The Alt-Right’s Newest Ploy? Trolling With False Symbols
>"Don't feed the trolls" remains indispensable guidanceforthe internet, if only because trolls exist solely to get a reaction out ofyou. Ignore them and they lose all power.
>Thesemaster baiters represent the so-called alt-right, the meme-fluent arm of American white nationalism. Even as their memes morph intomilitaristic propaganda, thisloosely organized troll army inhabitingextremist corners of social media, Sup Forums, and Reddit has adopted a new tactic: claiming mundane objects like milk, the peace symbol, and the LGBTQ flag as symbols of white supremacy. Every reappropriation providesanother reminder that a troll’s greatest strength lies inweaponizing youranger.
>This goes beyondsowing irritation and confusionamong “normies” and “snowflakes.” The alt-right is attempting to normalize itself and itsideas. If anybody who drinks milkmight be a Nazi, the idea of someone being a Nazi starts lookingmore pedestrian.
>It looks like thisstarted in February, whenusers on Sup Forums, using an image lifted from a 2013 Nature article about lactose intolerance, seized on the idea that Northern European adults have no trouble withlactose. From there, it was but a short hop to some racist poetry and the idea of making milk a symbol for whiteness.A couple of weeks later, neo-Nazis drank milk while trolling Shia LaBeouf’s anti-Trump performance art piece,He Will Not Divide Us. The media took it from there .
>They repeated thiscycle—make a joke, perform the joke in real life, watch the media report on the joke as a real menace—with the OK sign.A numberof media sites recently claimed that the alt-right adopted it asa symbol of white power,
