Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York, flashed a double white-power symbol during a Zoom conference about New York City’s crime uptick. Perhaps it was just an “OK” sign or even just a mindless gesture, but that doesn’t matter these days.
During the Zoom video, which The Hill uploaded to its YouTube channel Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez spoke to constituents and answered press questions about rising crime rates in the Big Apple. She pointed to the Wuhan virus, financial instability, and police brutality as reasons for the rise in crime, failing to mention anything about the violent riots that swept the nation or the fact that the economic downturn is largely the result of oppressive lockdown from the likes of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio. During her remarks, however, she flashed a symbol that for people who aren’t progressive politicians has resulted in grave consequences.
While answering one question, the congresswoman quickly flashed the notorious white supremacy symbol — the once-innocuous “OK” sign, wherein the thumb and pointer finger touch to form a circle and the last three fingers are extended — with both hands while gesturing. She even flashed it a second time at the end of the call.
AOC would have been A-OK, if it weren’t for the fact that the left has attacked innocent people for alleged racism over the last couple years for inadvertently flashing the “OK” sign, which also happens to form the letters “W” and “P,” and thus “white power.”
Jokes aside, people have been fired recently for doing exactly this.
Including a Hispanic electric and gas worker: https://t.co/PqllygfXYL https://t.co/luR52ypegQ
— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 12, 2020
Consider Emmanuel Cafferty, a Mexican-American gas and electric employee in California, who just last month lost his job when someone snapped a picture of him making the symbol out the window of his company truck and posted it on Twitter. Cafferty said he was just cracking his knuckle and that it was “baffling” when his boss said he was accused of making a white supremacist gesture.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get over this, but to lose your dream job for playing with your fingers, that’s a hard pill to swallow,” Cafferty told NBC 7.
Back in December 2019, the Military Academy at West Point launched a full investigation into cadets who flashed the symbol in a photo at the Army-Navy football game. It turned out, unsurprisingly, the incident had nothing to do with white supremacy. The young men were playing the incredibly common “circle game,” which often leads to “photobombing” with the gesture.
A basketball poster, displayed in the office window of a Portland federal courthouse, was amplified on Twitter by Antifa activists over the weekend and condemned as racist. It’s an innocent Trailblazers poster, with a hand making a 3-point gesture.
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1282471660734558208
This isn’t the first time the symbol has been in a story including Ocasio-Cortez. Last July, President Donald Trump make the hand gesture while talking about the leftist congresswoman. The takeaway? Trump is a racist.
Trump threw up a white power symbol while saying @AOC’s name in his latest speech.
Can we please stop asking if this man is a racist? pic.twitter.com/X6btsI2TKt
— Millennial Politics (@MillenPolitics) July 23, 2019
This is the same hand symbol the New Zealand shooter flashed in court. Fuck anyone writing about how democrats are veering too far left.
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) July 23, 2019
You might recall during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings when leftist commentators spent an entire news cycle speculating that his former law clerk, Zina Bash, was flashing a white power symbol behind him. Author and activist Any Siskind suggested the alleged signal should have disqualified Kavanaugh for the high court. As Bash’s husband pointed out, her parents are Mexican and Jewish, Bash herself was born in Mexico, and her grandparents survived the Holocaust. The idea that she was flashing a white supremacist symbol was risible.
Leftist blue checks piled onto the white-power rage train over the Independence Day weekend, condemning South Dakota native and television personality Mary Hart for displaying the symbol while introducing the president’s Mount Rushmore remarks. Hart flashed the sign in a manner similar to Ocasio-Cortez.
https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1279461654468714502
According to the woke Anti-Defamation League, “Someone who uses the symbol cannot be assumed to be using the symbol in either a trolling or, especially, white supremacist context unless other contextual evidence exists to support the contention.”
So why are Trump and those associated with him called racists for gesturing with the OK symbol, but nobody will say a word about Ocasio-Cortez? Haven’t you heard? Republicans are demonstrably racist. That’s the context clue. Everything they do then must be interpreted as acts of white supremacy and hate.
The racism double standard for people like AOC and the California gas and electric employee are far from “OK.”
