#Dog Whistling

[eaglesnick]

“Whoever debases others is debasing himself.” - JAMES BALDWIN

Over half a century ago Enoch Powell made his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech wherein he alluded to a prophecy from Virgil’s Aeneid:

“As I look ahead", said Powell,” I am filled with foreboding: like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood'." (Enoch Powell: 20/04/1968)

As with any prophecy, if you wait long enough, it’s almost bound to come true in one form or another. But rather than a “river of blood” caused by irresolvable racial tension, Britain has, in the main, weathered the social changes that mass migration brings with it.

In true dog whistling tradition Powell avoided being overtly racist himself but “quoted” a constituents instead, one who allegedly said:

"In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man"

As we all know this simply did not happen. By 1988 it wasn’t the "black man" who was the enemy of ordinary working people, it was Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government.

 It was Thatcher who raised interest rates and imposed huge spending cuts on the public services ordinary working people depended on. It was the Tory Government that drove unemployment up to 3 million, and it was Powell’s Conservative’s who waged war on trade unions and workers rights. It was Thatcher who was responsible for the deep recession in the early 1980’s and it was Thatcher who, by selling off council houses, kick-started the market trend towards unaffordable rents and house prices we see today.

The last 14 years of Tory government has seen a continuation of Thatcherite policies: public services starved of funding, massive rises in interest rates leading to unaffordable mortgages and rents, rising unemployment, and the resulting cost of living crisis.

Like Powell before him, Nigel Farage likes to blame immigrants for the countries ills and like Powell he is no stranger to the political art of dog whistling.  Talking on TV about the Southport murders he asked the “innocent” question:

“Why is it these days whenever something happens, we are told almost immediately it's a non-terror attack?" (Farage: 01/08/24)

Linking the horrendous murder of children in Southport to other, totally unrelated murders elsewhere in the country, he then answered his own question.

“Whenever these things happen there is a reluctance to tell us the full truth.”

There is the dog whistle. The authorities are withholding the truth about murders committed by non-whites. They are, for some reason known only to them, protecting ethnic minority killers and in all likelihood these murders are terror related. If only the police and the authorities would tell us “the truth” then the subsequent extreme right-wing led riots could have been prevented.

“Sometimes just tell the public the truth and you might actually stop riots happening” (Farage:01/08/24)

Light all bigots – left or right – it is only their version of the "truth" that they are interested in. Using the death of three innocent children to advance your own political ambitions is beyond contempt. Brandon Cox, husband of Labour MP Joe Cox who was murdered in a right-wing terror attack, had the measure of Farage when he described him as:

“nothing better than Tommy Robinson in a suit”

Mass immigration does present many problems but they are not problems that will be solved by whipping up hatred and bloodshed on Britain’s Streets. So far, Powell’s predictions have failed to materialise and his prophesy of violence and bloodshed have come to nothing.

Powell did get something right though.

In 1994 Farage wrote asking Powell to endorse him in his election campaign to become an MP. Powell refused. In the event, Farage came forth, with just 952 votes, only just ahead of the candidate for the Monster Raving Looney Party

If only today’s British electorate could see Farage for what he really is: a right wing, self-serving opportunist with not one shred of common decency.

[thetravelerwrites]

Being a mom has made me appreciate my mom more than I ever did before, and I have always been very much appreciative of her, even when she was still here. It has also made me realize how much of an absentee father my dad was, how toxic he still is, and how mentally and emotionally abusive he has been to me growing up. The stark contrast in their parenting styles has made me want to be an even better parent to my child, by learning as many lessons from my own mother’s unconditional love, and learning what not to do from my dad’s distance and disinterest.

Discussion of surgery, medical procedures, and toxic parenting below the cut:

A lot of you know that I was burned in an explosion when I was 2 years old. I’ve had somewhere between 85 and 90 surgeries (and hundreds of individual procedures, both with and without anesthetic) and my mother was present for every single one of them before she passed, except for one. She skipped that one because she had just started a new job and thought her boss wouldn’t let her take the week off she’d need to come with me. 

She was the last thing I saw when I went in and the first thing I saw when I came out. She’d hold my hand, stroke my hair, and her heart would break every single time I told her that I was scared and wanted to go home. It destroyed her to watch me be wheeling into the operating room, sobbing and begging her not to let me go in, and even though she never let me see her upset, she’d go back to the waiting room or the assigned hospital room and just cry the entire time I was in surgery. When I came out, she would swallow her tears, smile at me, and welcome me back with a kiss on my forehead. My mother struggled with watching me suffer and felt my pain as if it were her own, but she never left me, never faltered in support for me, and she was always there for the next procedure, no matter what.

