This is complete conspiracy theory nonsense. It's a hoax generated by 4chan trolls. They crowdsourced conspiracy thinking and collected it into a list. Just like they do with QAnon. No actual proof, just spurious connections. I'm surprised people are taking it seriously (numerology? really??). That's literally what these trolls intended. It's also what they did with the OK hand symbol. They took something benign and sowed chaos with it.
The “OK” hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017 when an anonymous 4channer announced “Operation O-KKK,” telling other members that “we must flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letters WP (for “white power”) could be traced within an “OK” gesture. The originator and others also suggested useful hashtags to help spread the hoax, such as #PowerHandPrivilege and #NotOkay.
Regardless of how it started a bunch of actual racists took it and ran with it. Now actual racists use that symbol unironically. The KKK was started by a group of hoaxers and pranksters to troll people but I don't think anyone would argue the modern KKK is just a bunch of trolls screwing around and messing with people.
Are you sure it's actually been used unironically?
I've wondered about that, but don't personally know anyone who's used it in any way. Are you on good enough terms with an actual white supremist who has used it unironically to confirm the intent is racist?
It's not all numerology, I'm just saying that's included (in the very first piece of "evidence" mind you) and should have set off alarm bells to anyone reading it.
The neo-nazi obsession with symbols and dog whistling is so.... stupid. They've got like 37 different stupid ways to say "Heil hitler". The Klan were the same way, with a bunch of code phrases, symbols, and secret handshakes that sound like they were invented at an elementary school birthday party.
I know the point is to fly under the radar and gaslight people into second guessing things (They couldn't possibly be using the OK sign as an in-group signal.... right?) but how do you do these things and still think you're the cool kids fighting a big bad evil instead of the obviously pathetic cowards you are?
The “OK” hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017 when an anonymous 4channer announced “Operation O-KKK,” telling other members that “we must flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letters WP (for “white power”) could be traced within an “OK” gesture. The originator and others also suggested useful hashtags to help spread the hoax, such as #PowerHandPrivilege and #NotOkay.
I still think it is amazing that the OK gesture being racist started as a prank, basically "these idiots on twitter see racism everywhere, lets make the some of them think the one of the most innocuous gestures imaginable is racist" and it spread so well now a lot of people think it genuinely is racist... including some actual racists by the seems of things.
It kind of scares me to think about how vulnerable culture is to this kind of thing. A small number of people say this is true, not enough people question it, so now it's true. It's inane
This kind of thing always cracks me up. In the minds of the Don Quixote's of the internet, neo-nazis are an erudite brotherhood of studious skinheads who sit around reading the skinhead handbook, memorizing the "37 different ways to say 'heil hitler'" and committing racist propaganda images to memory. You know, so that they can communicate with other neo-nazis through NFTs, and gaslight people with cartoon monkeys.
Or the windmills are actually windmills.
> I know the point is to fly under the radar and gaslight people into second guessing things
I think you're right, but in precisely the opposite direction. The point is to convince people that there are secret, evil nazis out there, working to subvert our society. To convince you that they are subtle and sneaky, that their symbolism is complex and their references oblique, so that even though things might look perfectly innocent, like an NFT of a monkey, you never know if it might actually be dangerous--even evil! Luckily, there are people who are willing to tell you when seemingly normal things are dangerous and evil! And when one of these people point and shout "Nazi!", be sure just do the right thing. Don't think. (You've been gaslighted. Your eyes deceive you!) Just shut up and grab your pitchfork!
The fact that this so closely resembles literal witch hunting should be telling.
It's how insular groups / cults work. The group looks for converts, so people who are normally isolated and rejected feel welcomed, and group members try to be welcoming. Members adopt a progressively more weird lexicon and lifestyle, so they find it harder and harder to make connections outside of the group. These two dynamics lead to a very hardcore membership.
It's like why hare krishna have to have funny haircuts.
Plus people don't tend to get into radical politics if their life is going great, so a lot of the people predisposed to neo-nazi stuff are also predisposed to be love-bombed by a proselytizing group.
I think your point about things like this being "invent at an elementary school birthday party" actually points to the solution; the intellectual maturity of the folks involved doesn't usually pass that level, either, so it is unsurprising that their pathetic behavior is not as easily noticed.
I like that honestly. You always know with whom you are talking. They in turn tried to put signs on people once they were in power, so I appreciate their attempt to come clean here.
Still, to declare the OK sign a racist symbol was very stupid. Don't give them anything. Imaging people would have used it even more when they tried to create their symbolism. It would be useless to them.
The best way to deal with them is ignoring them. If you constantly look at them you will become reactionary as well.
