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The far right is claiming more and more of everyday life as its own — and whether it succeeds is, to a surprising degree, up to us.
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Once every few years, I go scuba diving. Rarely, but often enough to have taken up the habit of doing the "OK" sign with my index finger and thumb, instead of giving the thumbs up. So I was quite annoyed when I learned that a small group on the forum 4chan decided to troll the internet by claiming that the universally recognised hand sign was now being used by white supremacists to identify each other. The gesture, so they argued, vaguely looked like "WP": White Power. As with most ideas that spawn in this corner of the internet, the motivation lay somewhere between doing it "for the lolz", to prove that they can make the "normies" believe anything, and in some cases quite simply racism.
Inevitably, some news outlets fell for the hoax and reported on the new calling card of the "alt-right" (a euphemistic neologism for Neo-Nazis). I knew it was nonsense, but still, from then on, a slight tinge of uncertainty washed over me every time I gave my "OK" in public. Not least because by then, the joke had landed. The reporting turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The common signal was now being used by very real supremacists to signal their very real ideology to each other.
A common, widely understood hand sign had become tainted: There suddenly was a serious possibility that somebody could mistake my (or your) innocent "OK" as a hate-symbol – because a small group of people on the internet decided so. They had taken one more part of our common understanding of the world and corrupted it, small as it may be. Symbols and words, after all, only carry the meaning we imbue them with. The OK sign falls in line behind a growing list of numbers (88, 18, 14…), abbreviations (HH, AH, SS, …) Runes (despite nordic gods being outrageously, flamboyantly queer, just ask Loki, mother to Odin's horse), Symbols and memes that might elicit some raised brows when seen as a license plate or even as a tattoo. They even took Pepe the Frog from us!
Another example of this absurd appropriation dynamic is the term "woke", which has crept even into Luxembourgish political discourse. In current usage, "woke" functions as a catch-all slur for anything and anyone that annoys the right. What it is supposed to mean exactly is, to most users, irrelevant. This was, funnily enough, given a definitive answer before an American court, when Republican Governor DeSantis fired State Attorney Ander Warren for being a "woke ideologue". Since the judge needed to understand the term to come to a fair decision, he had DeSantis's lawyers define it. They did, as follows: "The belief that there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them." This mirrors its original meaning surprisingly closely and, when laid out, exposes the absurdity of using it as a slur: To deny systemic injustices is to deny objective reality, to deny the need to address them is to deny civic duty—to choose to sleep.
"If you retreat from the get-go, the fascists win by default."
Yet "woke" continues to be a prolific slur, wielded by the ignorant. During the Covid-19 pandemic, this led to quite a few people being rather confusingly both "woke" and a "Schlafschaf" (sleeping sheeple) at the same time. The sovereignty of interpretation (Deutungshoheit) is a powerful thing, and we carry the responsibility not to let it fall into the wrong hands.
My annoyance with the far-right trying to define and appropriate the things we love (or are) got rekindled recently by an article by Audrey Somnard. The piece described, in detail and with proof, how the far-right infiltrates the wellness and fitness scene. Since the gym is more affordable than diving, I spend quite a bit more time there than underwater. And while the gym I go to can in my experience be described as nothing but welcoming and warm – though some of that may be sweat – watching fitness content requires some regular pruning of my social media feeds. This should not be a huge surprise: Where there is talk of biology and genetics, racism is sure to rear its ugly head. This does not make the gym and wellness racist, of course, but it does mean that it has been identified by hateful people as a place to spit their bile.
What stuck out almost more than the article itself was the comment section. It was quite amusing to see the very people that deny any links to far-right ideas also deny the existence of the problem. Can't even go to the gym these days, without being called a nazi, eh? Assuming they are all avid gym goers that reject racist ideas, should their first instinct not have been surprise and disgust that their hobby is being coopted by bigots to spread hatred, and, somewhat more selfishly, wondering what connotations this carries for them when talking about their hobby?
At least, it did for me: Would I, in the future, need to tread more carefully when talking about this part of my life, much like I do with the "OK" sign? Would I let them take this from me, from us – the woke gymrats, as it so happens? What is an OK slinging, rare Pepe collecting woke sheeple to do?
Many readers will have noticed that what I am describing is a miniaturised version of the reappropriation challenges that almost every minority has faced: How do you avoid being defined by others? By reappropriating what they try to use against you. So, let's take the same approach and wear the label proudly. Signal OK, post dank Pepes, be woke – as you understand it, not as they try do dictate it.
Because if you retreat from the get-go, the fascists win by default. If only the alt-right uses the OK sign, it does indeed become a hate symbol, and a hate symbol only. If we let the far-right monopolise Pepe (despite his creator Matt Furie suing people who use him as a hate-symbol), he will, in fact, become theirs. There are of course symbols that have been corrupted beyond saving – there is no bringing back the Sun Wheel or the so-called Roman Salute – though they may remain useful tools for identifying real neo-Nazis. But for everything else, we should not give an inch. Because definitory power lies where people believe it lies. So, let’s claim it.
