Full post here: https://www.tumblr.com/brightlotusmoon/727204642739617792
Posting this to make up for accidentally posting a dog whistle earlier. Oops
You must log in or register to comment.
This may be controversial, but I think the way to combat dog whistles like this is to overuse them and muddy the waters. Make it so the Nazi’s aren sure whether the “pattern noticer” they are interacting with are antisemitic or not.
ISIS went from being an Egyptian goddess and a great band to a poorly translated acronym for a terrorist organization because everyone let the terrorists win on that one. The swastika has been a neat and simple symbol used by a variety of cultures with a variety of meanings ranging from positive to neutral until it was taken by the Nazi’s. 88 is a really neat looking number that’s done nothing wrong.
Society keeps on ceding cultural ground to assholes and the rest of us have to tiptoe through every piece of communication in fear of being associated with them.
What’s next? How long until some fascists start to use the “cool s” that we all doodled in our notebooks in school? Are we going to have to stop using any numbers with less than 3 digits? Will Allah, Jupiter, and Thor join Isis as symbols of fear?
I like the idea of not yielding semantic authority to fascists. Like here in Germany, I’ve seen (minor) shitstorms over the phrase “to each their own” (“Jedem das Seine”) because the Nazis put that on the gate of Buchenwald concentration camp. But the principle of “suum cuique” goes way back to ancient times and is a central tenet of our legal system. So why should we let Nazis dictate what the words we use mean?
That said, they coined a whole bunch of expressions that are rightfully frowned upon to this day and I have no issue with that kind of criticism. I’ve never felt the need to label anyone’s relationship as “racial shame,” for instance.
Just my two cents.
Society keeps on ceding cultural ground to assholes and the rest of us have to tiptoe through every piece of communication in fear of being associated with them.
FUCKING PREACH
I reject the idea that recognizing patterns is now a racist dogwhistle. Fuck that absurd noise and never darken my door with such a ridiculous suggestion ever again.
I don’t give a fuck what six racist sister-fuckers on Telegram say. No one should. They’re irrelevant. Let them have their little secret meanings, no one who matters should give a fuck.
The “OK” signal was a classic one. I can see why 4chan dwellers love coming up with bullshit like that, it’s astonishing how gullible our society can be.
Qanon, jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, the OK signal, no doubt many others. It’s amazing the bullshit you can convince the general public of.
Christ, the carrot thing was something the British came up with in ww2 to help cover up the invention of radar, and people still believe it to this day. We’re really bad at analysing the source of information.
I’ve got so much respect for people who fight the good fight and continue posting Pepe in 2024.
But, the whole point is to have the waters muddied. That’s why it’s called a dog whistle, because only the dogs (the intended audience) will hear the whistle (recognize the true intent behind the phrase).
So fight mud with mud and make it harder to recognize the true intent.
Or better yet, make it so that the symbols are just way more commonly associated with non-asshole meanings.
It’s like the ok sign. It’s only a dog whistle when combined with other things. Mudding the water doesn’t work when there’s layers unless you muddy the layers. But then they just add a layer
Better to let them use it and out themselves
Great points. Here is the original post:
I honestly interpreted this as a socially awkward way of trying to do small talk - for example talking about weather
Me, too. But I definitely know about the dogwhistle when they phrase it as “stop noticing things.” Subtlety makes it an effective dogwhistle. They will steal vocabulary and concepts from anywhere to spread their bigotry and hatred.
Hmmm. Looks like you’re noticing a pattern on how people behave when it comes to racism…
is the okay sign still a good whistle
The problem with the concept of a “dog whistle” is that it’s non-falsifiable. Anyone at any time can declare that word X actually refers, secretly, to concept Y. No evidence required, and if people buy the claim then it makes the concept of X un-conveyable.
The problem with that problem is you can say any kind of accusation of racist behavior is non-falsifiable in the same way (“You can’t prove I was shitty to them because they were black, maybe I was shitty to them because they’re just a jerk”), but everyone knows racist behavior and dog whistles still exist
if people buy the claim
This is a good demonstration of why the concept of dog whistles isn’t really a problem, because when it’s a totally absurd accusation people aren’t going to buy it.
because when it’s a totally absurd accusation people aren’t going to buy it.
👌 would like a word
I don’t know where you’re getting your people from, but around where I’m at, people will believe any and all sorts of absurd bullshit constantly, that’s kind of been one of the major problems surrounding our upcoming election.
wat
Look at the full post, it is about the alt-right conspiracy of Jews running the world. Also has other racist stuff too.
All is dog whistle. Especially patterns.
Patterns are a government psyop.
Or you could actually read the post
My mom has this belief that there is a high comedy in taking two unrelated things and putting them into the same sentence.
Shitty example: “She Ichabod my Crane until I jack-o’-lantern”
The humor of the sentence comes from the person who is listening to you attempting to connect the two parts, and you getting to watch them draw the line.
This happens because people notice patterns and in a conversation it is the listener’s job to understand what the speaker is saying.
And this is well and good for the most part but because we have that tendency it’s easy to make horrible mistakes that we have a very difficult time disbelieving because we came to the conclusions ourselves.
Best case you end up like the no soap radio joke. Worst case, you end up in some sort of like weird Armageddon apocalypse right-wing conspiracy nut group talking about your weird imaginations with other people who also do not have a reality filter on their own imaginations.
I feel like if/when the shit hits the fan, I’m going to be so lost with who’s who and what’s what. I mean, I already am; I never would have considered any of that (except the blatantly obvious).
Oof, I thought it was a joke about psychosis and immediately shared it with my BP1 peeps
That actually might be exactly what we should do, just try to reinterpret this before it gets off the ground and make all their attempts to dogwhistle to their fellow shitheads come off like they’re just calling themselves paranoid schizophrenics
And, like, for what it’s worth, “Is bigotry a mental illness?” is a question that’s gotten some academic debate. The professional consensus is still “no,” but it honestly makes a lot of sense to me to think of bigotry as a form of delusional and compulsive thinking (although I don’t want to minimize the evil of racism or demonize mentally ill people, so like I’m still thinking over that one).
Idk, I’ve had three clients diagnosed with schizophrenia and, while one was fairly racist, the other 2 were rad as hell, and I don’t think the bigotry had anything to do with the racist one’s mental health- just culture.
In fact, I think bigotry is a pretty normal human thing to experience. Psychotic symptoms (and poor mental health in general) can certainly lead to and exacerbate bigotry, but I don’t think pathologizing bigotry itself makes much sense. I mean yeah if someone is experiencing bigoted delusions/obsessions/compulsions/etc then we should call that what it is, but bigotry itself is typically better explained by culture and natural human behavior
Edit: but I do like the idea of coopting it. I think it would be hilarious to respond to someone using it as a dog whistle with something like “haha I’m [autistic/ADHD/BP/etc] too.” I think that would really rustle their jimmies
