white power hand sign

This is a gesture in which the thumb and index finger make a circle and the other three fingers are stretched out straight.  It has meant various different things in the past but the most common meaning has been ‘OK!”

 White supremacists took control of the sign by inventing a different significance for it. According to them the three straight fingers represented the letter W and the circle with the line of the thumb running down from it represented the letter P. White Power.  They were so successful in this attempted hijack that many other white power supporters took them seriously and adopted the sign. 

 The most notable instance of its use has for us been the gesture made  in court by Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch terrorist. After that its popularity grew in white supremacist circles in Australia to the point where the Army has felt obliged to ban it.