What exactly is a “racist dogwhistle”?
In: 3987
Dog whistling is the use of words, phrases, images, etc where your target group understands an additional meaning than a casual observer who isn’t part of the group you’re talking to.
For example, going out and yelling that the Jews control the media and are a bunch of child murdering perverts is gonna get you shut down pretty quickly. But what if you’re part of an ethnic-political identity that has established a kinda slang where the words Globalists/Illuminati/Soros/Cabal and so on all mean “Jews” to you intended audience. From there you can go on shouting “Globalists control the media to help a secret Cabal of elites kidnap children for perverted causes” and anyone who wants to criticize you has to them explain to those outside your group that you’re using words like “Globalists” and “Cabal” as a stand in for “Jews” while you’re all 😇 Who? Me? 😇 if anyone calls you out as an antisemite. But your audience understands you just fine.
Similarly if you want to go around yelling that you want to murder homosexuals… tough sell to the mass market. So instead you go around creating hysteria that homosexuals are “grooming” children, and then you go around shouting that people who rape children need to be murdered. Your intended audience knows to tie these two statements together, people outside it who aren’t part of your group don’t.
Or, on the race angle, say you want to perform a song about how good lynching is. Again… tough sell to the ordinary folk. So instead you sing about how a bunch of armed good ole boys are going to round up those outsiders who need to find out and shoot your music video advocating for vigilante violence against the site of a notorious lynching. Now you’ve not mentioned race once, so can be all 😇 Who? Me? 😇 when people object to the type of violence you’re promoting.
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