It started in early 2017 as a hoax. Anonymous 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 sympathisers 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 Centre has identified memes featuring the hoax religion of “Kek” and cartoon character Pepe the Frog, among others, as being at the forefront of white nationalists’ efforts to distract and infuriate liberals.