In the latest absurdity from the absurd Left, the Anti-Defamation League has classified the OK sign as a racist hate symbol.
This is achingly, howlingly, hair-pullingly, wrist-slittingly ridiculous. Millions of people have made this sign. Millions of them are not racist, and are not people the ADL would ever call racist, including Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.
How stupid, totalitarian, vicious, and absurd is the ADL’s classification of the OK sign as a hate symbol? Consider this: in the photo accompanying this article, Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir, the principal of Maspeth High School in New York, is receiving a plaque; his school was named a 2018 National Blue Ribbon School. As he gets the plaque, he is clearly making the sign of allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS), the upraised index finger, isn’t he? If I or anyone else were to claim that, the condemnations would come as quickly as Democrats to impeachment hearings. “Spencer, you racist, bigoted Islamophobe,” I’d be told, “millions of people make that sign every day. It means ‘We’re Number One.’ That’s all Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir means. Just because he is a Muslim and raises one index finger doesn’t mean he is ISIS, you benighted, evil rabble rouser.”
Of course. But if the ADL were consistent, it would classify the one-finger salute as a hate symbol, based on the use of it by the Islamic State. This signal has been known to be a sign of allegiance to the Islamic State for almost as long as there has been an Islamic State. It has been described as the group’s “ubiquitous hand signal.” If it were consistent, the ADL would expect Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir to know this and to care, and would brush aside his likely explanation that he was just saying his school was “Number One.” It excoriate him as energetically as it would a high school principal who made the Nazi stiff-arm salute and then claimed he was only making an ancient Roman salute. If Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir were a non-Muslim, conservative, Trump-supporting school principal who made the OK sign as his school received the National Blue Ribbon School designation (which it probably wouldn’t get anyway, if he were known as a supporter of the President), would the ADL cut him any slack or would it smear him as a white supremacist? What do you think?
The ADL is not consistent. It classifies the OK sign as a racist symbol because it wants to smear conservatives who use it as white supremacists. Leftists who use it will be ignored. And it wouldn’t dream of classifying the upraised index finger as a hate symbol, because that would require it to charge some Muslims with allegiance to ISIS, including some who were entirely innocent. Nor would that classification fit the ADL’s narrative, that Muslims in the U.S. are wholly and solely innocent victims of “Islamophobia,” and that jihad terrorism is not nearly the terror threat that white supremacism is.
This entire episode is yet another illustration of how arbitrary, politically motivated and defamatory the “hate group” classifications of the ADL and its friend and ally, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), really are.
“Anti-Defamation League Declares OK Sign a ‘Hate Symbol,'” by Jim Treacher, PJ Media, September 26, 2019:
I want to try a little experiment, Dear Reader, and it requires your participation. No, no, don’t worry, it’s nothing weird. I just need you to follow these instructions: Hold your dominant hand in front of you with your palm outward, like you’re about to wave. Then, curl your thumb up and your forefinger down until the fingertips touch each other, without curling the other three fingers.
Congratulations. You’re now a racist!
The “OK” hand gesture is now a hate symbol, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL added that symbol along with several others on Thursday to its long-standing database of slogans and symbols used by extremists…
The OK hand gesture and its link to white nationalism began as a hoax cooked up by users of the website 4chan, who falsely linked it to white supremacy, according to the ADL.
It was meant to bait the media or people with liberal ideals to overreact, ADL experts say, and therefore look ridiculous for condemning such an innocuous sign. But in 2019, the sign was adopted by some white nationalists.
Ahhh. See, it used to be a hoax. It was formerly a joke to make liberals look like big dummies for being scared of the OK sign. But then some really bad people started using that same gesture for real. That means you can’t use it now, or everybody will call you a racist. Sorry!…
“Maspeth High School’s secret to high pass rates is cheating: teachers,” by Susan Edelman, New York Post, September 14, 2019 (thanks to H):
At highly rated Maspeth High School in Queens, students know they can play hooky, skip course work, flunk tests — and still pass.
They call it the “Maspeth Minimum,” meaning everyone gets at least the minimum grade or score needed to pass or graduate, no matter what.
Whistleblowers call it fraud. The secret to the school’s 98% graduation and 90% Regents pass rate, they say, is simple: “Cheat!”…
Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbi [sic], who founded the school in 2011, did not respond to an email seeking a response….
US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos named Maspeth a 2018 National Blue Ribbon School, the highest honor the feds bestow upon schools…