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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35661 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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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.

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