People weren't using the OK gesture innocently. After 4chan trolls decided to start pretending it was a white supremacist symbol, actual white supremacists started using it as a symbol.
Some were using it in the traditional unironic (and IMHO cringe) way, similar to anyone who used the phrase “Let’s go, Brandon!” Before that NASCAR race when MAGAs adopted it as ironic + coded vice signaling.
Quit being overly pedantic. We all knew there was an unironic purpose for the gesture before it became ironic.
No, because western culture never really did. However the countries who have been using it for at least thousands of years in Buddhism are still using it just fine.
In fact there was a recent thing with one of the BTS members' uniform (worn during mandatory military service period in South Korea), which had the regular (not tilted) swastika on it because he was assigned to religious duties.
And of course the western world/media ran away with it. Plenty of absolutely brain dead people out there who couldn't research a topic to gain an understanding to save their lives.
>Do you still use swastikas as symbols of peace and love because you don't want white supremacists to define your language?
They were hardly ever used in the west for at least a full millenium before the Nazis too (except a handful of cases, where they still use them, like the Finnish Air Force), so that's a moot analogy.
In Asia, they still use them just fine, in houses, temples, businesses, and elsewhere.
