Operation O-KKK: the OK hand sign hoax

JUN 2017

In February 2017 an anonymous 4chan user launched 'Operation O-KKK', urging others to flood social media with the claim that the OK hand gesture was a white-supremacist symbol, supported by a graphic tracing the letters W and P within the sign. Participants mass-messaged journalists and civil rights groups. It then backfired: far-right figures adopted the gesture sincerely, and in September 2019 the ADL added it to its hate symbols database, making a fabricated claim materially true.