Blogger Ulysses expressed minor frustration that in this entire dog whistle debate, few have asked the question: who is the target of these so-called whistles? If conservative voters are as dumb as liberals say they are then they’d already be in the pocket of the GOP. The GOP establishment would merely be whistling Dixie to the choir.
Mickey Kaus writes on the topic:
Would a “dog whistle” tactic even make any sense? As John Ellis notes, it can’t be about white working class men–Romney’s already got them in his pocket. The ads are more likely to appeal to disillusioned women who voted for Obama last time–and to anyone who thought the welfare issue had been settled, or who worries more broadly that Obama was not the neoliberal he appeared to be in 2008 (when he ran ads boasting about … slashing the welfare rolls). If there are millions of racists in the electorate, it’s hard to believe they were seriously thinking of voting for Obama until … wait,! the dog whistle!**
Kaus also wonders if Bill Clinton – our “First Black President” – was being racist when he set out to “end welfare as we know it.” At National Review, Reihan Salam
suggested checking out Gerard Alexander’s 2004 essay “
The Myth of the Racist Republicans“. Alexander boiled down the argument:
It goes something like this: the Republican Party assembled a national majority by winning over Southern white voters; Southern white voters are racist; therefore, the GOP is racist.
The argument that
core conservative principles are rooted in racism falls apart, according to Alexander, because it relies on the false assumptions that Republicans (the conservative party) depended on White Southerners to win elections in the 1960s (they weren’t as important as the myth suggests), that Republican presidents from Nixon after gave White Southerners the racial policies that they wanted (the South has advanced the most of any region in turning back true racism), and that conservative policies are racially motivated. Alexander further
explains this last false assumption elsewhere:
Welfare reform is deliberately anti-black (or anti-minority or anti-poor) only if conservatives secretly believe that welfare actually does help its beneficiaries and are being deceitful when they argue that long-term dependency devastates inner-city communities. Tax cuts are part of a racist agenda only if conservatives do not believe that lower taxes will enhance economic growth and social mobility for all. Conservative opposition to raising the minimum wage is anti-poor only if free-marketeers are feigning concern that increases will price less-skilled people out of the workforce (as when Milton Friedman called the minimum wage “one of the most . . . anti-black laws on the statute books”) and secretly agree with liberals that increases will benefit the working poor over the long term.
Alexander puts the burden of proof on those who call conservatism a racist venture. His argument makes me hope that Mitt Romney will grow the balls to ask Barack Obama directly in a debate, “do you think I am a racist?”*. He won’t do it, but that would be something:
To be condemned as racist “code,” the GOP’s position would have to come across as proxies for these views [such as positions on busing and affirmative action], and in turn these views would have to be racist. The problem is that these views are not self-evidently racist. Many scholars simply treat them as if they were.
…
In effect, these critics want to have it both ways: they acknowledge that these views could in principle be non-racist (otherwise they wouldn’t be a “code” for racism) but suggest they never are in practice (and so can be reliably treated as proxies for racism). The result is that their claims are non-falsifiable because they are tautological: these views are deemed racist because they are defined as racist…One suspects these theorists would, quite correctly, insist that people can disagree with the Israeli government without being in any way anti-Semitic. But they do not extend the same distinction to this issue. This is partisanship posturing as social science.
Or to carry the anti-Semite thread, that San Franciscans who oppose neonatal circumcisions are anti-Semites.
This brings to mind Will Wilkinson’s
argument pushing back against the dog whistle charge. Though Wilkinson is now a proponent of affirmative action, he arrived at that position from a purely libertarian one because of a shift in his understanding of society’s fundamental structure and operation. Not because his beliefs about or hopes/dreams/wishes for outside groups had changed. His mirrors my transition from liberal to libertarian/conservative. I disregard the argument that conservative principles are fundamentally racist because of my own transition story. I was introduced to libertarian principles by a girl I was dating who was stringently non-racist. It’s clear that leading libertarian/small government thinkers are strongly anti-racist. Ayn Rand is held up as a proponent of small government principles who stringently opposed racism as the ultimate in collectivism. For me, I was a reformed liberal who, without any racial awareness whatever, shifted towards a small-government, anti-coercion stance because the philosophy is more consistent with my beliefs about human nature than any of the other options. You should see me with my dinner. I’m not a big resource sharer in general.
Just to show how this demonization would play out in real time, Alexander mentioned the strategy of the JournoList participants:
“If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us,” Spencer Ackerman wrote. “Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
And all of the JournoList participants are up in our media, shaping our narrativz.
Like this:
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There’s no point. We’re raaacist because. Period.
Sorry for the double comment but-
“Though Wilkinson is now a proponent of affirmative action, he arrived at that position from a purely libertarian one because of a shift in his understanding of society’s fundamental structure and operation. Not because his beliefs about or hopes/dreams/wishes for outside groups had changed.”
HA, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Dear little Will arrived at that position when he got to the big city and realized he wanted to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table. It is -exactly- because his wishes about outside groups –namely that he would be accepted by progressives as ‘one of the good libertarians’ — had changed.
