So are people going to finally admit the shit about the ok hand sign is stupid?
- Thread starter Specter Von Baren
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There is a difference in something being done to mock and ridicule the nazi's, and the nazi's doing something to mock and ridicule others. The white supremacists aren't doing the "ok" sign to be "anti-nazi" and to show how bad it is to live a white supremacist lifestyle. So that comparison to donald duck doesn't really fly.As an example.
Donald Duck would be considered pro Nazi imagery just based on this image despite this cartoon being made during WWII and intended to be anti-Nazi from its depiction of what it was like to live under Nazi rule.
I think they went all in on it being a hate symbol because Trump had that habit of making the ok sign with his hand when emphasizing something.
They are doing it to 1. Troll the people they dislike, because they think it's funny that people take offense at them intentionally trying to offend them. 2. Feel special. They know it's going to draw attention to them, get some splash in the news, and keep them in the general conversation.
I personally think, that a lot of these might just be douchebaggy dudebros, who are doing that game of "if you see me doing the OK sign, you lost 'The Game' and I get to punch you." But, given the fact, that at least around me, the dudebros who do that, are almost exclusively white dudes, who very likely are ALSO racist shitbags, it doesn't surprise me that the sign has morphed into being associated with it.
Besides, intent is a lot when it comes to offense. People can laugh, and have laughed, about the idea that the word "cracker" is actually a racial insult. But, as a white guy who has actually HAD a black guy use it at me as a racial slur, I can assure you that it didn't feel funny. He invested so much hate, and disdain into that word. I mean that's how this shit works. The N word isn't inherently a "bad" word, as evidenced by the millions of people who use it casually all the time. But then a racist shitbag uses it, and it's got an entirely different meaning.
So, regarding OK, I think some of it might be overblown, or at least misaimed, as I think some of them are just doing The Game, as stupid as it is to do that these days. But, I mean it's not like the white supremacists don't try and hide their imagery and secret language in everyday things. That's how they sniff each other out when in public, without just putting on a MAGA hat.
He's stated that the only reason he uses the copywrite is to combat Pepe's use by hate groups, and the main groups he's targeted with potential legal action are literal neo-nazis and the like using Pepe on merchandise they sell.
Pretty much this sums it up. It was a meme, people bought into it, people looked stupid. People should know better than to give meme culture the time of day.
Sorry, but you weren't looking very hard.
The gesture was adopted by the alt-right during the 2016 election after conservative viner Pizza Party Ben posted a video of himself making the sign. The video was captioned "white guys be like."
During the election Ben and Milo Yiannopoulis began making the gesture at pro-Trump rallies and events.
The gesture became popular among other alt right figures expressing support for Donald Trump, many of whom were white supremacists or publicly expressed racist views. It was a common alt right symbol at the time, and while the intent might not have necessarily been an intentionally racist expression (although I'm going to draw your attention back to that initial caption) it was certainly very popular with people who were racist.
That is the context of the Media Matters article, and I can't blame you too much for missing it because it seems like many other media outlets did too. A lot of liberals and moderate conservatives alike were simply not paying much attention to the alt right in 2016, so when 4chan came out and said they'd invented the whole thing much of the media seems to have believed them
The reality is that they didn't do anything, they jumped on a bandwagon which had already begun rolling and then pretended they'd pushed it. Also, considering that operation O-KKK was coordinated via /pol/, it's a fairly big leap to conclude that the people organizing it weren't actually white supremacists.
But then, 4chan does this a lot. They have a long history of taking ridiculous things that are actually racist memes (like the global prevalence of lactose tolerance) doing some weak "false flag" operation and then claiming that people think drinking milk is a white supremacist thing as a way of discrediting their political opponents and, let's be real, drawing attention away from how deeply stupid white supremacist beliefs and memes actually are. The idea of a bunch of sad little boys being so desperate for validation that they latch onto the ability to drink milk without shitting as a sign of racial superiority is laughable, and true. It happened. Heck, it happened on 4chan.
These people are losers. Their beliefs are dumb. Their memes are dumb. Never make the mistake of thinking that anything is too ridiculous or stupid for these people to sincerely stake their fragile identities on.
As for the original case, it sounds like someone chasing a lawsuit. But hey, this is capitalism.
