Last Updated on December 30, 2019
Mocking phrases such as “We Wuz Kangs,” “We Wuz Kings,” and “Kings N Shiet,” have been listed by the ADL as ‘hate slogans.’
‘We Wuz Kangz’ is a phrase used to mock individuals of certain extractions for wild historically revised racialist claims stemming from Egyptian history to classical musicians to 16th century poets and beyond.
Now, ‘We Wuz Kangz’ joins the ranks of various internet slogans and trolls such as 13/52, the “OK Hand Gesture,” and “It’s OK to Be White.”
According to the ADL website:
“We Wuz Kangs” is a racist catchphrase and collection of memes directed at African-Americans and other people of sub-Saharan African descent. Originating in 2015 and popularized by the website 4chan, the phrase is a racist shorthand reference to discredited but popular Afrocentric theories that claimed sub-Saharan Africans were descended from ancient Egyptians.
The phrase and meme are intended to mock the Afrocentric theories and, by extension, anyone who might believe in them. Users employ phrases such as “We Wuz Kangs,” “We Wuz Kings,” and “Kings N Shiet,” featuring mock black American dialect that is intended to portray blacks as ignorant and a contrast to the ostensibly more civilized ancient Egyptians. Meme versions of the phrase similarly tend to feature images with racist stereotypes of black people, often contrasted with images of Egyptian pharaohs. The overall intent is to portray blacks as crude, ignorant and uncivilized.
Many of the so-called Afrocentric narratives are loaded in anti-white decolonizing social justice phraseology, often adding a further dimension to its unintended comedic value.
The ADL continues:
Memes featuring the phrase often include an image of an African leader taken from The African Kingdoms expansion of the video game Age of Empires II, which debuted around the time the meme was created in 2015. Usage of the meme seemed to increase with the release of the popular movie Black Panther in 2018.
As previously identified, this isn’t the first time internet trolling has been included as hateful.
Recently, National File reported on the ADL’s inclusion of the 13/52 numeric meme to denote FBI crime statistics by racial demographics.
National File reported:
In part, the meme is used to derail progressive egalitarian narratives surrounding crime, alluding to the possibility of there being another causal factor behind the commission of certain crimes other than so-called “systemic racism,” “institutionalized racism,” or wealth inequality.
According to the ADL website:
The number 13 used in conjunction with either the number 52 or the number 90 is a shorthand reference to racist propaganda claims by white supremacists against African-Americans to depict them as savage and criminal in nature.
In this numeric shorthand, the number 13 refers to the purported percentage of the U.S. population that is African-American. The number 52 refers to the alleged percentage of all murders committed in the U.S. that are committed by African-Americans. Some white supremacists use the number 50 instead of 52.
The OK Sign was one of the most successful trolls originating in the bowels of the internet.
A small hand gesture has been recoded to signify something related to ‘white supremacy,’ which has identified two things: 1) the knee jerk attitude to denouncing a simple internet troll in relation to its redefinition 2) the awesome power wielded by the cultural left in commanding outrage mobs to socially destroy those who use the OK sign–whether they know the meaning of the circular hand gesture or not.
National File previously reported that the ADL officially placed the OK sign in its hate database, claiming that it has white supremacist ties:
In 2017, an online troll campaign began to trick the media into thinking that the OK sign was a white supremacist one, given how willing they are to decry anything as racist. As expected, the legacy media jumped right onto it, but the ADL themselves did not take the bait, and noted the trolling for what it was.
Despite knowing the entire thing was made up to incense the liberal media, the ADL on Wednesday declared that the OK sign was now an unironic racist symbol, and decided to include it in their hate symbols database.
