The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon confirmed a poster in a Portland courthouse is an NBA poster after some on social media claimed they saw a white power symbol.
A person named Morgan McKniff, who on Twitter identifies as “probably the general manager of Antifa,” shared a video of Portland’s Hatfield Courthouse to social media claiming a poster depicting hands in the “OK” symbol was a “white power symbol in the window,” the Post Millennial reported.
White Power symbol ? in window outside the US Court House pic.twitter.com/D15xBaBtAB
— Morgan (@ironyandfood) July 11, 2020
Other supposed antifa members shared the post, after which the U.S. attorney’s office to issue a statement on the matter.
“We can confirm the poster spotted in a Hatfield Courthouse window this evening is in fact a Portland Trailblazers poster,” the office’s Twitter account stated, accompanied by photos of the poster.
We can confirm the poster spotted in a Hatfield Courthouse window this evening is in fact a Portland Trailblazers poster. pic.twitter.com/Bnn85HSKp7
— U.S. Attorney Oregon (@USAO_OR) July 12, 2020
The “OK” symbol has long been known as a sign of approval, but recently became associated with white supremacy.
The Anti-Defamation League said of the symbol: “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.”
The hand gesture was subsequently deemed a symbol of hate by the ADL after some reportedly began using the symbol seriously and not as a prank.
“Context is always key,” Oren Segal, director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, said in 2019. “More people than not will use the OK symbol as just ‘OK.’ But in those cases where there’s more underlining meaning, I think it’s important for people to understand that it could be used, and is being used, for hate as well.”
