Santa Cruz’s “Okay” Skate Symbol (A #MAGA Hoax)

ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2017

ROLL THE TAPE PLEASE:

Of course the left thinks this “okay” symbol is racist, like everything is now “racist” (milk, the term “athletic,” criticizing the IRS, saying that Barack Obama lied, wanting lower taxes, Star Wars, your baby, craft beer, being white, lunch bags, etc., etc. TOWNHALL | TWITTER [Tucker Carlson] | WASHINGTON TIMES | NATIONAL REVIEW | ZERO HEDGE [Tucker Carlson]).

See, of course, my previous posts on the “okay” symbol, here and here. I assume that “racist things” and the list of things caused by “Global Warming” will compete with each other.

Of course, if you are not familiar with the original graphic from SANTA CRUZ, it made #3 in the TOP 50 GREATEST SKATE LOGOS.

I was happened upon DICTIONARY.COM’s definition of the “Okay” symbol — and can you guess what I found? And the reason for Savory Agent’s version of the Santa Cruz Symbol? Here is the WRONG DEFINITION description first:

Important context: While the OK hand emoji 👌 has many harmless meanings, it was co-opted as a white supremacist symbol in the late 2010s. One should now be mindful of context when using or coming across this emoji.

This is just factually wrong. The “okay” symbol as a white supremacist symbol was first a hoax by 4Chan dating to 2017, and, the media made such a stink about it [thinking  it was true] that after the media freakout, white supremacist groups adopted it.

Here is WIKIPEDIA’S noting of it:

In 2017, users on the message-board site 4chan aimed to convince the media and other people that the OK gesture was being used as a white power symbol as a joke. According to The Boston Globe, users on 4chan’s /pol/ (“Politically Incorrect”) board were instructed in February 2017 to “flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy,” as part of a campaign dubbed “Operation O-KKK”.

The satirical association of the gesture with white supremacy derived from the assertion that the three upheld fingers resemble a ‘W’ and the circle made with the thumb and forefinger resemble the head of a ‘P’, together standing for “White Power.” While some members of the alt-right used the symbol after the launch of the 4chan campaign, it initially remained ambiguous whether or not it was being used to communicate genuine adherence to white supremacy, or with deliberately ironic motives.

In September 2019 the ADL revised their earlier position and added the OK gesture to its “Hate on Display” database. The listing notes that the usage of the OK hand gesture is sometimes benign, but that it is intended as a symbol of hate in some contexts, as some white supremacists have begun using the OK symbol “as a sincere expression of White Supremacy”. White supremacists have acknowledged using the symbol as a gesture of White Power. As a result of white supremacists’ co-opting the symbol….

Dennis Prager says it often, “everything the Left touches it ruins.” The Mainstream Media and Democrats [the Left] had their grubby hands/paws/mitts all over this story as factual — and because of the perceived power play seen in using this politically — they even ruined the “okay symbol.”

Here is the ADL’s dealing with it — take note the “circle game” was ruined as well by the Democrats and Media:

In 2017, the “okay” hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters “wp,” for “white power.” The “okay” gesture hoax was merely the latest in a series of similar 4chan hoaxes using various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a common image as white supremacist.

In the case of the “okay” gesture, the hoax was so successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post photos to social media of themselves posing while making the “okay” gesture.

Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The overwhelming usage of the “okay” hand gesture today is still its traditional purpose as a gesture signifying assent or approval. As a result, 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. Since 2017, many people have been falsely accused of being racist or white supremacist for using the “okay” gesture in its traditional and innocuous sense.

Other, similar-seeming hand gestures have also been mistakenly assumed to have white supremacist connotations as a result of the “okay” hoax. One of these is the so-called “Circle Game,” in which people attempt to trick each other into looking at an okay-like hand gesture made somewhere below the waist. Another is the hand sign of the Three Percenter movement, a wing of the anti-government extremist militia movement. Three Percenters, who are right-wing extremists but are not typically white supremacists, often make a hand gesture to symbolize their movement that uses the outstretched middle, ring, and pinky fingers to represent a Roman numeral “3.” This gesture, from certain angles, can often resemble an “okay” hand gesture and has been misinterpreted by some as a white supremacist symbol.

But hey…. our dictionaries. Lol.

You know who get’s it right? BLOG EMOJIPEDIA!

  • The myth of the OK gesture as a secret symbol of white supremacy begins in 2017 as a deliberate effort on 4chan to spread the sign as such. It was chosen in part due to its use by the controversial speaker Milo Yiannopoulos and some white nationalists in support of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Its creators also claimed that the fingers of the OK gesture represent a W for white and the ring a P for power, as illustrated below. (read it all, it’s good)

I rarely say anything positive about VOX, but the link in the bullet point above surprised me. Bravo.

The “OK Sign” Hoax | Joe Rogan & Tim Pool

“Most Biased Encyclopedia in History” | Wikipedia Co-Founder


I just discovered that Wiki considers NO right-leaning outlet “reliable.” Not Fox News Politics, The Daily Wire, the Daily Caller, the FDRLST, or New York Post. What DOES Wiki consider “reliable?” CNN, MSNBC, Jacobin, Vox, and Buzzfeed! Give me a break!


Wikipedia Co-Founder Condemns WIKI: “Most Biased Encyclopedia in History” The entire opening/interview starting at the 10:37 is HERE.

here is the hat-tip AMERICA FIRST REPORT:

….Sanger says he noticed a bias creeping in around 2006, particularly in areas of science and medicine. Around 2010, he started noticing that articles about Eastern Medicine were being changed to reflect blatantly biased positions, using “dismissive epithets” to paint this ancient tradition as quackery.

In 2012, evidence also emerged revealing a Wikipedia trustee and “Wikipedian in Residence” were being paid to edit pages on behalf of their clients and secure their placement on Wikipedia’s front page in the “Did You Know” section, which publicizes new or expanded articles — a clear violation of Wikipedia rules.

“It really got over the top between 2013 and 2018,” Sanger says, “and by by at the time Trump became president, it was almost as bad as it is now. It’s amazing, you know, no encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has ever been as biased as Wikipedia has been

I remember being mad about Encyclopedia Britannica and The World Book not mentioning my favorite topics, [and] presenting only certain points of view in a way that establishment sources generally do. But this is something else. This is entirely different. It’s over the top.”….

In 2007 a hacker and tech whiz named Virgil Griffith revealed that the CIA, FBI and a host of large corporations and government agencies were editing pages on Wikipedia to their own benefit (or the benefit of associates). Now Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is reporting that the intelligence agencies are still at it, routinely editing pages relating to the Iraq War body count, treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and China’s nuclear program. In the video below Jimmy mentions Aaron Maté. Jimmy Dore interviewed him regarding this incident of the Syrian chemical attack (HERE), and the article can be found on Aarons GRAYZONE.

REUTERS (2007)

The changes may violate Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.

The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.

The program allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries.

WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit an entry on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A graphic on casualties was edited to add that many figures were estimated and were not broken down by class.

Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited by CIA computers to expand his career history and discuss the merits of a Vietnam War rural pacification program that he headed.

[….]

It violates Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines for a person with close ties to an issue to contribute to an entry about it, said spokeswoman Sandy Ordonez of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent organization….

Here is HEARTLAND INSTITUTE’S quick noting of the bias:


Heartland Institute President Tim Huelskamp discusses Wikipedia bias.


Rebutting Vox’s Republicans Breaking Politics Stupidity! (Crowder)

Steven Crowder provides a full rebuttal to Vox’s recent claim that Republicans “broke politics.” SPOILER: Nope.

Mass Shooting and Other Gun Myths!

Below are some updated videos inserted into this older post… the most recent being Steven Crowder’s rebuttal of VOX’s anti-gun propaganda video:

  • (Louder with Crowder) Misrepresenting numbers, massaging “facts,” are tactics used by leftists daily. Misrepresentation is the secret ingredient in their half-caf soy latte. Leftists always have a pre-determined outcome in mind. In Vox’s case (like all leftists), TAINT GUN OWNERSHIP. Make gun owners look like out of control whack jobs with no hearts.

Also, this IS a good definition via the FBI:

✦ An FBI crime classification report from 2005 identifies an individual as a mass murderer if he kills four or more people in a single incident (not including himself), typically in a single location. SO, following VOX’s own criteria WITH this definition to help set boundaries… we are not even close to having one “every-other-month.”

This Uber driver just stopped a mass shooting (ehem, in Chicago) with his concealed weapon (for which he had a permit), via Breitbart:

On Friday, an Uber driver with a concealed carry permit thwarted an attempted mass shooting by pulling his own weapon and shooting a gunman who had opened fire in Chicago’s Logan Square.

