But I thought the whole point of a dog whistle is to do two things:
Say a thing out loud that can be interpreted in so many different ways, people who wouldn’t be 100% on board with the sentiment behind the dog whistle will agree with it and repeat it.
Allow the group who might not be agreed with if they just said they really meant, to speak out publicly about a subject or opinion and not immediately be rejected by the majority of a group.
A dog whistle doesn’t have to be a false statement or true statement but it seems like they tend toward being vague. Its all innuendo. When a phrase is said, there is a wink and a nod at the end instead of a period.
Like, “state’s rights”, “school choice”, or “urban youth”. Those three phrases seem pretty straight forward if you aren’t looking at them through any particular lense.
A normie gets to think about “state’s rights” and it sounds pretty good right? “Hey, we can made decisions on what we do around here. We are capable of making decisions for ourselves.” But the context that “state’s rights” is often used in is not the general idea of local self determination but questions like “should human beings be property?”, “should 100% of medical procedures, 100% of the time be forbidden because it could terminate a pregnancy?”, “should the state allow oil pipelines to run close enough to municiple water supplies to poison all the poor people.”
Oh damn, i misread your first comment. While typing a reply I realized it… I thiought you said “I’m thinking that’s what a dog whistle means.” I agree with you then, I was just being flexible with the term because the poster above used it. I dont think it’s a dog whistle either, just that it’s easily co-opted for good regardless of what kind of racist term it is.
For posterity, the comment I was typing I left below. Only read if you really care, otherwise probably not worth your time hahaha
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Ok I guess what I meant is that Dogwhistles are ways to hide a terrible thing under a more palatable phrase and so ‘call the dogs to you’ without it being heard by everyone else. That’s what your 3 phrases do, hide a negative thing within a neutral or maybe not even noticable phrase. Saying “Chinese think in centuries” or whatever similar thing isn’t hiding that sort of negative, really. If you already are afraid of China, you think “it’s scary because they’re better than us in a way which could allow their domination.” But that’s something that is simultaneously a positive.
So it’s easier to counter because you just reply “well shouldn’t we just also change our economic system to do this clearly good thing that they do for themselves?” Meanwhile, with “state’s rights”, the hidden message is that they should have the right to enslave people. That is not flippable in the way that the first one is.
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Now, I reserve the right to be wrong…
But I thought the whole point of a dog whistle is to do two things:
Say a thing out loud that can be interpreted in so many different ways, people who wouldn’t be 100% on board with the sentiment behind the dog whistle will agree with it and repeat it.
Allow the group who might not be agreed with if they just said they really meant, to speak out publicly about a subject or opinion and not immediately be rejected by the majority of a group.
A dog whistle doesn’t have to be a false statement or true statement but it seems like they tend toward being vague. Its all innuendo. When a phrase is said, there is a wink and a nod at the end instead of a period.
Like, “state’s rights”, “school choice”, or “urban youth”. Those three phrases seem pretty straight forward if you aren’t looking at them through any particular lense.
A normie gets to think about “state’s rights” and it sounds pretty good right? “Hey, we can made decisions on what we do around here. We are capable of making decisions for ourselves.” But the context that “state’s rights” is often used in is not the general idea of local self determination but questions like “should human beings be property?”, “should 100% of medical procedures, 100% of the time be forbidden because it could terminate a pregnancy?”, “should the state allow oil pipelines to run close enough to municiple water supplies to poison all the poor people.”
Oh damn, i misread your first comment. While typing a reply I realized it… I thiought you said “I’m thinking that’s what a dog whistle means.” I agree with you then, I was just being flexible with the term because the poster above used it. I dont think it’s a dog whistle either, just that it’s easily co-opted for good regardless of what kind of racist term it is.
For posterity, the comment I was typing I left below. Only read if you really care, otherwise probably not worth your time hahaha
" Ok I guess what I meant is that Dogwhistles are ways to hide a terrible thing under a more palatable phrase and so ‘call the dogs to you’ without it being heard by everyone else. That’s what your 3 phrases do, hide a negative thing within a neutral or maybe not even noticable phrase. Saying “Chinese think in centuries” or whatever similar thing isn’t hiding that sort of negative, really. If you already are afraid of China, you think “it’s scary because they’re better than us in a way which could allow their domination.” But that’s something that is simultaneously a positive.
So it’s easier to counter because you just reply “well shouldn’t we just also change our economic system to do this clearly good thing that they do for themselves?” Meanwhile, with “state’s rights”, the hidden message is that they should have the right to enslave people. That is not flippable in the way that the first one is. "