The Anti-Defamation League has now decided that the “OK” hand gesture — used commonly by people of all kinds and cultures every day, ranging from former President Barack Obama to Pope Francis to Elizabeth Warren — is now a symbol of white supremacism.
The organization’s utterly fatuous explanation even acknowledges that the connection between this symbol and racism was always an online hoax. But it then argues that the hoax became real.
No, this is not how things work. A hoax cannot turn an innocent and useful hand gesture used without a second thought by someone as random as Cory Booker into a symbol of white supremacism, all in a matter of just a couple of years of hoaxing.
If you allow this, then you’re only encouraging the hoaxers to move on to more symbols — and frankly, you deserve it, but the rest of us don’t. Next thing you know, the peace sign will be verboten. Or the military salute. Or the facepalm — especially apt here. Or the high-five.
Where does it all stop?
You know what has a much richer history of white supremacism than this gesture? A direct connection to active, virulent, violent racism that this hand signal will never have in a thousand years? The Democratic Party, that’s what.
Yes, it began as a hoax, but sadly the hoaxers have taken it over. Resign your membership today, or else you’re a white supremacist. Looking at you, Nancy Pelosi.
