Texas Rangers broadcaster C.J. Nitkowski has come under fire after liking a meme posted by the Twitter account @ProudBoysUSA which is associated to the pro-west fraternal group, Proud Boys. The Tweet, which is pictured below shows the U.S. women’s hockey team being pictured together, with one of the players showing their fingers in a circle, which is a part of the “circle game.”

The “circle game” is a game where one person puts their fingers in a circle and places it somewhere below the waist. If they can trick someone else into looking at the circle, that person loses the game.

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Much of the backlash had to do with the group itself, which was labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group earlier this month. As we reported here following that designation, the group itself isn’t actually a hateful group, despite the designation.

Many on Twitter also went after Nitkowski due to claims that the finger circle the U.S. women’s hockey player was displaying is actually a white power symbol. That claim came from a joke originating on the anonymous imageboard 4chan. The claim that the finger circle “ok” sign is a symbol for white power was so ridiculous that the Anti-Defamation League came out debunking the claim.

Despite that, Nitkowski was forced to set his Twitter account to private.

Big League Politics spoke exclusively with J.L. Van Dyke, who is a prominent member of the Texas Proud Boys. He lambasted the Southern Poverty Law Center, denying their claim that the Proud Boys are hateful.

“This shouldn’t be a controversy. The Proud Boys is a mainstream men’s organization of conservatives and libertarians that mostly likes to get together to drink beer,” Van Dyke stated. “In contrast, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a group of has-been political mudslingers that haven’t been relevant since they civil rights movement. Their list of “hate groups” is nothing more than a skillful fundraising ploy designed to part fearful people from their money. Since they don’t have many actual hate groups to fight, the work of the SPLC today mostly consists of political mudslinging.”

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