thing as a "revenge pardon", but I guess it's a thing now.

(Incidentally, I wanted to use an exact Trump quote in that first paragraph, and I found it here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/trump-...)

His pardon could be interpreted as a strike against “piracy is theft” mindset and the idea of “intellectual property” in general that HN often rallies against.

I’m quite disappointed by Trump’s pardons but this one is actually a good one.

Do you have any evidence that he didn't commit the crimes he is convicted of? Because his lawyers would've loved to talk to you last year.

It's not as if I said he was not guilty, but rather saying that he would have a lot of information on self driving cars. Which is what he was charged with in the first place.

I think corrupt is the right word.

If highly positioned people in the industry asks to have his competence back on the market, maybe it's the best if the president just listens

He was sentenced to 18 months and served 6. Wouldn't he be out on good behaviour after 9 months anyways?

Are you sure you are not just knee-jerking here?