Fashtag

About

Fashtag is a hoax orchestrated by members of 4chan's and 8chan's /pol/ boards attempting to trick people into thinking the "hashtag": is an alt-right hate symbol as part of a campaign known as "Operation Bash the Hash."

Origin

On April 6th, 2019, Steam Community ^[5] user FunkyMunkyAus posted a photoshopped version of the Nazi flag that replaced the swastika with a hashtag (shown below). They named the piece "#FASHTAG."

Spread

The following day, Gab ^[6] user @darngribbit posted the image with the caption, "I'm all for some 4chan pranks. Recently clowns have been deemed a white supremacist symbol. We can expect to see clowns be deemed Nazis in the coming months. I say we all take it a step further and move towards making HASHTAGS racist now" (shown below, left).

On May 23rd, 2019, an anonymous user submitted a thread titled "New meme op" to the /pol/ (politics) board on 8chan, which called for viewers to help spread images declaring the hashtag a "new alt-right hate symbol" (shown below, right).

The following day, the same post was submitted to 4chan's /pol/ board,^[2] where it gathered upwards of 130 replies prior to being archived.

On May 26th, 2019, YouTuber Conservative With a Mic uploaded a video discussing the hoax (shown below).

That day, Redditor KaliforniaX posted a photoshopped picture of a fake CNN report on the symbol, featuring a chyron with the question "The 'Fashtag', Alt-Rights New Hate Symbol?" to /r/The_Donald^[3] (shown below). The post was subsequently removed for being "misleading or inaccurate."

Meanwhile, Urban Dictionary^[4] user Coronatus submitted an entry for "fashtag," defining it as "a hate symbol used by neo-nazis and the racist alt-right" (shown below).

Search Interest

External References