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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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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

Or maybe the antisemites actually mean "rootless cosmopolitan bankers" and just think they're identical with jews.

Q: "Why don't you just say jews, if you clearly mean it?"

A(ntisemite): "I don't specifically mean jews. Well, obviously they are jews, but if they weren't that wouldn't change anything, and if jews weren't attacking white christians I wouldn't have a problem with them. So I'm talking about the actual core of the issue."

But this also means one could complain about ruthless cosmopolitans without identifying them with jews - the entire position works without any reference to jews.

So we can't actually know a priori whether a given mention of "ruthless cosmopolitans" refers to jews.

And if you keep insisting "obviously it has to mean jews" it starts sounding a lot like "rootless cosmopolitans obviously are jews", and at this point you're reinforcing the narrative you're supposedly attacking.

It's like the old joke about the man who gets arrested after saying "Nicholas is an idiot" in Moscow, and when the defends himself claiming he meant a different Nicholas, not the beloved Tsar, the police responds with "Liar! When you talk about an idiot, you can only mean the Tsar!"

At the very least the connection "rootless cosmopolitans=jews" is embedded in your worldview, which is a dangerous situation, and the more you talk about and say "Please join me in fighting the popular perception that everyone from Comoros is a flaming gay", the more you're spreading the malicious meme.

So people who don't have this connection in their worldview, and don't want it to, become increasingly suspicious, while the actual antisemites are secretly gloating.

You can't very well fight against the perception that comorans are gay while calling "Man, Comorans are weird" a homophobic dogwhistle.

There is still the following conundrum--let's say there is a speaker who believes two things:

  1. "The rootless cosmopolitan bankers are conspiring against white Christians" is a statement that is literally true, ignoring subtext.

  2. 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

As @themottealt9000 said, I feel like your response here kind of illustrates my point.

You're associating "rootless cosmopolitan bankers" with a racial phenotype because you (and everyone else in your secular progressive bubble) are predisposed to frame things in terms of race. In short you can hear the racist dog-whistle because racism (IE judging people on the basis of race) is an integral component of your worldview. You're the dog.

Meanwhile outside that bubble "rootless cosmopolitan bankers" is simply an accurate description of "the Davos set" and their various allies, cheerleaders, and hangers on.

Everything you said is wrong, I use that example because I am a terminally online right winger and browse racist Twitter/forums where people post about (((bankers))) all the time. My point is that if you are an otherwise upstanding anti-racist progressive citizen who finds their way into dissident-right Twitter or /pol/ you’re not a “dog” for recognizing what people mean when they bring up wooden doors or “joggers” or whatever vague phrase is being used to avoid getting banned from normie internet spaces. Perhaps the confusion is that you wouldn’t consider those examples to be “dogwhistles” because they are so obvious? I agree with you entirely that the term “dogwhistle” 99% of the time is used as a political smear to associate politicians the left doesn’t like with ebil nazis even when it has no basis in reality.

Again I feel like you're just illustrating my point.

I don't think you're a "terminally online right winger" so much as just "terminally online". That the dissident-right on twitter ought to stop pretending to hate woke-left and start making out has been a running joke amongst the wider right for years now.

What exactly is your point then? I agree I am a “dog” by whatever definition you’re using. Fair enough, but that was not your point. Your original point was that identifying a dogwhistle means you are the “dog”. You are on here enough that I assume you are at least passively familiar with various dogwhistles like “jogger” or the three parentheses thing. Because you understand that these are dogwhistles, does that mean that racism is an integral part of your worldview? Pick your favorite “real right winger” who doesn’t use the internet. If I told this person that certain people use the term “jogger” instead of black person, and then I show this person a 4chan post saying that joggers commit too much crime and should be sent back to Africa. Is he supposed to say “wow this guy really hates runners huh?” And if he doesn’t say that and correctly parses the 4chan post, does that mean that racism is an integral part of his worldview now?

And then this happens...

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/351854/berkeley-develops-jewish-free-zones/?fbclid=IwAR1RyY1u7FeYbL9YYVgmo2DNs258oEdm6JiKLR3WhdW8ZpQ77PyAOFKSAcE

He's associating "rootless cosmopolitan bankers" with Jews because historically, that phrase has been used on Jews. Your argument could be made about any epithet. What makes you think that "crackers" refers to lower class white people? After all, he just said "crackers", he didn't mention their skin color at all!

In short you can hear the racist dog-whistle because racism (IE judging people on the basis of race) is an integral component of your worldview.

