Did Zina Bash Do It Again?

Look at the above epitome. On the left, of grade, is Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, at the Senate Judiciary Commission for his confirmation hearings. Behind him is his quondam clerk, longtime Republican legal operative Zina Bash. Just what is Fustigate doing with her paw? Is she resting it normally? Is she making an "okay" sign? Or could it be that she's making a … WHITE POWER HAND Betoken?

This is 2018, and then naturally, some prominent #resistance Twitter personalities jumped on the latter accusation, seeing Fustigate'due south hand movements as proof of Republican complicity with white supremacist movements:

Kavanaugh's former constabulary clerk Zina Bash is flashing a white ability 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. flick.twitter.com/uQGOpNa6xg

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) September 4, 2018

Eugene Gu, a prominent anti-Trump doctor who recently made news when he was accused of sexual assault, racked up more than thirteen,000 retweets and 17,500 likes for his tweet accusing Fustigate.

Keith Rubin, an Army veteran whose Twitter bio states he "love[s] everything except racism," got even more than engagement on his version of the post:

In a since-deleted tweet, Amy Siskind, the prominent Twitter personality who writes a weekly list of #NotNormal things the Trump assistants has done, stated that the manus signal should disqualify Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court.

Before we go any further: Bash was not making a "white ability paw signal." You can, if yous want, trust the word of her husband, John Bash, who is currently Us attorney for the Western Commune of Texas:

Zina is Mexican on her mother'south side and Jewish on her male parent's side. She was born in United mexican states. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. We of form have nothing to do with hate groups, which aim to terrorize and demean other people — never have and never would. two/three

— US Attorney John Fustigate (@USAttyBash) September 4, 2018

Only if his word isn't enough, yous can listen to real experts on white supremacist movements.

"No one should assume anything nearly the utilize of such a gesture unless there are other unmistakable white supremacist signifiers in that context as well," Mark Pitcavage, an expert on right-wing extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted, calculation:

Out of all the things you lot should be legitimately concerned well-nigh regarding the Senate confirmation hearings in Washington, DC, today for Estimate Kavanaugh & SCOTUS, handshakes and handsigns ought not exist amidst them.

Actual serious constitutional issues are at pale.

— Marking Pitcavage (@egavactip) September 4, 2018

Jared Holt, a enquiry associate at the left-leaning watchdog grouping Right Wing Lookout man, agrees. "It could accept just been her resting her hand in a manner that looked similar that," he said. "I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe this was intentionally a troll."

That'south the gist of it. Simply there'south a backstory to why the okay gesture is perceived equally a hate sign, and the eagerness of some liberals to comprehend fake news on the subject is itself revealing. We take, at this signal, gotten plenty of signs through bodily policy decisions, and concrete connections betwixt Trump staffers and white nationalist activists, that the Trump White House is pursuing a racist calendar. So why do people still desire a secret paw signal to prove that the Trump assistants is sympathetic to white supremacist goals?

The origins of the okay hand signal troll

As the ADL'southward Pitcavage explained last year, this whole story was fueled, like and so much internet nonsense earlier it, with a 4chan trolling endeavor.

In February 2017, Pitcavage writes, a 4chan user proposed an endeavour 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 mail, equally shared by KnowYourMeme:

KnowYourMeme

The selection of the okay symbol for the prank, as KnowYourMeme editor-in-principal Brad Kim explains, was not totally capricious; "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 mail, Jim Hoft and Lucian Wintrich of the alt-right outlet Gateway Pundit made the okay symbol in the White Firm Press Room. The left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters denounced information technology equally a "hate symbol," noting that images of alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog sometimes showed the character doing the "okay" sign:

A far bigger accident-up occurred the following Apr when journalist Emma Roller, then of Splinter, tweeted a photograph of alt-right celebrities Cassandra Fairbanks and Mike Cernovich making the okay sign in the White House press room:

Screengrab by Know Your Meme

To Channers and alt-right loyalists, this was the ultimate proof that the prank had worked: A left-leaning announcer had been fooled into thinking an innocuous manus gesture was a secret sign of deep, racist evil. Especially funny to them was when Roller explained her tweet by referencing a diagram … originating in the 4chan post that launched "Operation O-KKK":

Screengrab via KnowYourMeme

At get-go Fairbanks and Cernovich seemed to be having a laugh over the whole state of affairs. Fairbanks told BuzzFeed News's Joe Bernstein: "There was a troll meme going effectually saying that it meant white power. But information technology was a joke because Trump supporters are ever being called Nazis fifty-fifty when it isn't true." Cernovich told Bernstein that he borrowed the hand gesture from Jay-Z, and from a conspiracy theory alleging that Jay-Z used the gesture every bit a sign he's in the Illuminati.

Fairbanks would afterward purport to have the allegation a bit more seriously, and sued Roller for defamation in federal courtroom. Gauge Trevor McFadden of the DC District Courtroom, a Trump appointee, dismissed the lawsuit in an stance memorably offset, "Plaintiff Cassandra Fairbanks trolled the web through Twitter …"

Holt at Right Wing Spotter said that, meanwhile, "people at the ADL and people similar me who follow this stuff full-time tried to explain that this is not actually a symbol tied to white supremacy in whatsoever style."

