FORT WORTH, Texas — A controversial gesture increasingly associated with white nationalism is sparking controversy after an unidentified man flashed the “OK” hand sign at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade Monday in Fort Worth.
The photo appeared on the social media pages of the Tarrant County Republican Party’s Facebook page but has since been taken down, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“It’s supremacist,” said community organizer Pamela Young. “It’s racist.”
The Tarrant County Young Republicans addressed the photograph on social media but did not identify the man.
“It was inappropriate/dumb, and we’ll be talking w/ him,” reads a tweet by the group. “Rest assured though, he is no white supremacist.”
The controversy surrounding the hand sign, which until recently was universally understood to mean "OK," began in 2017, according to The Anti-Defamation League.
Users in the online 4chan community set out to spread the false claim that white nationalists adopted the hand gesture because it formed the letters “W” and “P,” the initials for “white power.”
Users created fake accounts to spread hashtags and bombard journalists and civil rights groups with messages to further spread the hoax, according to the ADL.
“It’s not a real white power symbol,” reads a tweet posted by the Tarrant County Young Republicans Twitter account. “He does that b/c he thinks it’s funny how crazy leftists get over a fake symbol. Rest assured though, he is no white supremacist. Bit of a troll perhaps...but a good kid.”
However, the trolling tactic eventually gained legitimacy among actual white supremacists.
Brenton Tarrant, the man accused of killing 51 people in New Zealand mosques last March, flashed the sign in court, according to the ADL.
That’s why Young said there’s nothing innocent about what happened at the parade in Fort Worth.
“Perception is reality,” Young said. “Whether you mean it as a joke or not, it is racist, and you know exactly what you’re doing when you use it.”
On Monday, the account for the Tarrant County Young Republicans re-tweeted its own tweet from March, which stressed “White supremacy has no place in the Republican Party.”