My father, on the other hand, escaped. He ran. He took a long haul trucking job that took him away from his injured family 48 weeks out of the year. He left my mother two care for two special needs children (my older brother and me) and my infant brother, who was born six hours after the explosion. He left under the pretense of earning money, but he abandoned us because he couldn’t handle the circumstances emotionally. He’s admitted as such to my sister, though he’ll never admit it to me. To this day, he can’t even talk about those times. He has completely shut that part out of his memory and won’t discuss it. After he returned when I was 12, I barely knew him, and he didn’t know a thing about me. He loves to claim we were best friends back then, but I know now that it’s actually quite easy to get along with someone you don’t have any emotional investment in, which is a concept he doesn’t seem to understand.

He’s told me before that he wished he’d waited ten years after getting married before having children, and that he should only have had two, an indirect way of him saying he wished my brother and I (who are the eldest and were both special needs kids) hadn’t been born. The first time I stayed the weekend with a boyfriend, he told me that whenever my boyfriend broke up with me, I should get the money up front from the next one, implying that me staying with my boyfriend overnight was akin to prostitution. I was 25 years old at the time. He tried to have my insurance changed against my will by giving all of my information to an insurance salesman I had never met over the phone, and when I protested, he screamed at me in front of strangers that I didn’t appreciate him trying to help me (even though he was literally committing insurance fraud). I was 30 and had been handling my own insurance for over a decade. We stopped speaking for a year after that. It honestly should have stayed that way.

A few years ago, I learned that the reconstruction they performed on my airway is deteriorating and that I would need to have a tracheotomy (breathing tube) implanted, and it will be permanent unless I can get approved for a full tracheal transplant. The first of this kind of surgery was performed in January of 2021, meaning that this surgery is highly experimental and not something my insurance will cover because it’s risky and there’s basically no data on it’s success rate.

When the doctor was telling me about the surgery, he mentioned that the closest specialist that could attempt it is in Cleveland, Ohio (I live in Mississippi). If I were approved for the surgery, not only will I have to pay for it, but I'll also have to pay for the three months of aftercare and I will need to have a support system in place so that I don't spend three months alone, and I’ll have to pay for that, too. I'm disabled and live below the poverty line, so this is going to be a monumental undertaking.

My father drove me to the tracheotomy surgery (because I couldn't drive myself) and heard the doctor telling me all this, and as we're driving home afterward, he says to me, "Why don't we do this? We buy an RV that I and Ella (my daughter) can live in instead of an apartment or hotel. Then, at the end of the three months, I (my dad) will just keep the RV."

I asked him why he would keep the RV, and he told me it would be to make up for all the income he would lose over the three months he’d be taking care of me. I was astounded by the suggestion, because, A: I didn't ask him to be my support system, my sister is more than happy to drop her entire life to go with me and has not expected anything in return for doing so, so no lost income for him; B: There's no possibility he would lose the amount of income necessary to buy an RV in the span of three months, even if we bought it used; C: I would be footing the bill for his entire trip. Rent, electricity, food, gas, internet, literally everything out of my own pocket. It would be an all expense paid vacation for him, other than babysitting my daughter; D: I know that my father's dream is to live out his retirement in an RV. He's told me so. And E, most importantly, he is in no way entitled to any of the money i raise for the surgery, even if he helps me with the fundraising. That money will serve a purpose, and that purpose is not buying him a retirement.

When I told him point blank I felt like he was using my surgery money to fund his retirement, he got angry and told me, "everyone thinks parents are just supposed to give and give and get nothing in return. Nobody ever thinks about how this affects me. Why shouldn't I get something in return if I'm giving up three months of my life and income to go with you?"

15 years ago, this would have made me feel guilty, because I was so used to being manipulated into believing that I was an ungrateful child who was never appreciative of the things he did for me, and I would have given him what he wanted. But now that I’m older, have been in therapy, have a child myself, and remember my mother’s example of love and support, I can see how toxic and abusive this is. Can you imagine trying to con your disabled daughter, who is poor and a single mother, into buying you an expensive vehicle for your retirement? With transplant money? The idea of asking your child to buy you a vehicle after you abandoned her for ten years and gave her no emotional support even when you did return is already disgusting, but the thought of asking her to buy it from life-changing surgery money is just despicable. This is not something I would ask of anyone, let alone my own child.

