'OK' Hand Signal and Bowl-Style Haircut Added to Anti-Defamation League's List of Hate Symbols
The Anti-Defamation League has officially added the popular “OK” hand sign and bowl-style haircuts to its list of hate symbols, according to The Hill.
The two symbols, along with 34 others, were added to the ADL’s online database of hate symbols on Thursday, increasing the list to 214, many of which are not actually symbols of hate in most contexts.
The “OK” gesture and bowl cut join innocuous signs such as “100%” (short for “100% white” among some white supremacists) and more well-known examples, such as burning crosses and swastikas.
“We believe law enforcement and the public needs to be fully informed about the meaning of these images, which can serve as a first warning sign to the presence of haters in a community or school,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.
The ADL’s rationale for including such entries are somewhat dubious.
The bowl cut, according to the ADL, became a hate symbol since it was the hairstyle worn by the white supremacist mass shooter who opened fire at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
The “OK” sign supposedly references “white power” (the letters “W” and “P” being formed by the fingers) and was included despite the ADL admitting that it’s a significant part of American Sign Language.
“Use of the okay symbol in most contexts is entirely innocuous and harmless,” the group says.
The ADL also acknowledged that the sign only came to prominence as a hate symbol because of an online hoax and the subsequent gullibility of the left, and stressed that caution must be exercised when determining the intent of those who make the sign with their hand.
In fact, the group said that “someone who uses the symbol cannot be assumed to be using the symbol in either a trolling or, especially, white supremacist context unless other contextual evidence exists to support the contention.”
This word of warning, of course, raises the question as to why it’s included in the first place.
If you can’t tell if the person using a symbol is a white supremacist, how is that symbol indicative of white supremacy at all?
For example, the only hard evidence provided for labeling the “OK” sign a hate symbol was that it was used by the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shooter during his court appearance.
Of course, this in and of itself does not make the “OK” sign a hateful gesture.
In that case, there’s no point in identifying and interpreting the symbols he used.
We know he was a white supremacist because of what he did and what he explicitly said. Case closed.
Allowing the white supremacy movement to co-opt everyday things and turn them into hate symbols is incredibly ridiculous.
When will the left realize that they are the ones making these symbols hateful? Extremists, by very definition, are a tiny minority. They have no real influence unless there is a majority that legitimizes their claims.
Whenever there is a new thing stolen by racists and turned into a sign of hatred, we as the non-racist majority should just scoff and move along. That’s exactly what we have to do now.
Bowl cuts and the “OK” gesture are not hateful. It doesn’t matter what the ADL says, and it certainly doesn’t matter what the white supremacists say.
Right now, they are gripping the left with fear, and it’s sad that such a large portion of our country is letting them get away with it.
Now, that doesn’t mean white supremacists are not somewhat of a threat, even if that threat is overblown. Their ideology should be countered and defeated, but giving them what they want is not the way to do that.
The Anti-Defamation League is rolling over for the bad guys.
They’re in the pocket of their opponents and they don’t even know it.
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