The entire POINT of the dog whistle is to say something ugly in a deniable way. They by definition are not going to ADMIT the ugly truth of what they said. Also, I can dig up a video later but there was a white racist Trump supporter I saw recently who intimated that he knew Trump couldn’t really SAY what he meant, but that he understood the message loud and clear, i.e., he understood the dog whistle. I am about to go to work but I can provide the video later. Your position is ridiculous. It isn’t a coincidence all (or maybe just most) of the deniers of Dog Whistling on this thread are right wingers, btw.
edit: It isn’t always racism either, Crazy-Eyes Michelle Bachman uses crazy-apocalyptic Christian code words all the time, I had to have her wording explained to me because I didn’t grow up in that circle and didn’t realize the actual meaning of what she is saying.
I question whether a “dog whistle” was actually issued when only the opposition hears the alleged “dog whistle”.
As I understand the term “dog whistle” it’s supposed to be some sort of secret code issued from speaker to supporter. However, if the only people hearing the “dog whistle” are the opposition, the “dog whistle” fails as a secret code. It’s not a secret code if only the opposition hears it. These alleged “dog whistles” sound more like a delusion, or fantasy, on the part of the opposition.
Exactly, people use the term dog whistle because if they said “secret codes that politicians are speaking in that only a few of us understand” the people with the butterfly nets would start looking their way.
Plus…if it was truly secret, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Substitute “thinly veiled code, providing plausible deniability” for “secret code”.
Bottom line: liberals want to believe that conservatives are all basically Klansmen. But most conservatives never say anything to confirm liberals’ prejudices.
It would be awfully convenient Republicans would say “I hate foreigners” or “I hate n-words.” But they never do. So, liberals are reduced to claiming that Republicans are STILL Klansmen, but have gotten a teensy bit more sophisticated.
So, if a Republican talks about, say, crime? That’s a “dog whistle.” In theory, there’s nothing racist about saying we should be tough on crime, but clever liberals know that “get tough on crime” REALLY means, “Lock up all the darkies.”
Don’t you think it is oversimplistic and incredibly naive to say that the only proof of racism are comments like ‘I hate niggers’, and nothing less? This is why liberals think conservatives are racist, or racist enablers, and in fact this is why dog whistles are used…you completely just demonstrated dog whistle psychology while trying to refute them.
And yes, tough on crime in American political talk OVERWHELMINGLY means “tough on (black) crime”.
The way it gets accused of being a dog whistle is when you look at the statistics later on and it turns out that people get executed for murdering a white person like 50 times more than for a black person. So was it just “crime” they were talking about? No. Just a fer instance there. You can mask and play around with words but those things are visible in the end.
Anyone can play around with words and claim that dog whistles are being issued. That doesn’t mean dog whistles are being issued. It only means that some people are claiming to hear these alleged dog whistles.
Some people pick up on “dog whistles”, even if they’re not in the “target audience” because they’re, well, educated, and know a little history. There was, for instance, a group calling itself the “Conservative Citizens Council”. Did anybody not recognize that as kind of KKK-lite?
Well, is it “dog whistling” when, for instance, Obama is called “lazy”, or a “clown”, or a “hustler”, or a “cool cat”, or “shucking and jiving”, or his friends are called “homies”, or his wife is called his “baby mama”?
I mean, it would be an odd coincidence if all these anti-Obama conservatives are just accidentally happening to refer to him with terms that traditionally connote unfavorable stereotypes of black people.
Dogwhistles are when the liberals think the conservatives are smart enough to not be so obvious, but they still don’t believe that these conservatives are capable of saying anything neutral or productive.
Therefore, the liberals play the "We know what they’re really saying " game whenever a conservative says something that they might agree with in principle if taken at face value.
The only people *complaining *about the dog whistle are the opposition. Everybody on both sides hears it just fine. As I said in an earlier post, dog whistling is *not *secret code. You (and others) defining it that way is simply trying to define it out of existence.
Instead dog whistling is simply this: speaking unacceptable positions with deniability enough to enable your supporters to support you in public while leaving your detractors needing to explain in more detail what you really mean. In a sound-bite driven world it’s a way to ensure the TLDR version carries the day and the opposition is cornered into having to counter sound-bites with paragraphs. In a TLDR world that’s an effective trick. But it remains just that: a rhetorical trick.
The argument against is “if it’s a dogwhistle, then why isn’t the racist audience admitting that they’re racist.”
Because they don’t want to be seen as racist, obviously. It’s not that it’s too secret for them, it’s because it’s deniable. That’s the whole fucking point.
No, everybody doesn’t hear it just fine. That’s the problem. The opposition hears it, claims it’s a dog whistle, and other members of the opposition agree to agree that the alleged dog whistle is a dog whistle. Except the speaker and intended audience don’t recognize the alleged dog whistle because the opposition hasn’t seen fit to let the speaker and intended audience see the secret code book of dog whistle issues.
The detractors love to explain what other people really mean. It’s a rhetorical trick. The opposition may as well start their explanations with the words - I don’t know the facts but…