They’re either genuinely showing solidarity with white supremacists, or they’re pretending to because they think white supremacy is a good thing to clown around about. There is doubtlessly a subtle and important distinction between those two motivations, but I’m not particularly interested in drawing it. I want neither type of person in our military, especially not as an officer.
ETA: I am nearly 100% certain that they are not playing the “circle game”.
One thing I think is being overlooked . . What if they really are white supremacists? I mean, lots of people are, and do we really want white supremacists as officers?
Once again, when the story is about white dudes, everyone imagines they are the white dude in the story and thinks “why would I do that?” and the only semi plausible reason you can think of is maybe, just maybe, on your most dovish day, you felt really edgy and subversive. But that doesn’t mean that is their reason.
They shouldn’t do anything at all until they’ve asked around and investigated whether this is kids being dumb or racists using the media to represent and recruit.
Trolls should face penalties coming to trolls. Dox them if it makes you feel better. And if you’re offended by a hand signal, that’s nice, deal with it.
Rest assured, Academy leadership will deal with it, and the consequences could be severe. Here, I suspect the “snowflakes” (in the stereotypical “cry-baby millennial” sense that it is often used) may well be the cadets or midshipmen involved, whinging about how they did something stupid on television and, shock suddenly a bunch of people who have killed or been prepared to kill on behalf of the government are way overreacting.
I mean, these are schools where underage drinking isn’t just shrugged off as a youthful indiscretion, for instance.
Looks basically like the same thing as the circle game, obviously not to hit but it’s a way to draw the viewer’s eyes away from the guy being filmed and direct attention to themselves. Seriously young guys in a military academy they prob do dumb shit like that all the time. I know when I was in AIT in the Army we did.
Schools should have policies prohibiting students from using racially offensive speech and hand gestures during school events. Rest assured everyone who poses with ok sign has gotten the memo declaring what it means.
“But I’m trolling” is not an excuse, and it’s bizarre so many think it is. If I go into church shouting blasphemies, is anyone going to care if I claim not to really hate God, I’m just rick rolling the devout? If a guy on a street corner make obscene hand gestures as women pass by, will he be able to talk his way out of trouble by saying he’s just fooling? I mean, come on. Speech has consequences
Throughout the military, this is still known as “The Circle Game” and has nothing at all to do with white supremacy. Yes, grown-up soldiers still play The Circle Game.
I seriously have no clue what “the circle game” is. I looked it up, and I’ve never heard of it.
Is it some kind of gen x’er thing? Because it’s either very old or very new. And if it’s very old, I’d be curious to know why a bunch of late-model millennials and gen Z’ers are doing it.
Idk what year it became a thing, without giving out too much personal details, We played it when I was in high school and I graduated back in the early 2000’s, I was in AIT around 2009 and we played it then, after that I lived off post so I wasn’t really dealing with the childish antics of living in the barracks, which for young, unmarried soldiers is almost like a frat house sometimes.
I played the circle game in college in the early 90s. As we played it, the idea was to trick someone into looking at the finger circle (held below your waist, and maybe over your dick IIRC). Shoving your hand in front of someone’s face and claiming a score wasn’t the way it was done. How is putting your hand in front of a camera and going “I got you, yuk yuk” part of the circle game?
Well they are standing in bleachers, the hands are about at waist level of those making the gestures. It just looks like a bunch of young dudes goofing around on camera for attention, how is it white supremacy?
Yes, and this guy just tricked all of his buddies and millions of others to look at the finger circle. He now owes them all a punch, and to be honest, judging by the overreactions of people, maybe he truly does. How can you not see how epic it would be to slide in that circle on camera where everyone had to see it? That’s kind of the point of the game, a “made you look” game. I’m 42 and I’ve played it in school and I’ve even seen adults (males) play it today in Facebook photos with friends.
Because variants of the OK sign – including one with the fingers pointed down and one with the forefinger bent inward against the thumb – have been appropriated by white supremacists. Have you missed that part of the national conversation over the past couple years?
It’s held at their waist level. If they do that on camera where a few million people will inadvertently see it, that’s a ton of "yuk yuk"s, I’m sure. I’ve seen tons of graduation and other unit pictures going back at least 15 years where someone or several are posing with this gesture in order to “get” any and every single person who happens to look at it. It’s extremely immature, but it isn’t racist.
In 2011, there was a Basic Training graduation photo–it was one of the informal ones taken in front of the National Infantry Museum (NIM), and not the official graduation picture. Anyway, this picture was posted on the NIM’s Facebook page, which is where I saw it. One of the Drill Sergeants thought it would be funny to sneak this into the picture. I thought it was extremely unbecoming of a Drill Sergeant, unprofessional of an NCO, and just all around immature. I sent an email to the NIM and they removed the photo right away. At no time did anyone ever think it was anything more than The Circle Game. This was almost a decade ago. The only thing that has changed since then is other people’s misconception of what it is.
That’s how language and symbols work. I’m not going to hang a swastika over my door and claim it’s a good luck symbol despite people’s misperception of it.
I think punishment from the school for conduct unbecoming should occur. I find it highly unlikely that they wouldn’t know about the white supremacy connotation at this point. Yes, a lot of you haven’t, but they’re the smart phone generation. Memes are their heart blood.
Ya know what? I actually still have the picture. The NIM took it down, but I actually saved it. I was probably off a little on the date, the meta data says 2013. I’m going to go ahead and post this thing. None of the names are visible, and it demonstrates the point I’m making.
Notice the Drill Sergeant in the front row, second from the left. This was at least 6-7 years ago. It’s an immature game, that runs rampant across the military. It isn’t about racism.