Illinois Assistant State’s Attorney Barry Quinn verified that the driver “had a concealed-carry permit and acted in the defense of himself and others.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, the driver was watching “a group of people” walk in front of his car on North Milwaukee Avenue just before midnight when 22-year-old Everardo Custodio allegedly “began firing into the crowd.” The Uber driver pulled his own gun and “fired six shots at Custodio,” wounding him in “the shin, thigh, and lower back.”

The attempted mass shooting ended with no one other Custodio injured….

In his June 18, 2015, remarks from the White House, Obama said, “Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.” (Politifact)

(Obama’s most recent remarks are in the video, above/right.)

Obama, as usual, tries to rewrite history by his word. Here Fox lays out some of the stats in regard to this statement of “faith.”

….In the November attacks, 129 people were killed and 352 were injured. In just 2015, France suffered more casualties – killings and injuries – from mass public shootings than the U.S. has suffered during Obama’s entire presidency (508 to 424). This number includes the San Bernandino massacre on Wednesday.

Obama also overlooks Norway, where Anders Behring Breivik used a gun to kill 67 people and wound 110 others. Still others were killed by bombs that Breivik detonated.  Of the four worst K-12 school shootings, three have occurred in Europe. Germany had two of these — one in 2002 at Erfut and another in 2009 at Winnenden, with a total death toll of 34.

Obama isn’t correct even if he meant the frequency of fatalities or attacks. Many European countries actually have higher rates of death from public shootings that resulted in four or more murders. It’s simply a matter of adjusting for America’s much larger population.

Let’s look at mass public shootings from 2009 to the middle of June this year. To compare fairly with American shootings, I excluded attacks that might be better classified as struggles over sovereignty. For instance, I did not count the 22 people killed in the Macedonian town of Kumanovo last month.

Norway had the highest annual death rate, with 2 mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Macedonia had a rate of 0.38, Serbia 0.28, Slovakia 0.20, Finland 0.14, Belgium 0.14, and the Czech Republic 0.13.  The US comes in No. 8 with 0.095 mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Austria and Switzerland are close behind.

In terms of the frequency of attacks, the United States ranks ninth, with 0.09 attacks per million people.  Macedonia, Serbia, Switzerland, Norway, Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic all had higher rates.

There are two other studies on these questions that have gotten a fair amount of attention.

One, by State University of New York-Oswego public justice professor Jaclyn Schildkraut and Texas State University researcher H. Jaymi Elsass, who look at shootings across countries, has left out a large number of shootings in other countries.

Yet, despite the extensive news coverage their study has received, they miss a lot of cases.  For example, in France, they miss three mass public shootings:

  • Tours, France, October 29, 2001: four people were killed and 10 wounded when a French railway worker started killing people at a busy intersection in the city.
  • Nanterre, France, March 27, 2002: a man kills eight city councilors after a city council meeting.
  • Toulouse, France, March 19, 2012, Mohammed Merah killed four people (the killer also killed people in Montauban, France).

Other cases are missed in such countries as Austria, Belgium, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, Macedonia, Spain, Switzerland and Slovakia.

It takes a lot of time and effort to find all the cases, but if you get all the attacks in the U.S. and miss those in other countries, it makes the U.S. look a lot worse…

Crowder likewise showed that the “Gun Show Loophole” exists only in the leftists mind:

Here is a great video by Encounter Books:

From the video description:

The right to keep and bear arms has always been central to the American identity. The American Revolution was sparked by British attempts to confiscate guns. After the Civil War, America changed the Constitution to defeat America’s first gun control organization, the Ku Klux Klan. When Hitler and Stalin demonstrated how gun registration paves the way for gun confiscation which paves the way for genocide, Americans resolved to make sure it never happens here.

Gun control is not an issue of left vs. right, or urban vs. rural. Liberal icons such as Hubert Humphrey and Eleanor Roosevelt recognized the right to arms as fundamental to preventing large-scale tyranny by criminal governments, and small-scale tyranny by ordinary criminals. Barack Obama’s gun control program is founded on disinformation, and is a direct assault on the Constitution.

To learn more read The Truth about Gun Control, by David B. Kopel.

BTW ~ even Bernie Sander’s understands the goal of the left:

In the aftermath of more mass shootings, Bill Whittle tackles gun control, rebutting progressives call for stricter measures.