Getting photographed smiling next to two notorious white supremacists is already fishy. The picture was taken after the sign became a notorious rallying sign for racists. Do you really think that Luckey is aloof to the point of not not knowing what he's doing there?
If you borrowed Occam's razor, you may need to sharpen it a bit before using it.
The "ok sign is a white power symbol" thing started as trolling on 4chan. It doesn't mean anything apart from being useful to infuriate other people. You're being trolled.
Notwithstanding its origins, it was subsequently adopted by racists as a rallying sign. Context matters.
Not going to lie but it’s apparent you will see racism wherever you want to despite the evidence.
What evidence? That it used to be (and still is in many contexts) totally non-racist? I agree with that. But it's also been coopted (humorously, but it still is a rallying sign).
To this day, the swastika is still a religious sign in Hindu and Buddhist cultures. It also carries a nefarious meaning in other contexts.
Re:Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
by user-the-name on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @06:14AM
(#25845034)
"It's just a joke bro" is what fascism has always done to mask its real intent.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-...
Re:Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
by fredophile on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @10:02AM
(#25847184)
I agree that a bunch of people from 4chan spreading misinformation online could be considered trolling. Taking it into the real world is a step I have a hard time believing. What would the troll's logic be? "I'm going to make all these suckers think I'm a racist"? That seems like an unusual step from anonymous online activity.
Trolling, at least in its original meaning, is not "spreading misinformation". It's saying things for the sake of provoking anger in other people that you despise or you just don't connect emotionally with. So it makes perfect sense to me for rightwing trolls to excite anger and confusion in leftwing people by appropriating a completely innocuous gesture and using it as a provocation. It doesn't really have to mean anything or to capture or express your true beliefs- the important thing is just that others will go nuts over it.
So the goal is to troll anti-racists. That makes it an anti-anti-racist symbol. I'll let you factor out the double negative.
If you troll pro-life people, are you pro-death?
Re:Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
by raverbashing on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @04:10AM
(#25844232)
Yes, agreed.
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)
The question is, why has it become popular for white supremacists to flash this hand sign? If they are intending to convey that they are white supremacists and we are successfully understanding the message then that is what the hand gesture means. It's like a new word. The trollish origin doesn't change the fact that it has this new meaning in these contexts.
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.