[snakke]

While it is true that it started as a 4-chan hoax, and the ADL considers it a hate symbol, that's not the entire story. The page of the ADL[0] explicitly mention that in the vast majority of cases it just means ok. Much like how 14 and 88 are perfectly normal numbers, but when someone uses a personalised numberplate Adolf1488 they probably didn't choose those numbers at random.

It's also that symbols and gestures evolve in a social context, people, language, customs and culture changes. It's not unthinkable for symbols to get a worse connotation over time because a group used them a lot. So the question then becomes, do actual white supremacists consistently use the symbol as a way to identify themselves? Eh, I don't think that's the case anymore or in meaningful quantities. But after the populairty of the hoax white supremacists did co-opt it for a while. Is it still completely meaningless if a racist mass-murderer flashes the symbol?

So yeah, indeed it started as a hoax, but the implication that the ADL only included it because they were somehow gulled by a hoax is incorrect.

(As an aside, the OK-gesture is quite culturally different and dependent on context in the first place. Had a mate who while drunk almost started a fight with some Turkish dudes by flashing it, since apparently it mimics the asshole and basically means "you're an asshole". And in France it apparently means that you're a zero, since it looks like a zero.)

[0]: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/okay-h...