Views from the Abyss #33: Dog Whistles

Q. I often hear of dog whistles being used during political campaign speeches and whatnot. What is that all about?

A. The notorious dog whistle rhetoric is considered to be an extremely dangerous means of delivering subliminal messages to certain groups of people, while everybody else remains entirely unaware that anything has happened.

A typical exchange goes as follows:

Politician: (Blah blah blah)

'Progressive': Oh my god, Politician just said something totally anti-semitic!

Joe Regular: I didn't hear him say anything anti-semitic at all.

'Progressive': Well of course you didn't, because it's like, a dog whistle. What he said was designed to like... to totally resonate, but only with people already pre-deposed to an anti-semitic world view. It's like... an appeal to hatred, or something...

Joe Regular: Nope. Still can't hear it.

Now, ignoring even that weak stimuli only produces weak responses, our 'progressive' friend above fails to note the irony that they heard the so called dog whistle loud and clear, though no doubt do not consider themselves to be anti-semitic. And often, the hypothetical exchange would continue as follows:

Anti-semitic: Hey, what are you guys talking about?

Joe Regular: 'Progressive' is trying to convince me that Politician's speech contained an anti-semitic slur in the form of a dog whistle—a subliminal primer message that only already anti-semitic people can hear—as some kind of appeal to hatred, a means of securing the anti-semitic vote, as it were.

Anti-semitic: Well, I didn't hear anything.

'Progressive': Like, that's why they call it a dog whistle, you knyoo. Only those that are already pre-disposed to anti-semitism can hear it! Hello?

Anti-semitic: Listen, Sir or Madam, delete as applicable. I'm as anti-semitic as they come. When I learned about the six million Jews killed under Nazi occupation (which can not be falsified on threat of imprisonment), I thought 'Nice start, but what about the remaining three point five?' That's how much I hate Jews. I didn't hear Politician say a single anti-semitic thing during his speech, and I still think he's an arse. I notice however that you seemed to hear it just fine though.

'Progressive': Oh my god, I can't believe you just. I can't even. That is like, totally ignorant and insulting, you knyoo. Some of us are just, like... intelligent enough, to notice these things, you knyoo!

And herein lies the crux of the issue. Dog whistle is merely a descriptive term for a perceived form of persuasion from the eyes of one who believes themselves immune to fallacy, and clever enough to have spotted it. Persuasion comes in many forms, and there's no reason to think that making a dog whistle spotter look foolish (i.e. discredit an opponent) is not among its repertoire.

And it's not even hard to do. As with so many other liberal arts rhetorics, the dog whistle spotter suffers frequently from appeals to hubris, the idea that only oneself and one's in-group is capable of independent thought in a world of mindless automatons.

Nobody is immune to fallacy.