Judge Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing: 4Chan ‘white power’ prank goes viral as Zina Bash photos drive left insane
This is beyond fake news, it is literally a hysterical litmus test of the insanity consuming many on the left. A 4Chan joke about the “ok” symbol being a “White Power hand signal” found new life as longtime Republican legal aide Zina Bash crossed her arms and her hands formed the gestured.
Check out the image at the bottom.
Then the Internet broke.
Eugene Gu, a prominent anti-Trump doctor who recently made news when he was accused of sexual assault, racked up more than 13,000 retweets and 17,500 likes for his tweet accusing Bash.
Kavanaugh’s former law clerk Zina Bash is flashing a white power sign behind him during his Senate confirmation hearing. They literally want to bring white supremacy to the Supreme Court. What a national outrage and a disgrace to the rule of law. pic.twitter.com/uQGOpNa6xg
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) September 4, 2018
Keith Rubin, an Army veteran whose Twitter bio states he “love[s] everything except racism,” got even more engagement on his version of the post:
Who is she? What’s up with the white power sign? @MSNBCpic.twitter.com/VUU9QsFdXW
— Keith R. Dumas (@rubin_kd) September 4, 2018
Amy Siskind, the prominent Twitter personality who writes a weekly list of #NotNormal things the Trump administration has done, stated that the hand signal should disqualify Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court.
Zina’s husband, John Bash, who is currently US attorney for the Western District of Texas, attempted to quell the hysteria:
Zina is Mexican on her mother’s side and Jewish on her father’s side. She was born in Mexico. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. We of course have nothing to do with hate groups, which aim to terrorize and demean other people — never have and never would. 2/3
— US Attorney John Bash (@USAttyBash) September 4, 2018
Jared Holt, a research associate at the left-leaning watchdog group Right Wing Watch, agrees. “It could have just been her resting her hand in a way that looked like that,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything that would lead me to believe this was intentionally a troll.”
Vox published the hand gesture’s history:
“.ADL’s Pitcavage explained last year, this whole story was fueled, like so much internet nonsense before it, with a 4chan trolling effort.
In February 2017, Pitcavage writes, a 4chan user proposed an effort called “Operation O-KKK” in which he and allies would, in the anonymous user’s words, “flood Twitter and other social media websites … claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy.” Here’s the original 4chan post, as shared by KnowYourMeme:
The ACLU couldn’t help themselves:
KnowYourMeme editor-in-chief Brad Kim explains: “Sometime during the 2016 United States presidential election,” Kim writes, “Pizza Party Ben and Milo Yiannopoulos began making the gesture together at various events supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump.”
On February 13, 2017, a few weeks before the 4chan post, Jim Hoft and Lucian Wintrich of the alt-right outlet Gateway Pundit made the okay symbol in the White House Press Room.
The left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters denounced it as a “hate symbol,” noting that images of alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog sometimes showed the character doing the “okay” sign.
Zina Bash’s “white power” signal – a complete 4Chan hoax
