Monday, September 30, 2019


'OK' hand gesture, 'bowl-cut' hair style worn by white supremacist killer Dylann Roof, and Moon Man are now added to civil rights group's database of racist symbols

The 'OK' hand gesture, a mass killer's bowl-style haircut and an anthropomorphic moon wearing sunglasses are among 36 new entries in a Jewish civil rights group's online database of hate symbols used by white supremacists and other far-right extremists.

The Anti-Defamation League has added the symbols to its online 'Hate on Display' database, which already includes burning crosses, Ku Klux Klan robes, the swastika and many other of the most notorious and overt symbols of racism and anti-Semitism.

The New York City-based group launched the database in 2000 to help law enforcement officers, school officials and others recognize signs of extremist activity.

It has grown to include nearly 200 entries.

'Even as extremists continue to use symbols that may be years or decades old, they regularly create new symbols, memes and slogans to express their hateful sentiments,' Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.

Some of the new entries started as trolling campaigns or hateful memes on internet message boards such as 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, before migrating to Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream platforms, and to public forums and fliers.

The ADL has updated its database to include the 'OK' hand symbol, which became fodder for a 4chan trolling campaign to dupe viewers into thinking the fingers formed the letters 'W' and 'P' to mean 'white power.'

Brenton Tarrant, the Australian man arrested for killing 51 people at mosques in New Zealand earlier this year, is seen right making the gesture in court in March

But the ADL says extremists also are using it as a sincere expression of white supremacy.

Oren Segal, director of the ADL's Center on Extremism, said context is key to interpreting whether an 'OK' symbol is hateful or harmless.

He said the ADL had been reluctant to add it to the database 'because 'OK' has meant just 'OK' for so long.'

'At this point, there is enough of a volume of use for hateful purposes that we felt it was important to add,' Segal said.

An earlier addition to the database was Pepe the Frog , a cartoon character that became hijacked by online extremists who superimposed the frog with Nazi symbols and other hateful imagery.

The ADL branded Pepe as a hate symbol in September 2016 and supported cartoonist Matt Furie's efforts to reclaim the character he created.

The ADL also added the 'Dylann Roof Bowlcut,' an image of the hairstyle worn by the white supremacist who shot and killed nine black people in 2015 at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Roof's bowl-style hair became an avatar for extremists, including a Washington, D.C., man whose relatives contacted the FBI to report concerns about his behavior and far-right extremist rhetoric after last year's Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.

SOURCE 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the ADL is seeking another 'hateful' hand gesture, I can think of one I'd like to show them.

Bird of Paradise said...

The Civil Rights Weenies want to regulate everything they feel makes little snowflakes cry

Stan B said...

Just waiting for the day the Hate Groups abscond with the rainbow flag emblazoned with a Star of David!