Imagining themselves as born elites fighting undeserved oppression is the foundational feature of Nazism, going back all the way back to the myth of Germany's loss in WWI demonstrating such oppression. Everything else depends on it. So, without it, they have nothing.
They are not alone in that. Ayn Rand tapped the same well, as did every monarchy-restorationist clique.
NFTs in general and BAYC in particular make sense to me as a bunch of bored young men with rich fathers who like throwing their allowance around for fun. I see NFTs as a symptom of wealth and income inequality and BAYC is 4chan for rich kids
shockingly, internet cartoon series has edgy jokes- including referring to an iconic japanese symbol as 'sushi chef headband', and using a round SS logo as their round opensea logo- but anyone who doesn't agree with your nazi conspiracy theory is 'pretending' it's ridiculous?
half of the argument proposed is that monkeys are involved, because monkeys have also been used in offensive stereotypes- so wouldn't nazis be offended at the monkey skull in the ss logo?
joking about taboos has always been a part of any type of underground humor, and idiots freaking out about 'secret nazis' is just playing into the joke
> I have dedicated a lot of time to researching this and as an expert in the field of internet culture having been active within it for 25 years, a B.A. in Media Studies, with many credentials, I, and many others, feel very confident these accusations are founded.
Is this satire? Something about the whole article seemed off, but this final paragraph takes it over the top.
this website is actually serious and not satire and there seems to be real person behind it: https://twitter.com/ryder_ripps
but i feel like: "The probability of picking a name that is also a racist anagram is about 1 in 750 billion"
needs some kind of explanation as to how this figure was arrived at. this seems to be quite a difficult value to calculate and seems to require a lot of assumptions that are not necessarily shared.
* what is racist anagram?
* what is a name?
* are names picked uniformly?
my prior is a lot of this nazi hunting is similar to numerology. people are just datamining for signals then are surprised when they find them.
As much as I'd like to hear that BAYC is untouchable on account of being founded by Neo-Nazis (I think it's a very dumb project) I honestly can't buy the simianization argument.
We've all heard the WallStreetBets crowd call themselves "apes". First thing I thought of when I saw a bunch of NFT apes and heard the name of the project was a bunch of apes holding GameStop.
That being said I can actually kind of buy the other arguments. When you put the logo next to the Totenkopf it's pretty hard to deny that they look alike. Add some crossed bones behind the skull and it's almost a spitting image.
NFTs are a great innovation for the world and possibly the biggest technological revolution since the semiconductor. With the help of this technology, we can solve the problems of climate change, poverty, and racism. It won't be easy, but seeing the utter sheer brilliance of ideas like "Pushy Penguins" and "Bored Apes", I truly look forward to a better tomorrow.
I swear there was a green text where people on 4-chan wanted to connect Bored Apes with Nazism to get the price down and ruin them because they thought it was stupid. I can't seem to find the text, but it's weird to see it actually happening...
I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Or if someone involved wanted to pretend that 4chan is doing such a thing to make people doubt it, its difficult to know the truth with that website
Is it possible that this was just an elaborate Producers-esque thing where the creators weren't exactly "racist", but more "wouldn't it be funny if could get every TV station to post a bunch of racist stuff?"
I realize it's a Poe's Law distinction without a difference, I'm just curious if there was any evidence of that hypothesis.
There are a lot of NFTs and most are not controversial. These happen to get popular but not for the reason OP has found but for the fact they are interesting pieces of art which some liked and then it turned into a gold rush. I thought they looked kind of cool and I would have purchased one if I has a chance. I didn't know they has anything to do with Nazis and I think most people don't.
Let me get this straight: So we have been flailing about for years now over micro aggressions and critical race theory calling everything under the sun “white supremacy” but outright, blatant white supremacy has a market cap of $4 billion dollars. And the people calling everything under the sun “white supremacy”, are likely to be the same people that contributed to the $4 billion market cap of legitimate white supremacists(young people are woke and young people buy NFTs. Both being woke and NFTs are trendy. Hence the groups are likely to overlap). Talk about irony.
It's almost like a dogwhistle slips under the radar by design.
This isn't the own that you think it is; even if a lot of the people talking about CRT are the ones buying Bored Apes (which I am not conceding), this would just be evidence on how easy it is for racism to sneak into the common culture. It proves their point, not negate it.
See https://www.adl.org/blog/how-the-ok-symbol-became-a-popular-...
The “OK” hand gesture originated as one of these hoaxes in February 2017 when an anonymous 4channer announced “Operation O-KKK,” telling other members that “we must flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” The user even provided a helpful graphic showing how the letters WP (for “white power”) could be traced within an “OK” gesture. The originator and others also suggested useful hashtags to help spread the hoax, such as #PowerHandPrivilege and #NotOkay.