Bear_Nenno your point is taken. I’ve never been in the military, and I don’t know how the circle game is done there nor how prevalent it is. And I concede that getting the camera to “look” may have been the point.
However I continue to think it is overwhelmingly likely that an adolescent a couple years removed from civilian life is aware of the current association of the OK gesture and that these guys were trolling or showing off their true feelings. I have no way of knowing for sure. But the national conversation over the past few years, the growing boldness of white supremacists, and the problem of white supremacists in the military, all make me hesitant to give these guys the benefit of the doubt.
Bear_Nenno your point is taken. I’ve never been in the military, and I don’t know how the circle game is done there nor how prevalent it is. And I concede that getting the camera to “look” may have been the point.
However I continue to think it is overwhelmingly likely that an adolescent a couple years removed from civilian life is aware of the current association of the OK gesture and that these guys were trolling or showing off their true feelings. I have no way of knowing for sure. But the national conversation over the past few years, the growing boldness of white supremacists, and the problem of white supremacists in the military, all make me hesitant to give these guys the benefit of the doubt.
What troll have you ever been around? The whole point of trolling is to get a reaction. When you ignore them they don’t get what they want. I have trolls, at times, online due to some activism that I partake in. I don’t respond. That robs them of the sweet, sweet nectar of whining and tears that they look for. Engaging trolls only encourages them. They don’t have to keep upping the ante because there’s always some sucker there to take the bait. There are many here.
Yes, you have. What you miss is that we don’t actually have to believe you. We can have played the game ourselves, or talked to other people who played it.
I explain your picture by the fact his hand is not held in the same position. It is held in a way that someone could see it to his right, allowing the game to work. There’s also the possibility that there is someone on the other side of the camera to see it, which is why it’s not held completely to the side.
I also note it’s held down by his waist and tries to hid e it, rather than boldy holding it by someone’s face in front of him, and that he holds the circle properly, with both tips hitting his fingers. The guy in the crowd is letting his thumb stick out.
You are incorrect in assuming the white power symbol is never inverted. It often is, specifically in photos. It’s one way to tell it apart from the OK sign, as that is never inverted. People have lost their jobs for the inverted symbol–simply google white power symbol.
I know that you are convinced that it is not the white power symbol, but that’s exactly how these things work. They have to have the plausible deniability. The point is to get people (mostly conservatives) to defend them. It’s just those liberals/SJWs/etc being outraged!
I am not convinced. As I said, people know about this, and know how such hand gestures will be interpreted. He knew how it would be interpreted, and did it anyways.
I can accept that it could be found out that the guy is a rabid racist. Maybe they find horrible things on his social media and the guy is a flat out nazi. Sure, it could happen. The guy is clearly in a fraternity of guys that play this game, of whom I’ve known some, but I can say that there’s the possibility that he is a racist making white supremacist symbols to his brothers out there online as a not so secret message. If he proves to be then he should be kicked out and dealt with harshly. I agree.
Can you, those of you that feel so outraged by his act, concede that it could just be a game? Can you fathom a world where people do things that don’t fit your narrative? Just wondering. Could it be a kid (a lot of these guys are very young) playing a game and trying to take it to the next level by getting everyone in the tv audience as well by making them look? Is that possible? If it comes out that it was just a game can you accept it, and can you accept it if he’s not punished to make you feel better?
Do you understand that there is a large percentage of people who have to walk around every day wondering how and if their lives are going to be affected by white supremacy? I quit posting on Facebook and Twitter because I started fearing for my life after Trump got elected and two people in Kansas City got killed simply for being of my ethnicity.
Only people who don’t have that fear get to play such games without a care. I don’t want them punished to make me feel better. I want society to say that this shit isn’t funny so fuck off with your games. Trolling isn’t a game and it isn’t funny. If it’s inadvertent then society shouldn’t make it clear to them that it’s unacceptable and inadvertent isn’t allowed.
It’s high time that white people start having to consider and re-consider every move they make in public, just like non-white people have had to do for centuries. We don’t get a break ever. It’s high time white people stopped getting breaks.
We need hand symbol, flag, and hat police? Seriously, at some point people just need to accept that other people think differently and that’s fine. Now who knows what this person was thinking. Who cares?
