“Students appeared to make the White Power hand symbol during a pregame broadcast of the Army-Navy game,” is the headline USA Today’s Mike Brehm led with after a picture surfaced of multiple Army and Navy cadets using the OK sign.
In response to these accusations, West Point and Annapolis have opened investigations into the cadets.
https://twitter.com/bkesling/status/1206024950085279746
Several other outlets and verified journalists repeated the smear without ever asking the cadets for comment.
The media has learned nothing from Covingtongate and their smears of innocent high school students.
Trial lawyer Kurt Schlichter had a warning for these media smear artists.
You bastards will not Convington these cadets.
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 15, 2019
And cadet libeled by the garbage media in Covington 2: OK Sign Boogaloo needs to contact:@RonColeman @pnjaban @Barnes_Law
or another attorney who can fully vindicate a defamed plaintiff's rights.
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 15, 2019
Many Twitter uses mocked the media by showing that the OK sign is widely used by leftists and people of color, including Congresswoman AOC and President Barack Obama.
— Robert (@IgG1purifier) December 15, 2019
Look at these racist mofo’s flashing the #WhitePower symbol. WTF? pic.twitter.com/t8BiQKuFAd
— I Yam What I Yam (@Nvr4Get91101) December 15, 2019
https://twitter.com/DLW_FLHTC/status/1206026456129769474
The media isn’t going to stop.
They want to destroy the lives of innocent people.
They hate our military.
They want to see America fail.
Today’s false accusation isn’t a new media low, because this assumes there’s a bottom to all of this.
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The white power sign is an upside down ok sign, which is what they flashed. The ok sign in your photos is the real ok sign, which means ….ok.
You are disgusting.
Bullshit. Pull their free tuition. Scum.
those cadets knew exactly what they were doing. take that weak ass BS and stick it straight up your 👌, spanky.
Grow up overly sensitive liberal democrat
Sandra McCune, Joe Scott, and Chuck; yall are disrespectful asinine adults who are offended by a game that has been going on for decades and has ZERO correlation with any racist group. Grow up, and stop jumping to conclusions. If no, why not ask ANY college student from the last 20 years what it means. Also, that political nonsense of being a white power gang sign was started by 4Chan, a internet trolling forum. Fact check yourselves. And stop being part of the problem.
Jon B:
You’re right. It was started by trolls. As in, some white supremacists decided to start using this symbol. And now that’s what the symbol means. That’s how symbolism works. Are you going to argue that the swastika isn’t a white supremacist symbol either?
The accusation also didn’t start with some monolithic “Media.” Like all reporters got together for a meeting to discuss what to cover this week, and someone was like “oh, well I saw this football game…”
Please, someone explain to me what they were supposedly saying is “ok?” They just wanted the audience to know they were having an ok time?
‘It started in early 2017 as a hoax. Some users of 4chan, an anonymous and unrestricted online message board, began what they called “Operation O-KKK,” to see if they could trick the wider world — and especially liberals and the mainstream media — into believing that the innocuous gesture was actually a clandestine symbol of white power.
“We must flood twitter and other social media websites with spam, claiming that the OK hand signal is a symbol of white supremacy,” one of the users posted, going on to suggest that everyone involved create fake social media accounts “with basic white girl names” to propagate the notion as widely as possible.
The 4chan hoax succeeded all too well, and ceased being a hoax: Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white nationalists began using the gesture in public to signal their presence and to spot potential sympathizers and recruits. For them, the letters formed by the hand were not O and K, but W and P, for “white power.”
The gesture is not the only symbol to have been appropriated and swiftly weaponized by alt-right internet trolls. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified memes featuring the hoax religion of Kek and the cartoon character Pepe the Frog, among others, as being at the forefront of white nationalists’ efforts to distract and infuriate liberals.’- New York Times.
The point I’m making here is that this nonsense is about perspective. These Cadets and Midshipmen were using it as a joke/part of a game that has been around for decades now. Clearly, the users of 4chan have fooled you as well since you’re taking their harmless jokes out of context. Their intent for using it was as a simple joke, with zero correlation to anything other than that. There is zero political affiliation whatsoever.
Hi Andy, Which white supremacists decided to start using this symbol? This is much like the the trolling hoax of Trump pardoning Manson, did the re-tweet of that by an elected official make that some true? While we are at it since when do libs endorse the thought police? Be careful what you wish for as in some future administration you may be the one to be imprisoned. My advise is read some Seneca and review this as truth or foolishness. If true why let offence rule you over a truth, much better to work to effectively combat such thinking with better tools than hate and desired censorship. And if it is foolishness ….
Here we go again the liberal socialist democrat media falsly accuseing people of stuff first it was covington now it’s army navy this false bs is getting ridiculous
John:
THANK YOU!!!! 1000000000% agree
Is the middle finger a white power sign too?
The comments above reveal the ridiculous nature of the Left and its obsession with racism, especially since Trump has become President. I’m sorry, but the SPLC is using racism as their all-encompassing narrative and they don’t get to redefine common terms or gestures or anything else as “racist” just because they don’t like it. Anyone who buys this interpretation by the Leftmedia is either intentionally ignorant, brainwashed or has a psychotic need to make everything racist. Ridiculous and absurd, but also a dangerous thing to encourage.