Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live last weekend and people believe he used a racist white supremacist hand gesture on live TV.
Elon Musk excitedly announced that he would be hosting the classic skit comedy show Saturday Night Live early May, but now the tech billionaire is being accused of racism. Musk displayed an “OK” sign during one of his bits on SNL and some believe he was signalling to white supremacists.
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There were already a few alarms sounding before Elon Musk stood Saturday Night Live (abbreviated as SNL) stage in New York City last Saturday. Cast and crew members were told that they would not be forced to work with, let alone be in the same room, as the Tesla CEO. A few crew members had complained to the producers that Elon Musk was too problematic and his presence might trigger their PTSD.
What exactly did the Saturday Night Live crew members find to be problematic with Elon Musk? His tweets. Well, to be accurate, his Twitter takes on some partisan issues ie. mandatory vaccinations, capitalism, first amendment and cryptocurrency just to name a few.
Tensions were already high before Elon Musk set a single foot on the SNL set as some Twitter checkmarks already had their crosshair set tightly on him just waiting for him to slip. They believed they caught definitive proof that he is a white supremacist when he flashed a hand gesture doing one of his bits.
In one Weekend Update skit Elon Musk plays a financial advisors who is being interviewed by the news. When explained Dogecoin and cryptocurrencies to the interviewer, when he’s explaining “the hustle” Musk flashes two OK hand gestures and thousands of people on Twitter believed he was signalling to white supremacists.
Freelance writer, Daisy Barringer, was shocked when she saw the Weekend Update segment she was livid, saying it sent her into a “tornado of emotional despair.”
Is the OK hand gesture really racist?
No. It’s not. The OK hand gesture is not racist, but members of the popular image messaging board 4chan managed to trick the mainstream media into believing with a cleverly devised troll known as ‘Operation O-KKK’.
According to KnowYourMeme, in February 2017, 4chan users launched Operation O-KKK to “flood Twitter and other social media websites” with posts claiming the OK hand symbol was a “symbol of white supremacy,” along with a picture of an OK symbol identifying the three up-turned fingers as a symbol for “W” and the thumb-and-forefinger circle as a symbol for “P.”
After the media reported that former US president Donald J Trump had repeatedly used a white supremacists hand gesture by doing the OK hand sign in photos, other conservatives jokingly did the pose to display the absurdity of the mainstream media outrage.
Despite evidence that this all stemmed as a troll campaign from 4chan, the Anti Defamation League officially added the OK hand gesture to their list of “racist hand signs.”
“Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature,” the ADL stated on their website.
“I hope he dies.”
Daisy Barringer followed up with another tweet regarding Musk’s use of the ADL confirmed racist hand sign wishing him to die in a horrific death.
“I almost don’t have the words but I will say I hope his Tesla catches on fire and he dies,” Barringa tweeted with a smiley face.
Some have argued that Elon Musk was making quotation marks with his hands and not doing, what the ADL consdider, a racist OK hand sign when he was talking in the Weekend Update segment.
Daisy Barringer has since made her Twitter profile private, presumably to avoid criticism, and neither Elon Musk nor Saturday Night Live (SNL) have responded to her demands for an answer.