I can hear the racist dogwhistle because i'm familiar with history. The other times people said that, it was predominantly in a context where it meant "Jews". In other words "racism is an integral component of my worldview" in the sense "racism actually exists". And, you know what? Racism does exist.

@SSCReader made a good point up thread but I feel like this instance in this context is closer @ApplesauceIrishCream describes. IE if someone who is not a Jew keeps trying make everything about the Jews in itself is a red flag. Ditto, male feminists, and white academics who wont shut up about black victimhood.

The phrase has historically been used to refer to Jews. The people who are "making" it be about Jews are the people who've said it in the past.

I think this is a case where the phrase just has too much obvious use even with absolutely no knowledge of that history. John Fetterman [D] is literally running his campaign almost entirely by accusing Mehmet Oz [R] of being the sort of person to whom "rootless cosmopolitan" would apply. Insisting it's a dogwhistle in all cases comes off like the people who get mad when "literally" is used figuratively, except the literally person is a Nazi.

It's not the concept literally described by the phrase which means Jews, it's the actual phrase. If all you want is the concept, there are plenty of ways to say it without using those exact words, and it's unlikely you'd stumble upon the words by chance unless you blindly copied it from someone who did use it to mean Jews.

you blindly copied it from someone who did use it to mean Jews.

Suppose I did - does that imply anything? After all, the whole point of a dogwhistle is supposed to be that it's unrecognizable to non-dogs. So I read the term, take it at face value, because the implication is obscured (or because I encountered out of context), think it's a good description, and reuse it without being aware of the original speaker's meaning.

The end result is the same as coming up with it by myself: I'm using the term at face value and it's not a dogwhistle.

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.

It does sound like you're misunderstanding what a dogwhistle is. If everyone would understand that it means something else, then, by definition, it cannot be a dogwhistle.

Of course, imperfect dogwhistles can exist, as can dogwhistles that no longer work due to information spread (at which point it is no longer a dogwhistle).

I guess when it’s so obvious that it can no longer be called a dog whistle it becomes a euphemism?

the rootless cosmopolitan bankers

I mean, I did literally just parse that as "PMC types" before I caught the point you were making.

Which is kind of my point, that their association goes immediately to "Da Joos" tells us where their preconceptions lie. It's the dog hearing the whistle.

It's a specific Soviet phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootless_cosmopolitan

Heh, TIL. Well I suppose that explains why it's so popular amongst the online left.

I think you just proved his point... First im not sure Ive seen "bankers" called out on the right, typically it is elites, globalists, big tech, etc. Calling out bankers and financial institutions is more left coded in my experience.

Second, most on the right tend to be more pro Isreal and find more in common with religious jews than with blue tribe.

I mean shit, how many times has Ben Shapiro been labeled a literal nazi by the left?

Frankly someone claiming another party's innocuous statements are "dog whistles" indicates that the claimant refuses to extend any charitability to the other party and is defacto acting in bad faith. They are merely searching for an excuse to hate the outgroup.

I don’t disagree with you or Hylnka that innocuous statements are called dogwhistles all the time even when they are actually innocuous statements. I agree that when politicians/mainstream media figures are called out for using dogwhistles it’s bad-faith partisan bullshit 99% of the time. My point is just that simply recognizing an obvious dog whistle doesn’t mean you are “the dog” if the statement is in fact a dog whistle. As in if you go on 4chan and see someone refer to (((bankers))) you’re not anti-semitic for recognizing what they are referring to

You're not anti-semitic, but I would argue you are a dog. A "dog-whistle" is generally just a term of art or piece of jargon that reads differently to those in-the-know than those not in-the-know. I don't think that agreeing with the argument being made is a relevant part of it. The difference is between you hearing it (and disagreeing) vs. it going completely unnoticed by you.

One bit of irony is that it's pretty common for conservative speakers in the US to use properly metaphorical dogwhistles, with the following significant caveats:

  1. the statement isn't racist, sexist, or whatever -ist is popular; and

  2. the statement isn't actually picked up by liberals except sometimes as "what could he have meant by that weird statement?"

It's usually a Biblical reference, used as shorthand to describe something. Both speaker and audience have enough shared understanding that a casual reference suffices to communicate, while the liberal commentariat has no idea. It may not even be intended as covert, just efficient, and yet the intended audience understands while the outside audience has no clue which is exactly the situation a dogwhistle claims to describe.

(Also, I am protected at the bottom of the stairs. You cannot shove me!)

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