What I love about this whole topic, is every major discriminatory law and precedent was instituted by Democrats, and every major race based law that rescinded those early discriminatory practices was due to Republicans – heck, the very first Republican President – Lincoln ended slavery. Yet, due to the media and constant repetition of the lie, Republicans are perceived as racist – when it is the Democrats who are constantly harping about RACE. They are the real racists. I couldn’t care less about the color of a man’s/woman’s skin if he/she can do the job since THAT is what is important to me. Hiring someone incompetent due to their race is what Democrats do – not Republicans since a Republican is a business man and wants to turn a profit, and Racism has no profit associated with it.
That is the fact. Yet, it is the Democrats that focus on race and sex to the exclusion of ability. They are the true racists – it is that simple…
dog-whistle tactics might work in the primaries. according to the dog-whistle theory, republicans would try to out compete each other in showing how racist they are in order to capture the vote of racist republicans.
In fact, chuck, i think you’re wrong in saying that the dog-whistle theory is unfalsifiable. the following is a way it might be falsified:
collect all the campaign speeches of every republican presidential candidate going back to, say, goldwater. compare the pre-primary victory speeches to the post-victory speeches. If the latter contain more language alleged to be “code words” by the dog-whistle theorists, then the dog-whistle theory is disconfirmed. even if there were reasons to continue race baiting even into the general election, it would make no sense to ratchet up the racism at a time when you no longer have to pander to your presumably racist base. it would show that the alleged code words are not really code words at all and are actually legitimate arguments about nonracial issues.
on the other hand, if the pre-victory speeches contain more alleged code words than the post-victory speeches, this would lend a degree of confirmation to the dog-whistle theory.
The message is coming from the Left and the Media (but I repeat myself). The message is, “No matter how good these guys sound on the economy or whatever issue, don’t forget they are racist. Even if they don’t SOUND racist to you right now, they are secretly still quite racist. And if you vote for them you will also be considered racist.”
The target of the message is anyone center-left or undecided who might be wavering and thinking of voting Repub for whatever reason.
Thanks for doing the research. I suspect liberals will continue to ignore such facts. I’m also starting to suspect that dog whistle charges are themselves dog whistles. “If you support X then you’re an awful meanie.”
When someone says “racism,” theyre really saying “you do not have the right to exist.”
Racism is nothing more and nothing less than a human being’s desire to not be destroyed.
… which is why an epic reframing is due.
Running away from racism charges (which are inanely spurious given the GOP’s anti-racist breast beating since Bob Dole’s campaign) or conversely race-pandering to non-whites, is the Republicans’ formula for perpetual retreat.
“Racism is nothing more and nothing less than a human being’s desire to not be destroyed.”
correct. the racism smear campaign is nothing less nothing more than old skool tribal warfare with the spears fashioned into bits of ascii. and when the lies have piled up high enough, the real spears will return.
You forget the doctrine of disparate impact, and always thinking the worst of someone. A Conservative or a Libertarian trying to escape the label “racist” from a Liberal, is like someone who wants to escape the label “mushrik”(idolater) from a Wahhabi.
The left use NAMs as a weapon.
They vote the way progressives want them to vote in exchange for the cash prizes of being progressive clients.
They are trained from childhood to behave in a savage manner. Have you ever wondered exactly why progressives are so uniformly in favor of school policies that undercut teacher authority to impose classroom order? It’s so that the students are properly trained to disrupt authority whenever they encounter it. Effect 1: the students grow up to be dangerous to be around – result? They’re effective foot soldiers to ethnically cleanse dangerous whites (especially when the law doesn’t apply to them but does apply to the wrong type of whites). Effect 2: they grow up to be unemployable – result? They have no alternative to being progressive clients.
Of course, all this isn’t explicit – it just “happens”. Progressive ideology is constantly being refined to approach progressive perfection – one that fully benefits the upper portion of the upper and lower vs middle and fully destroys the middle portion. They know full well exactly what kind of savagery they’re creating – it’s not like anyone with any thoughtfulness could miss the destruction of Detroit but the important part is to never explicitly state the actual ideology.
Hmm, never stating your actual ideology but at the same time communicating it when you fully control the narrative… I wonder what such coded communication would be like? It would require sending messages that sound innocuous to people who are on the wrong side, can be mentally processed as being innocuous to the members of the upper part of the coalition and at the same time clearly communicating to the lower portion of the coalition that they’re free to commit crimes as long as the victims are the right type*. This is pretty complex. You’d have to craft a message that actually says three different things and each group can only hear the message that they’re intended to hear.
I wonder what you’d call such a communication style?
* Of course the lower members aren’t expected to be able to distinguish between uppers and middles – don’t worry though! The uppers will figure out how to maintain total physical isolation from the lowers. Then the lowers can simply act on the identifying trait of the middles and uppers – race.
“* Of course the lower members aren’t expected to be able to distinguish between uppers and middles – don’t worry though! The uppers will figure out how to maintain total physical isolation from the lowers. Then the lowers can simply act on the identifying trait of the middles and uppers – race.”
To me, what you say is more a personal analysis and after-the-fact deconstruction than what I would consider to be a widely held political-and-class-based social strategy; that much cunning is not necessary. A few core, reflexive class resentments and conceits are enacted on a society-wide level and the rest falls into place.
I think a lot of these alt-right theories and critiques similarly assume too much conspiracy.
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“correct. the racism smear campaign is nothing less nothing more than old skool tribal warfare with the spears fashioned into bits of ascii. and when the lies have piled up high enough, the real spears will return.”
Humorously poetic nonsense…..hyperbole abounds!