Another iteration of the controversy exploded in December 2017, when the Daily Mail reported that White House intern Jack Breuer had flashed a "known 'white power' sign during a photo-op with President Donald Trump." Here'due south the photo in question, from then-Post reporter Jessica Chasmar:

Breuer strenuously denied the suggestion on Twitter:

In some of our intern pictures, I emulated the OK sign the President sometimes makes. That was foolish. I should have listened more closely to the Commander-in-Master and given the thumbs up. (1/2)

— Jack Breuer (@jjbreue) December 29, 2017

I'm proud of my Jewish heritage and strongly turn down the mean views associated with racist white power organizations. I would never make common cause with them. (two/two)

— Jack Breuer (@jjbreue) December 29, 2017

Snopes, the fact-checking website, called the accusation against Breuer "unproven," noting that the only show the Mail produced for the proffer that Breuer intentionally made the sign as a evidence of alt-correct solidarity was an anonymous quote from a fellow White Firm intern. Even that source conceded, "Jack'southward a adept kid and is probably doing it as a joke."

Holt, at Right Wing Picket, said that while information technology began as a hoax, the symbol's success as a troll has given it some new pregnant in right-wing circles it didn't have originally. He says intentional use of information technology falls into ii camps. "One is white supremacists making a tongue-in-cheek inside joke to each other," he said. "Then the larger contingent of people are people who do information technology in the photos to get a reaction and troll the libs."

In the old camp, he includes people similar Charlottesville rally organizer Jason Kessler; in the latter, folks similar Cernovich, an alt-correct troll who, while certainly a racist, is "probably more concerned with merely trying to brand liberals and the #resistance look every bit bad every bit humanly possible."

The Bash incident, and what this means for the White House and liberalism

Zina Bash, the latest bourgeois ensnared in an okay sign controversy, has a more intellectual pedigree than her predecessors Breuer, Fairbanks, and Cernovich. According to her LinkedIn folio, she holds degrees from Harvard College, Harvard Police force School, and Penn's Wharton business school, and she clerked for both Brett Kavanaugh on the DC Circuit (hence her presence at the hearings) and for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Until recently, she worked in the Trump White Firm every bit a special assistant to the president for regulatory reform, legal and immigration policy. In July, she joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton'due south office as a senior counsel.

It seems clear that Fairbanks and Cernovich were using the hand signal to troll the libs, and at least plausible that Breuer, Hoft, and Wintrich were as well. (The latter 2 are pretty prominent alt-right racists, but their incident was also before the 4chan hoax began.) But was Bash? It's certainly possible she was exposed to the idea of the troll.

That said, information technology's equally if not more than plausible that she was replying to a text message. (Some Twitter mitt signal detectives argued she can be seen getting an alert on her phone before the hand signal appears.) Or maybe she was signaling to someone watching the livestream; sending an okay signal to a senator or staffer sitting opposite her and Kavanaugh; or simply fidgeting with her fingers.

In that location'south but no reason, other than an epistemological delivery to assuming the absolute worst of admittedly everyone e'er associated with the Trump administration, to believe she did a small paw movement to bear witness her commitment to white supremacy.

Information technology's, of class, natural for imitation news about the president and his aides to proliferate among their political critics. When I was 14, I really sincerely believed that George Westward. Bush-league had snuck in an earpiece so he could be fed answers during his debates with John Kerry, and that the "bulge" in the back of his accommodate jacket proved this.

This was, of class, nonsense. Only Bush-league really was awful, and really was prosecuting a horrific state of war killing hundreds of thousands of people and torturing many more. That made ridiculous suggestions, like that Bush had to cheat at televised debates, seem plausible to me (that, plus I was xiv and my brain was small and unformed).

And, of course, faux news nigh Barack Obama (he'south secretly Kenyan!) and Pecker Clinton (he'southward a cocaine trafficker!) spread wildly among conservatives during their presidencies.

But in a manner, the Zina Fustigate fake news is stranger, considering information technology seems to ostend something we all already know: The Trump administration contains racists who want to use policy to harm nonwhite people. You don't need a mitt signal to know that.

Take, say, Rosie Grayness'southward exposé in the Atlantic of Homeland Security staffer Ian M. Smith, who was close with numerous white nationalists and went to a house party advertised as judenfrei (or "gratis of Jews"). Or take Stephen Miller, the White House domestic policy adviser responsible for the fractional implementation of Trump'south promise to ban Muslims from the U.s. and for the policy of separating immigrant families, and who alt-correct leader Richard Spencer has described as a friend and ally when they were at Knuckles together.

Or have, I don't know, the president: a man who as a candidate promised to ban all Muslims from the US, who calls Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas," who said that a Mexican-American guess is unfit to preside over cases involving him, who called Mexican immigrants "rapists," claimed Muslim-Americans celebrated the 9/eleven attacks. And so, after all that, a man who came into office and set about implementing the most anti-immigrant policies in years, slowing housing discrimination law enforcement to a halt, and reorienting the Justice Section away from fighting racial discrimination against blackness Americans. Oh, and who empathized with neo-Nazis after Charlottesville, and described Haiti and African nations as "shithole" countries, for good mensurate.

We don't demand to interpret hand signals to know where this administration stands on racism and white supremacy. Nosotros know very well where it stands.

coynelifeastrom.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821946/white-power-hand-signal-brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-hearing-zina-bash-4chan

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