I want to be a parent like my mom was. She wasn’t perfect, and she made her mistakes, but she was there. Always, in every situation. She never left me, she never let me experience suffering alone, and I never had reason to doubt she loved me. I want to be that to my child. And if my dad did anything for me, it’s teaching what not to do to my children. The idea of alienating my child to the point that she resent and distrust me is something that terrifies me. I don’t ever want to be like him. I want to be like her.

[striderstable]

(via A Few Words About White Supremacists, Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and Other Fascists)

It’s a sad thing to live in a day and age when this has to be said, but I am vehemently opposed to white nationalism or white pride or whatever you want to call your fascist racism or dress it up as. I’m saying this here and now, loud and clear, because there is a blog making the rounds that purports to be about heathenry but is actually a thinly-disguised white supremacist blog and I’ve noticed that some of you have been liking their posts.

[duckysprouts]

big brother, season 2 episode 1, part 2/2

bruce makes his first appearance… with a cameo

[luchigeon]

now he regrets having boasted that he could hear sounds inaudible to the human ear

[whereserpentswalk]

If you see a post that says that Israel is getting away with genocide because it's Jewish, or because Jews are given some sort of special privilege in society due to the holocaust, or because of the position of "privilege" the west gives to Jews, or because our society is "too sensitive" to antisemitism: RUN! Those takes are not coming from a good place.

Zionism is supported by the west despite it being Jewish, not because of it. It's supported due to propping up foreign interests in the region and justifies American imperialism in West Asia. For some it's supported due to the desire to bring about Christian apocalypse.

If someone treats Zionism as being propped up because of some sort of Jewish power in the west they are promoting antisemitism, weather knowingly or unknowingly.

[uchidachi]

“This thing can’t possibly be an antisemitic dog whistle, it’s just a commonly used phrase!”

My dude you are so close to understanding how pervasive antisemitism is

[shotmrmiller]

personal sperm donor soap x reader because IVF is expensive (craigslist ad. everyone else thought it some FBI scheme but you just want to start a family minus the male relationship) thank you but once the dick appt comes, it turns into ghoap cuz johnny just had to bring his boyfriend to donate sperm too. higher chance of a baby

[skuldthevalkyrie]

Dog Whistling

You ever watch a canine, when it’s ears perk at a dog whistle being blown? It’s so curious to watch them respond to something that’s outside of most people’s range of hearing, but that dog hears it. I’ve always thought that dogs look uncomfortable, that the sound might hurt their ears a bit. And they respond to it, sometimes begrudgingly. Dog whistling is also used in politics. Vox describes it…

[copperbadge]

When you realize an online seller who regularly turns up in one of your saved searches has priced everything in their shop some combination of 14 and 88...

If I were into WWII memorabilia, or gun parts or certain areas of neopaganism, I'd expect the presence of blatant lifestyle racists, even if I still wouldn't do business with them. But this is like, fabric and craft supplies. I guess they backdoored in through the tradwives or something.

I'm not going to name them or link because I'm not giving them even the potential for hits, and there's nothing I can do in terms of getting them deplatformed because they're not saying anything outright. Still. Skin crawling, so I'll say this here instead:

There are a lot of numbers and symbols, major and minor, that serve as dog whistles between poser Nazis, ways these losers identify one another. But if you never learn any others, be aware that the numbers 14 (referring to the "fourteen words" of the white power slogan) and 88 (popularized by the author of the 14 words, sometimes standing for Hail Hitler) are two of the biggest. Context of course matters but if you see 14 and 88 in close proximity, or in places you wouldn't expect them (such as the price of a few yards of fabric online) it generally warrants cautious investigation. If everything in their shop has a price ending in 88, you're probably about to do business with a dickhead.

Fucking yikes.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Trump continues having rallies in historic all-White "Sundown Towns," where Blacks had to leave by sunset.

Ayman Mohyeldin discusses the implications of Trump's having held rallies in Aug. and Sept. in four "Sundown Towns," where in the past Blacks had to leave/be off the streets by sundown. The rallies were held in Howell, MI, La Crosse, WI, and Johnstown, PA., and Mosinee, WI. Below is the video that Ayman posted on X.

AYMAN: "When your slogan is the nostalgic phrase Make America Great Again, a campaign tour of 'sundown towns' helps us all understand the America that Donald Trump is yearning for."

Trump keeps sending out his racist "dog whistles," while at the same time claiming that it is really "Whites" who are being discriminated against, and campaigning that he will ban the discussion in schools of "divisive" topics, like critical race theory, and instead promote a "patriotic" educational curriculum, like the whitewashed one developed by the 1776 Project in his last administration.

BlackPast: Sundown Towns:

Sundown Towns are all-white communities, neighborhoods, or counties that exclude Blacks and other minorities through the use of discriminatory laws, harassment, and threats or use of violence. The name derives from the posted and verbal warnings issued to Blacks that although they might be allowed to work or travel in a community during the daytime, they must leave by sundown. Although the term most often refers to the forced exclusion of Blacks, the history of sundown towns also includes prohibitions against Jews, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and other minority groups. Although it is difficult to make an accurate count, historians estimate there were up to 10,000 sundown towns in the United States between 1890 and 1960, mostly in the Mid-West and West.

The Green-Book

The rise of sundown towns made it difficult and dangerous for Blacks to travel long distances by car. In 1930, for instance, 44 of the 89 counties along the famed Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles featured no motels or restaurants and prohibited Blacks from entering after dark. In response, Victor H. Green, a postal worker from Harlem, compiled the Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide to accommodations that served Black travelers. The guide was published from 1936 to 1966, and at its height of popularity was used by two million people.

[edited]

[meatexe]

itty bitty purse dog vibes 🎀

[ghastlybirdie]

John Price is, of course, the husband that has a special whistle just for you

Did he lose you in a store or needs to get your attention? He whistles in the way meant for only you

Only needs to do it once till you’re bounding the corner seconds later and going straight to him, no detours, smiling at him just the way he likes

It’s worked on day one and knew from then that you were his

[liberalsarecool]

The racism and antisemitism are a constant.💫

[creature-wizard]

Some antisemitic dog whistles to watch out for

Because overtly hostile antisemitism is difficult to sell to people, and because it often gets people banned from media platforms, conspiracy theorists rely on other terms to get their ideas across.

Note that people will sometimes use these terms without understanding their connections to far right conspiracy theories, and some of them have legitimate uses outside of far right conspiracy theories. Don't assume that everyone who uses them is a secret Nazi or something. However, do pay close attention to what else they're saying and who they're getting their info from.

Banker/International banker: references the conspiracy theory that Jews control the banks.

Cabal/Kabbalists: references the belief that the Jewish conspirators are into Kabbalah (which is sometimes claimed to be satanic).

Globalists: references the conspiracy theory that Jews are working to create a one world order.

Talmudists: Literally just means Jews.

Marxists/Cultural Marxists: references the conspiracy theory that Jews created communism.

Leftists: references the conspiracy theory that progressive/leftist politics are a Jewish conspiracy.

The elite/elite bloodlines: references the conspiracy theory that most wealthy/ruling families have Jewish blood.

Khazars/Khazarian mafia: references a debunked hypothesis-turned-conspiracy theory that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a group of Khazars who converted to Judaism. (Conspiracy theorists often claim that this means Ashkenazi Jews aren't "real" Jews - which is nonsense from every angle because Judaism does not measure Jewishness through genetics.)

Generational Satanists: references the 13 Illuminati bloodlines conspiracy theory, which is basically a knockoff of the material in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion combined with blood libel and the anti-Catholic conspiracy theories of Alexander Hislop. Conspiracy theorists often claim that it isn't about Jews, it's about powerful families who sometimes just happen to be Jews, but like... c'mon, it's an obvious Protocols/blood libel knockoff that also happens to demonize a few more people. You're not slick.

Lizard people: references David Icke's assertion that the world is under the control of blood-drinking reptilian aliens who created Judaism to enslave humanity. Some people literally believe in Icke's lizard aliens; some just use the term as a dog whistle for regular Jews.

[xclowniex]

If you believe that hews are crying antisemitism over nothing and that we are making antisemitism up, congratulations you are now participating in white supremacy!

There is the antisemitic dog whistle annudah shoah, which is meant to mock a Yiddish accent saying "another shoah". Shoah is a Hebrew word commonly used to refer to the holocaust.

Annudah shoah is meant to mock jews who call out antisemitism. The people who use it, do so because they think that jews are making a big deal out of nothing, and/or are lying about antisemitism. It was created by white supremists

If you believe jews are either lying about antisemitism or are yelling "antisemitism at trivial matters" you are using the same logic as white supremists.

You can read more about the dog whistle here.