OK Hand Operation

2017

Date: February 2017, ADL listing 26 September 2019 · Place: 4chan /pol/ · ADL Center on Extremism, New York · Figures: Anonymous /pol/ posters, hoax originators · Anti-Defamation League researchers · Brenton Tarrant, Christchurch shooter (later adopter) · Tags: FalseFlag, HoaxBecomesReal, HandSign 01. Operation O-KKK In February 2017 a 4chan /pol/ thread titled 'Operation O-KKK' proposes a coordinated campaign to convince mainstream media that the OK hand sign, thumb and forefinger forming a circle, is a white-supremacist gesture. The reasoning given is that the three extended fingers form a W and the circle plus wrist form a P, spelling 'WP' for 'white power.' The operation is explicitly designed as a hoax to embarrass journalists and liberals into denouncing a common gesture. Screenshots of the planning thread circulate widely; the participants describe it as a successful troll. 02. The Hoax Adopts Itself Over the next two years the gesture is repeatedly used by genuine white nationalists, sometimes ironically, sometimes not. Brenton Tarrant flashes it in court after the Christchurch mosque attack on 15 March 2019. By that point the line between hoax and sincere use has dissolved. On 26 September 2019 the Anti-Defamation League adds the OK sign to its hate-symbols database with extensive caveats about context. The hoax has completed its arc: a fake symbol invented to mock recognition of symbols, recognized. "Particular caution must be used when evaluating this symbol, as in most contexts it is not used as a symbol of hate." — ADL Hate on Display database entry for the OK gesture, 26 September 2019 Sources • Anti-Defamation League, 'Okay Hand Gesture' entry, Hate on Display database, 26 September 2019 • Cassie Miller, 'How a self-described hoax came to be a symbol of hate,' Southern Poverty Law Center, 27 September 2019 • Know Your Meme, 'OK Hand Sign'