It’s a lot like Voldemort in Harry Potter by being so afraid of words and symbols you make those words and symbols far more powerful than they really are.
Seems easy enough to look into. If a cadet flashed the sign but otherwise had a good record, tell him to knock it off. If the cadet flashed the sign but there’s reason to be concerned about other racist statements, then there’s a ton of other fully qualified Americans who can make better use of a USMA education.
On one hand you say that you don’t want them punished to make you feel better, then you go on to talk about your feelings and how because of them he, and all white people really, should be punished.
What you say above is more race based than what the kid did. You expressly want to punish white people. You don’t even care of someone did something inadvertently.
Letting fear rule one’s life, or dictating the lives of others out of one’s own fear, is a race to the bottom. That will never create a better society.
You should come hang out with me at the Army Navy Country Club sometime and listen to the retired O-6s still talk about Obama. It’s pretty clear that some of the comments I have heard are not based on high-minded policy differences. And I doubt they picked up those views upon retirement.
It was absolutely wrong for society to cave in to 4chan’s trolling by letting them redefine the OK hand symbol to denote racism, and then flee from that hand gesture.
What if 4chan decides to make fist bumps, high fives, handshakes into symbols of white supremacy? At a certain point you have to make a stand and say “We refuse to let Internet trolls be in charge of us.”
The quoted statistic was, “About 22 percent of service members who participated in the survey last fall said they have seen signs of white nationalism or racist ideology within the armed forces”. So what percentage of that is actually white nationalism and not just racism? So if 1% of those who participated in the survey said they witnessed signs of white nationalism in the military and 21% witnessed racism, that’s 22 percent of saw one or the other. Was it two different questions? Or was it one question that just said, “Have you witnessed racism or white supremacy in the military? Because it it’s the latter, then white nationalism could be as low as 0% and there are just 22% who witnessed some form of racism.
There might be some good information in there around page 7. It says "A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that “large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces.” But it doesn’t seem to offer a cite. I will have to find this 2006 report and see where they found “large numbers” and just how large we’re talking about.
That’s an editorial that speaks mostly about the history of white supremacy in the military. It offers little facts about the numbers or activities of white supremacists currently in the military. That article was originally titled, “Does the American Military Have a Problem with Far-right Extremism?”. It was posed as a question. That’s not really convincing.
From the article: “Lawmakers want to know if military and homeland security leaders are doing enough to monitor the armed forces for signs of white nationalism and other dangerous extremism in the wake of the arrest of a Coast Guard lieutenant with radical views who was plotting mass murder.”
This article is about law makers asking about extremism in the military after an incident where one white supremacist/domestic terrorist serving in the Coast Guard was arrested after his plot was uncovered. This was a single lone wolf. There wasn’t a huge underground ring of neo-nazis arrested along with him. Had there been, I would say the military has a “pervasive white supremacy problem”. But this is just one guy. There has been as many muslim extremists in the military. Strange that an organization would have both white supremacists and muslim extremists in the same group! Extremism is an issue in the military, that includes but is not limited to White Nationalism. Gangs are an issue in the Army as well. I wouldn’t classify any of these issues as “pervasive”. One or two dozen people in an organization consisting of almost 1.5 million people… you’re going to have all types. A few isolated incidents doesn’t equate to “pervasive” in my opinion.
This is the poll nelliebly linked to. I don’t agree that it necessarily suggests what the author thinks it does. In fact, looking at it further, I am certain that both “racism” and “white supremacy” where included together in the same question. This was from a poll that only had 19 total questions, and those questions ranged from Trump approval, to Climate Change, to Space Force, to China/Russia… and a huge array of subjects. It wasn’t a survey focused solely on white supremacy, so it didn’t take the time to ask detailed questions. It just lumped everything together and drew whatever conclusion they felt like. This was really bad science, actually. And looking at the critiques from those surveyed, some made comments like “you know racism and white supremacy are not the same thing, right?” suggesting to me that the question contained both categories in a single question.
This is literally the exact same article from The Week that you linked to above.
