4chan: “Yo, we can totally make mainstream media think the OK sign is a hate symbol”
ADL: “That’s not a hate symbol”
PJW: “HA! WE MADE THEM SAY IT ISN’T A HATE SYMBOL!”
It’s also rather arbitrary and just seems like a dumb and meanspirited game the reactionaries always “win.”
Like obviously the okay single is too universal to be taken by white supremacists. But if a bunch of them, and fellow travelers, start using it as a “joke,” it’s asinine not to notice.
Like with Pepe, it’s just a funny cartoon. But these days if I see a Twitter avi with him, I’m not gonna be surprised if it’s some anti-Semite who screeches “cuck” at everyone. Yet, one either acknowledges that association and “falls for it,” or they don’t and say that Pepe, etc aren’t hate symbols, then they’re also “falling for it.”
it’s the right-wing application of the Kafka Trap.
“Liberals say everything is offensive!” “That’s not offensive” “See, they had to reply to it because dumb liberals were offended!”
vs
“You’re racist!” “I’m not racist” “You saying you’re not racist just means you’re racist!”
It’s because everyone is so sick and tired of it, so they decided to make dumb left wing virtue signalling, that used to be a way to attack the right with an ever-changing array of fashionable terms, into an exploitable vulnerability. They’re also taking advantage of dumb Antifas punching anyone who isn’t a real white nationalist.
People have been calling each other nazis casually (“Feminazi”, Obama is a nazi) for decades, and poking around with symbols and discovering bullshit gematria and whatever for much, much longer than that.
There was a serious concern in the populace over whether Obama was the actual, literal Antichrist.
The policing of it has been more powerful among the American Left lately. Newspapers were whining about a cartoon frog. TBH it’s just satisfying seeing the guys who frequently go “no only a Republican could be so stupid and inbred lol” while, say, ignoring or shutting down the fact that a certain group they actually favor *is* more inbred, getting worked up into a froth by trolling in such a way that it delegitimizes their controlling anger.
The Right is dumb too, it’s just that the Left was supposed to be better but they aren’t.