this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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In my opinion the better option is to ditch the concept of dogwhistle. We [people in general] should look at what a symbol (including words, gestures, etc.) conveys within a certain context, we shouldn't be picking individual symbols and assuming the discourse (what is being said) based on them.
For example, the 88 in the title of the game should be associated with the rest of the game. Because depending on the rest of the game it might convey only "1988", or it might convey "heil Hitler".
Well sure, but people use dog whistles so it's important to recognize them. Context can be important but sometimes it's subtle, that's why they're called dog whistles.
Fascists don't need to use dogwhistles to call each other. And they often don't use them, specially not the best known dogwhistles - because it's like saying "I'm a fascist lololol please kick my arse!".
As such, when you look for dogwhistles, you're bound to get
It's simply not a good way to find and get rid of them. Unlike looking at what they're saying "in the big picture"; that's always reliable because they need to convey their shitty discourses if they want to spread them.
Context is always important. And as a general rule (not failproof): if you're actively looking for the context and it's still too subtle for you, then odds are that it's too subtle for the fascists to get it too.
(Note: I'm talking about "fascists" here but it also applies to other shitty groups of people.)
No, fascists do use dog whistles. near constantly. In part because they are generally too chicken shit to say anything. It is similar to how (fascist) republicans think they are clever with "go brandon" whereas liberals and leftists just say "Fuck trump, I hope he dies of the most painful cancer imaginable".
And while there are "false positives", those are almost all immediately resolved with "yo dog. Uhm... I get you are in your mid 30s but you may want to stop putting your birth year in posts" and a "... holy fuck. Fucking nazis". Because, "context" generally does apply. The people who need to sign off "14 88" for every single tweet are usually also liking other white supremacist shit. Whereas the people who just got screwed over by what GFWL suggested their username should be twenty years ago have a history of advocating for tolerance and leftist thought.
As for "false negatives": Okay? Some fascists will be undetected with or without acknowledging their "super secret code" of dog whistling.
I got your examples, but tone down your nationalistic bubbling - fascism is a global issue, and yet you're framing it specifically into USA politics, as if other users were necessarily expected to be American.
It's because they're generally too chicken shit that they avoid dogwhistles, and actually say it - using a dogwhistle actually increases their odds to be detected and called out.
Here's a real example of that, from Reddit's r/againsthatesubreddits.
TW: transphobia
This thread links a lot of transphobic replies to a r/trueunpopularopinion thread called "Pronouns should not be enforced as they are now."When you look at what the users say, on a discursive level, you find "wonderful"[/sarcasm] things like this:
The user is clearly associating trans people and changing one's social identity with mental illness, that's transphobic per excellence. And yet the nearest of a dogwhistle that you could claim is that he used the word "schizophrenic".
Should we take "schizophrenic" as a dogwhistle? Well, then let's put Mayo Clinic as potential spiritual successor to Mein Kampf. [/sarcasm]
And if someone says "Mayo Clinic doesn't have the context to read it as a dogwhistle" - if you're already going to use the context to dictate meaning, might as well ditch the concept of dogwhistle, and look for what they say.
From my experience, that is far from true. Those people finding false positives will usually insist that the other is a Nazi, to the point of irrationality. Often doing things like I criticised Josh Fagundes (check the Twitter link in the OP) doing, and trying to justify their false positive as a true positive by grasping at straws.
It's like witch hunting - once you get labelled a witch, it doesn't really matter if you're a witch or not, you're going to be treated as one.
"Some"? No. More like "a lot of fascists". Because you're looking for a super secret code while they're saying things in the open.
Also, note that trying to decrease the amount of false negatives will increase the amount of false positives, and vice versa. So those issues are interconnected.
EDIT: about your example:
That is not how it usually happens. It's usually like this:
You see a low-key version of that in this very thread, with Josh being a low-key version of Alice.