This is another editorial about the same neo nazi in the Coast Guard from your previous cite. Posting two different links to what is essentially the same article inspired by the same one person does not help to prove this is a “pervasive” problem. If it were pervasive, you wouldn’t need to keep repeating the same story. Yes, there was a neo nazi arrested for planning a terrorist attack while serving as a LT in the Coast Guard. That doesn’t make white nationalism a pervasive problem in the military. Hell… the Coast Guard isn’t even military most of the time. When they’re not specifically being controlled by the Navy for a war or conflict, they fall under the Department of Homeland Security. They’re more of a law enforcement organization than the military. But anyway, I will concur that they are military. It still doesn’t make their one single Nazi a “pervasive” problem across the entire military organization.
This article talks about that one Coast Guardsman again, it talks about “extremists” in general and then it goes on about the “history” of white supremacists and the military way back to the 1860s. I would not argue that throughout history, society as a whole to include (but not limited to) the military has had a white supremacist problem. But I’ll also point out from your cite here this statement:
“The trouble, Ms. Beirich said, is that the Pentagon does not see white nationalists in the ranks as a major issue. “We’ve had a hard time convincing the military of the seriousness of this problem,” she said.
The Defense Department did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but its posture has generally been that the number of troops involved in extremist activity is tiny, that there are strict regulations against discrimination and extremist activity, and that military commanders are empowered to discipline and discharge troops who break them. The department told Congress in a 2018 letter that, out of 1.3 million serving members of the military, only 18 had been disciplined or discharged for extremist activity over the past five years.”
(Bolded for emphasis). The Pentagon doesn’t see this as a “pervasisve” problem, or a problem at all for that matter. They’ve seen 18 extremists (all types of extremists, not just neo-nazis) over that past 5 years. Out of a population of 1.3 million. That’s not very convincing to your position.
There is also this, however:
“Experts say, though, that because extremists generally try to keep their activities in the shadows, the official discipline figures probably understate the scale of the problem.”
I fully accept that these figures understate the scale of the problem. But “by how much?” is the question. I personally don’t feel that this is a pervasive problem, your cites have failed to demonstrate that it is, and as this statement points out, we can’t really be sure either way. Referring then to my personal experience, and the fact that if it were a pervasive problem, I would have witnessed it or at least heard about it around me. I haven’t. So I think that it’s not a huge problem in the military.
Seriously this is just another article talking about that same Coast Guard neo-nazi. One guy! Out of almost a million and a half. Is that pervasive to you? You’ve posted over a half dozen articles (counting your duplicates) and they all seem to be talking about once single neo-nazi and the incident which was never carried out because authorities were on to him. If he was just another of the many pervasive neo-nazis across the military, he should have been able to blend in better. But he was caught. And he was caught because he stood out.
Not arguing against that. But that has nothing to do with the statement that “the military has a well-known and pervasive white supremacy problem”.
You posted 8 links. Two of them to the same article. Almost all of them were about one guy. If “one guy” equates to a “pervasive problem” to you, then we’re just not going to agree. Otherwise, I think you might realize that you’ve overstated the problem.
You purposely ignored what I said to take it in the direction you want. I won’t engage in that. I never said that people of a certain race didn’t have problems. You specifically took aim at white people and you discussed pain that you felt that you want them to feel as well. If you think that makes society better, that’s a sad outlook.
This whole discussion has a whole lot of projection in it and I’m going to bow out. People see what they want to see. I prefer to start without branding a guy a white supremacist based on something I know to be a game and kind of figure that if he was doing it to signal to his other nazi buddies out there then he certainly didn’t think it through well because he did it on television. I don’t just jump straight to race or fear. Others do. Everyone lives out their experience and I’m not going to try to argue yours as you probably shouldn’t try to argue mine.
Seems like the organization that can’t solve a sexual assault problem has cracked the code on racism. Maybe they can apply the solution that works to the other problem.
Or, maybe there’s a lot of denial going on. I mean, sexual assault wasn’t an issue in the military until that Tailhook scandal… right?
Sure, you don’t have to believe anything I say, which is why I provided a link to Dictionary.com which explains it exactly the way I did. Are you also going to choose to not believe the dictionary as well?
It would be stupid for “society” to turn a blind-eye to blatant racism and trollery just because someone is smart enough to hide behind the fig leaf of a stupid game.