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This goes the other way, too: I've seen LGBTQ friends complain about conservative signs that say, "we support all sexes, races, religions" for not "mentioning anything LGBTQ" and "even said sex instead of gender."
That is to say, it is simply tribal signaling. The reason I am annoyed by white-bashing isn't because I identify with my racial coalition. As you mention, much of my outgroup is literally caucasian.
The white people that support her simply see a neon sign that says "ingroup." You see a neon sign that says "outgroup" but is it really because they call out straight white men (ironically by not calling them out), or because calling out straight white men is the kind of things your outgroup does?
You're still focusing on the words as being vehicles for literal meaning the way a scientist would use language. What do you mean they can plausibly say they support anyone? The sign is a rather obvious signal of conservative allegiance posted in the 2020s. You don't need plausibility to get that documentary "What Is A Woman?" removed for hate speech when the signaling game is obvious to everyone except mistake theorists.
Absolutely nobody makes this distinction you're making between:
what the conservative sign did -- listing a couple of axis (axes?) and omitting other axes
what the politician did -- listing a couple of directions on an axis and omitting other directions
What good is the right's subtle dog whistles (according to you) if they still get called out on them? Think anti-Trumpers talking about how Trump dogwhistled to white supremists or the white working class during his 2016 campaign. How would you argue to someone that one side actually does it differently?
I'm not asking to explain why This Dogwhistle is different than That Dogwhistle, I'm asking to explain why we see the same calling out on both sides. (Actually, do we see the same calling out on both sides?)
Something that I feel is lost on a lot of progressives and the progressive adjacent (IE much of the motte) is that if you're hearing dog whistles you're the dog.
I get what you mean but isn’t this obviously not true? Maybe I’m misunderstanding what a dogwhistle is but if I wrote on here “the rootless cosmopolitan bankers are conspiring against white christians” everyone would understand it’s an antisemitic dogwhistle. If I said “no I’m just referring to the literal bankers guys, YOU’RE the antisemite for thinking bankers = jews!” nobody would/should believe that
There is still the following conundrum--let's say there is a speaker who believes two things:
"The rootless cosmopolitan bankers are conspiring against white Christians" is a statement that is literally true, ignoring subtext.
Individual Jews may be inside or outside the definition of "rootless cosmopolitan bankers" on a case-by-case basis; he doesn't care.
This speaker simultaneously believes both 1) and 2), and would like to express that thought reasonably concisely. How?
(As a side note, I was already aware of the anti-Semitic history of the "rootless cosmopolitan" phrase, but I also know of people that fit the facial definition. @HlynkaCG mentioned "the Davos set;" I think some of them have referred to themselves as "citizens of the world.")
I’m not sure why everyone is focused on the specific example I used. I basically agree with Hlynka that accusations of dogwhistling are more damning of the accuser than the speaker most of the time. I’m just saying that if you concede that dogwhistles are a real thing and that sometimes people use them to obfuscate the meaning of a statement, I’m not sure how it would be at all reflective of someone’s character/worldview/etc. for correctly identifying that. I guess my example wasn’t obvious enough, pretend I used the (((rootless cosmopolitan bankers))) instead. I don’t think the reader being aware of what the parentheses mean here is reflective of anything but his awareness that people use them to (not so subtly) refer to Jews without explicitly saying so
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