“White power” gesture not the first extremist move in Bolsonaro cabinet

“To all of those sick minds who saw an authoritarian gesture in footage of me adjusting my lapel mic, I’ll sue you one by one.” On Wednesday evening, far-right Brazilian foreign policy advisor Filipe Martins raised a furor during a Senate debate on the government’s progress in procuring Covid-19 vaccines abroad. While on camera and standing behind Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco, Mr. Martins appeared to give the O.K. hand gesture — a symbol currently associated with white supremacy groups in the U.S.

A close friend of Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro — the president’s third-eldest son — Mr. Martins is adept in the culture of the American alt-right, among whom the O.K. signal is used earnestly as a white supremacist gesture.

The genesis of the co-opting of an otherwise innocuous hand gesture began as a hoax in 2017, led by users of anonymous imageboard website 4chan — more specifically, its “Politically Incorrect”/pol/ forum. Posts attempted to trick liberals and the media into believing that the O.K. gesture had its roots in white supremacist groups, representing the letters “wp,” or “white power.”

The hoax was widely successful, and white nationalists in the U.S. began using the gesture earnestly.

In Brazil, the O.K. gesture is offensive in its own right, akin...