This week’s confirmation hearing for SCOTUS nominee Brett ‘I’ve changed my mind’ Kavanaugh has reignited the ‘debate’ over a supposed ‘secret’ white supremacist hand gesture. As the word ‘reignited’ indicated this is a fake controversy that has been visited before. Vox has an excellent article explaining the history of the live trolling and how it started. This has been spreading around the Internet faster than heated opinions about geeky media spurred onwards by a large dose of accepting anything that confirms preexisting biases. In addition to pointing people towards the Vox article I have a couple of thoughts on the matter.

First off the very concept of a public but secret symbol to identify one as a member of an ideological group seems quite ridiculous. Certainly secret symbols and identifiers, handshakes and the like, have existed and continue to exist, but they were used, primarily, as a method of revealing oneself as part of one-on-one interactions. So that someone could know that they had a friendly audience before revealing the secret part of themselves. Public gestures and identifiers have a very different purpose and that is to proclaim, loudly, where one stands in respect to an ideological concept, the Nazi Salute, the Black Power Raised Fist, the MAGA hat, and the Lapel Flag Pin all serve the same purpose for different factions, announcing ‘I am here and this is what I stand for.’ A gesture, particularly when is seems out of context, performed publicly creates interest and curiosity from those not part of the communication which defeats the entire concept of secret. It however perfectly aligns with the idea of ‘trolling’ taking actions in order to provoke a reaction.

And before I leave this thought on the absurdity of secret public signs let me also point out that in my opinion nothing about this administration or its devotees has anything in common with subtlety. Steven Bannon, Steven Miller, Richard Spencer, or Donald Trump have no need for secret communications as they loudly and blatantly announce who they are and what they believes quite often.

Another aspect of this is that the meanings of symbols can change over time. Because some people are in on the trolling gag does not mean that everyone is or that new people will adopt the symbol in the same manner.

Take for example the word ‘gunsel.’ In many film noir movies the term is used to describe a low-level thug with a gun, as a synonym for gunslinger. However that is not how it started. In the classic film The Maltese Falcon Spade provokes Wilmer into a rash angry action by referring to him as a ‘gunsel.’ It seems strange that Wilmer reacted so angrily to simply begin called a gun slinger but what Spade, Wilmer, the writers knew is that ‘gunsel’ doesn’t mean gun slinger it means the submissive partner in a homosexual relationship, specifically it is slang from the hobo community. The Breen Office did not the meaning no did most of the audience and the filmmakers flew under the radar with their code violating insult. Over time other writers and filmmaker, taking the definition from their misunderstanding of the context used the word to mean gunman and the new definition became the accepted one.

I believe that most of the people flashing the hand-sign are in on the plan to troll others, but you cannot be certain that everyone is aware of the purpose. Certainly as time passes and the reports grow that the OK hand gesture is really a racist one then there may come a day when the new definition and intent supplants the original intent.