Media Matters Cristina Lpez explains how the White House uses dog whistles to appeal to the "alt-r

[Behind the Aegis]

Media Matters’ Cristina López explains how the White House uses dog whistles to appeal to the "alt-right"

Cristina López on PRI’s The World: Dog whistles like “cosmopolitan” “allow you to appeal to a certain part of the population that it wouldn’t be OK to appeal in a general speech, like the White House press briefing. But these groups are attuned, and they are listening.”

MARCO WERMAN (HOST): It may sound a little like it falls into the category of the word "elitist," but "cosmopolitan" also has an ugly history of anti-Semitism. Nazis in Germany and Joseph Stalin both weaponized the word. Cristina López is a senior researcher at Media Matters. She's been following trends in language used by white supremacists and the "alt-right." So, what does a word like "cosmopolitan" actually signal to white supremacists, Cristina?

CRISTINA LÓPEZ: Well, like you very well said -- antisemitism has a long, ugly tradition of using cosmopolitanism as a dog whistle. And the thing about dog whistles is that they work kind of like easter eggs -- you have to know what you're looking for to find them. So, therefore, they kind of, like, land with a very specific kind of audience, but fly over the heads of everybody else. So, on a sort of speech that was meant for public consumption, like yesterday's press briefing, Stephen Miller was able to just throw in the word "cosmopolitan" and make it sound like he meant "elitist." And, when confronted by anyone, he would be able to say, you kno, "Well, no. Of course you're making this up, I am myself Jewish" or be able to get away with it. And the thing about dog whistles is that they have to work into a larger context, and the context that we have in this particular instance is that the White House in the past 24 hours has cited explicitly groups that are anti-immigrant nativist groups -- Stephen Miller cited the Center for Immigration Studies, and the White House website had the praise from the group the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, and the group NumbersUSA. These groups have been labeled hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So, those citations that are so explicit leave very little room for interpretation to whether we should call it a dog whistle or not.

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This will inspire anti-Semitism from all directions.

[BigmanPigman]

1. Now we have to be astute enough to learn the specific lingo

of various subversive groups functioning in the W House? I'm so thrilled with this admin. and their ongoing animosity.

[sharedvalues]

4. Long-standing GOP problem. "States rights". "Young bucks"

Nixon and Reagan started this.

Dogwhistle appeals to hate are part of the fabric of the GOP. They can't win elections without these dogwhistles. Patriotic Americans should continue to call them what they are.

[Igel]

5. Yeah, because having an outsider explain something to other outsiders is so cool.

Ever hear a conservative explain to another conservative what a progressive means?

It's never good. And only on rare occasion accurate. It's like when a white guy explains to a black woman what blacks and what women really mean, except the white guy's talking to another white guy. (Same for when a black woman explains to a white man what white men really mean. Accuracy isn't really something that can be discussed except in the extreme abstract, sort of like the way general relativity folk discuss quarks and make use of Planck length.)

Even explaining how Stalin "weaponized" the word "cosmopolitan" went wrong. He used it with respect to Jews, to be sure, but also with respect to a lot of Russians. It wasn't a dog-whistle for "Jew" it was a dog-whistle for "enemy of the state." That could be Jewish, and was more likely to be Jewish than, say, Belorusian, because of the split loyalty claim that followed Jews. A cosmpolite could could be Russian or Ukrainian. It was more likely to fit the stereotype of a Jew as somebody more connected with Jews abroad than his neighbors or co-workers, but it was more likely to indicate to educated Jews. And not because they were Jewish, but because they were connected more with people abroad who had ideas discordant with government policy.

It wasn't direct code for "Jew" in most cases. It replaced "internationalist" in CommPartSpeak. Both were positive terms for a while, since Jews and "internationalists" were much more likely to support the Reds against the tsar' and against the Whites. But "cosmpolitan" sort of merged "internationalist" and "elitist" into a portmanteau term that usage said meant "anti-me" when used by Stalin. Anti-Semitism was deeply rooted, even in the non-Russian Georgian (and not because he assimilated--Caucasians tend to be anti-Semitic as most others).

Now, can you "prove" that it was code for "Jew"? Sure. Just pick all and only those instances when it referred to Jews. Then all the evidence says "cosmopolitan" meant "Jews." Of course, it's not really "all the evidence," just "all the evidence that supports my view." The doctors' plot is the usual place to start this. But the word was around before and after that, and while the doctors' plot was wrapped in anti-Semitic language it was pure Stalin. He'd done the same thing with cosmopolitan Russian generals and scholars, and didn't mean to say they were Jews. But when racism comes into play Americans sort of develop tunnel vision. Just yesterday I listened to some guy on the radio say that he was active in memorializing the Holocaust because it was horrible, and 6 million people died in those death camps, all Jews. The racism implicit in that statement erased over half the death camp victims, because they didn't fit the nice racial divides in the US. (It's one thing to say 6 million Jews died in the camps and they were singled out for extra-special treatment, but when the death camps become, under revision, entirely occupied by Jews because all the other groups, ethnic, religious, political, and gender-related, who usually were also singled out for extra-special treatment, suddenly become invisible landscape it's over the line.)


"Cosmopolitan," one DUer quoted somebody as saying recently, meant "black or Jew." No. It can refer to a white male just as easily, and sort of misses the point to make it simpler than possible to explain and provoke outrage.

[Girard442]

2. Cowardly little weasels, ain't they?

If their world view is so great, how come they won't talk about it openly?

[Judi Lynn]

3. Glad you made the point. They certainly are cowardly, sneaky, dirty players. n/t

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R