Military Investigating Suspected 'White Power' Hand Gestures Flashed at Game

A broadcast showed cadets from the U.S. Military Academy and midshipmen from the Naval Academy in the stands displaying the sign at least five times behind ESPN broadcaster Rece Davis at the game, which was held at the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Saturday.

“West Point is looking into the matter,” Lt. Col. Christopher Ophardt, a spokesman at the military academy, said in an email Sunday. “At this time we do not know the intent of the cadets.”

Naval Academy officials have appointed a “preliminary inquiry officer to conduct an internal investigation into the hand gestures,” Cmdr. Alana Garas, an academy spokeswoman, said Sunday evening. “Based on findings of the investigation, those involved will be held appropriately accountable.”

The gesture, which looks like an OK sign, is formed by “the thumb and forefinger joined together in a circle, the remaining three fingers splayed out behind,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The center, a nonprofit group that monitors hate groups, noted last year that white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Klansmen had increasingly begun using the symbol “both to signal their presence to the like-minded as well as to identify potentially sympathetic recruits among young trolling artists flashing it.”

The Anti-Defamation League described the symbol as a hate sign that forms the letters “WP” for “white power.” Officials of the U.S. Coast Guard reprimanded a service member who flashed a similar gesture in the background of a television interview on MSNBC last year.

Viewers of the football game Saturday noticed the gestures and shared clips on social media.

Although the intent behind flashing the symbol was unclear, the gesture is also part of a juvenile prank popular in junior military ranks called the circle game: A person makes the OK symbol below the waistline, and if another person looks at it, the person making the gesture is allowed to punch the other, often in the arm.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .