-The "okay" hand gesture has become a cultural flashpoint,
transforming from an innocent sign to a hate symbol.
The Anti-Defamation League officially included it
in its hate-on-display database in 2019.
The evolution was gradual.
It started on the anonymous online message
board 4chan in 2017.
When a troll campaign tried to trick the media
into believing the gesture was a secret symbol
of white supremacy.
But as the campaign spread,
the sign was actually adopted by the alt-right.
A term for those on the far
right who embrace white nationalist views.
It was then used to "trigger liberals"
who thought the hand gesture identified secret Nazis.
-The tricky part of discussing these things
is that it's simultaneously incredibly stupid
and incredibly consequential.
We're talking about a dumb troll campaign
that targeted people in order to make a group of racists online
amused for a little period of time.
And then at the same time,
we are talking about the okay hand sign at all
because of the real rise in visibility of white supremacy
and racist ideas
and increasing access to power of those ideas.
-The concept only continued to pick up steam online
and make headlines in the following years.
And the intention behind every instance is hard to know.
Some examples include white nationalist Richard Spencer.
And right-wing Internet provocateur Milo Yiannopoulus.
It's also been used by interns in the Trump White House,
a writer for the fringe right Gateway Pundit,
and a Chicago Cubs fan who was later banned from Wrigley Field.
However, it was the use by the Christ Church
shooting suspect that marked a shift in the conversation.
-The use of that hand sign by the Christ Church suspect
I think is something that really needs to be underlined here.
His use and engagement with this part meme culture
I think took some of the ambiguity
of a lot of these things
and made it harder to excuse it away.
Whatever his intentions, the fact that that this person
who was accused of killing so many people,
has used this sign, sort of seemed
to change the tone of the discourse around it.
-The okay sign, isn't the first seemingly innocuous bit
of culture claimed by alt-right groups.
Pepe the Frog went from innocent cartoon
to alt-right meme during the 2016 election,
thanks to a similar online evolution.
But flashing the okay sign has an additional element,
its use in every day life, including by public figures.
But post 2017, the frequent use of the symbol
opened the door for misinterpretations and a debate.
Is it being used knowingly
as a symbol of white supremacy or not?
-The intersection of ambiguity and racism
can be weaponized in order to manipulate the media,
to manipulate popular opinion,
to spread ideas into the discourse
that have no place being there.
That is something that has helped the okay hand sign,
Pepe, any of these things like it
that have some degree of ambiguity or playfulness
or irony that has been baked into it get away
with spreading earnest white supremacist Nazi racist ideas,
um, along with them.
-The confusion presents civil rights groups,
like the Anti-Defamation League with a challenge,
how to educate people about the sign's darker
meaning without giving oxygen to the movement.
-The significance here is that the ADL is attempting,
at least, to make this less ambiguous.
It's a sign of how even ironic racism
is now being taken more seriously and experts
are asking us to look beyond the explanation of just trolling.
And understand how something is actually being used
and how the spread of a symbol like that may carry the ideas
that it's being associated with it.
No matter what the ADL says,
there are always going to be people who make the sign
because they're unaware of this entire conversation
that has played out, right?
The symbol has existed long
before a bunch of people on a message board
decided it would be funny to trick the media
into saying it was racist.