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It's a phrase commonly used to refer to what University of Oregon linguist Sharon Henderson Taylor dubbed the "euphemism cycle" in 1974. I personally prefer it to that term (the imagery suggesting a march from one term to the next without actually getting anywhere just feels appropriate), but to each their own. The notion that a euphemism for a thing inevitably either starts being associated with the thing and thus loses it's euphemistic status or is so cumbersome that it is only used in official capacities, often by the use of overly long or overly clinical terminology.
So, what you're saying is that you agree that if we could get the top half dozen or so white supremacists on social media to coordinate, we could fairly quickly render all communication into white supremacy?
So some right wingers were all using the "ok" symbol, /pol/ started a rumor that it meant "white power" so as to slander them all as white supremacists, and you think this was done in support of white supremacy?
I would certainly say that it's a pointless thing to do without corresponding changes in attitudes to underlie it; the point being that to replace an old pejorative with a fresh and neutral term when the forces of prejudice have drained away to a low level means it is unlikely to be poisoned by prejudice. The other trick being that people who want to hold onto their prejudices will themselves almost certainly hold onto the old pejorative that expressed their contempt, because the new, fresh one does not do so.
But there is also a point where part of me also says... "so what?": even if we did replace terms every generation, it's really not a major burden. Although we'd need some understanding for people who aren't totally up to date and might not have got the revision yet (particularly perhaps the elderly).
It doesn't really matter who did it for what reason so much as what people understand it to mean.
As many people who have tried to get neologisms coined might tell us, that's not really how it works. They might stick, or they might not, or they might be very short term and hang around a few years before no-one ever mentions them again. Remember "sealioning"? Maybe ten or so years ago it was an indispensible term to throw around every second comment in an internet debate, now no-one ever mentions it and I could forgive anyone for having forgotten it even existed in the first place.
White supremacists just don't have the cultural power to take much over. They can make a few things their own, but the more things they attempt to take over the thinner their influence on any of those things is. I suspect even in a few years, no-one will remember their brief flirtation with the okay sign, the ADL reference will quietly disappear, and it will go back to a totally uncontested symbol of "okay". In 2040, a few people will reminisce about the crazy Trump years and say to each other "Hey, remember that time the neo-Nazis used the okay symbol? What was that shit about, eh?"
It does matter when discussing the history of things. You can't judge the actions of people 5 years ago using a symbol before it had a certain meaning.
Right, but surely you can judge people for what it might represent after it had that certain meaning.
So, this is kind of like saying that since communication represents the transmission of cultural information, then all communication is memes.
To be intelligible, memes have to be distinct cultural units, they need to stick out in some way against the cultural background. The fact that in 2016 a bunch of alt right people started using one particular meme to convey that they were part of a particular group with particular beliefs and values and political associations is incredibly distinct when viewed against that cultural background. Reading into that symbol and trying to infer the cultural information that it conveys and represents is a completely natural reaction.
The post for operation O-KKK talks very openly about how associating the symbol with white power would be good for the cause. What is the cause? Again, I want you to bear in mind that this is /pol/, a board that, by its creators own admission, was specifically intended as a dumping ground and containment for all the racists and Nazis on 4chan.
And again, it did end up being good for the cause, because a lot of news sources responded lazily (or they knew full well what they were doing but thought this story about 4chan manipulating their rivals would play well) and simply bought into the self-congratulatory rhetoric. They conveniently ignored the unanswered questions surrounding the use of the symbol in the context of the election, like what the hell that caption meant, or why this symbol in particular took off among people who coincidentally happened to be very racist.
O-KKK was never about getting people to sincerely believe that people who used that symbol were white supremacists (even though, let's be real, a lot of them were), it was about getting people to believe that stupid people (people who in most cases were never actually real) believed that. In that regard, it succeeded because people are still perpetrating this weird idea about 4chan psyops owning the libs, when in reality the real trick was getting everyone to stop looking into those unanswered questions.
The fact that we're at the point where literal mass murdering terrorists and full on pro-genocide neo-Nazis are using that symbol to convey their beliefs and people still won't shut up about some sad boys on 4chan is symptomatic of who in this situation is actually gullible.
Like a gaming discussion forum that for some unfathomable reason has a current events sub section, just as an example.
Eh, gaming or any thematic forums don't necessarily need to avoid "real world" discussion, if only for containment's sake.
Although this particular one is called "The Escapist", and yet...