MAGA Dog Whistles: Learn to recognize the coded calls to Political Violence

Dog whistles are coded messages that are understood by a particular group of people but not heard by most people.

A “dog whistle” is a word or phrase that has subtle or distinctive meaning to a particular audience. Over the years Trump’s racist dog whistles did their part in ensuring a white supremacist base, who turned out in force on Jan. 6.

Other Republicans were more direct in encouraging violence. After another court rejected Trump’s election appeal on Jan. 2, Rep. Louie Gohmert appeared on Newsmax and said, “you have to go to the streets and be …violent.” - Brandeis

Learn to recognize dog whistles to violence with this illustrated guide.

Republican dog whistle politics

MAGA Dog Whistles to political violence

Peter Baker, has covered the past five presidents noted in his analysis in the Times that Trump has a long history of encouraging violence. He listed many examples, and Jay Kuo added a few of my own:

Trump urged supporters at rallies to beat up protestors. 
He called for Black Lives Matter rioters to be shot.
He used racist language to inflame hate and hate-based attacks against Asian American during the pandemic.
He made fun of the brutal attack upon Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
He mocked the notion that radicals had plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
His words helped inspire racist mass shooters in Buffalo and El Paso.
He approved of chants to “Hang Mike Pence.”
And he incited the violent January 6 attack upon the Capitol.

Now Trump wants us to believe he is a changed man, a “uniter” of us all after what happened. I’m no psychiatrist, but we should be skeptical of a cruel man suddenly acting sweet and reasonable. - Jay Kuo

Dog Whistle Politics

“Dog Whistle Politics” describes that a lot of our political speech is being conducted in code. A dog whistle is something that, when you blow it, humans can’t hear it but dogs can. The metaphor is one in which, in political speech, on one level, some of these coded phrases are silent; and on the other, they’re producing strong racial reactions. So you think about terms like “illegal alien” or “inner city” or “welfare queen.” You can’t find race on the surface, but just below the surface, producing strong reactions. - Chicago Reporter

How dog whistles work

As explained by Lee Atwater, former Republican Party strategist: “You can't say "nigger" – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff.  You're getting so abstract now, you're talking about cutting taxes. And all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites.  And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that.  But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger." - HandWiki

Stoking aggrieved entitlement

"Since the November election, Trump has found new dog whistles. The phrase “Stop the Steal,” for instance, has special resonance for his followers because for years Trump has stoked the idea that racial minorities are “stealing” from “decent” (white) Americans; that immigrants are pouring in to plunder the nation; that African Americans are garnering jobs and other privileges from “reverse racism,” and so forth.

He’s persuaded his base they have been “stolen from” for a long time, stoking what Sociologist Michael Kimmel calls a sense of “aggrieved entitlement.” Now, Trump had a high-stakes election to attach this grievance to, and it is no coincidence that the votes he has questioned are disproportionately those of minority voters. “Stop the Steal” has special power because it emerges from the broader narrative that unentitled minorities have been “stealing” from what is supposedly rightfully that of Trump’s base.

On Dec. 19, Trump issued several tweets to promote the Jan. 6 event, including: “Big protest in D.C. on Jan. 6. Be there, will be wild!” – a descriptor implying norms would be violated or rules broken. Some of Trump’s supporters evidently took him as enlisting their help, rather like a paramilitary force. On Jan. 1, for instance, a supporter tweeted that “The calvary is coming, Mr. President!” Trump affirmed this as “A great honor!” - Brandeis

Dog Whistle resources

- Dog whistle database
- List of dog whistles
- Google Doc of Republican do whistles

TakeAway: Learn to recognize dog whistles and call it out.

Deepak
DemLabs

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