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You're one of my favorite commenters here, and I find myself agreeing most of the time. But in this instance I really do think you're wrong. Here's why: 1. the

by mercer 6y ago

You're one of my favorite commenters here, and I find myself agreeing most of the time. But in this instance I really do think you're wrong. Here's why: 1. the context is specifically vilifying a loose collective of anti-fascists using a symbol that was used by nazis to mark (among others) anti-fascists. 2. the source is a president who definitely exhibits fascist tendencies, and is very popular with white supremacists. 3. there's a history of weird borderline dog-whistling (see the Twitter thread linked to elsewhere. I think it makes a pretty good case.). 4. if the 'removed 88 ads' is correct, surely that's a very weird coincidence? I'd say that if the 88 thing is false, I might believe the 14 words thing is a coincidence. But that doesn't change the fact that the red triangle or even the weird focus on antifa as being a terrorist organization is deeply worrying to me. I am generally skeptical of conspiracy theories, but this one really does strike me as too coincidental to actually be a coincidence. That said, I also wouldn't be surprised if it's more of a 'trolling' thing than Trump going 'mask off' or whatnot. I'm only arguing that I don't think it's a coincidence. EDIT: I'll add that considering the popularity of Trump among white supremacists and trolls, it's quite possible that someone somewhere in the organization got to make an ad and decided to fill it up with incindiary dog-whistles. That scenario still makes me uncomfortable, as I really don't want 4chan anywhere near the most powerful country in the world, but it would make the whole thing less of a conspiracy theory. I truly believe Trump is too dumb to have any kind of consistent ideology, so it's possible.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
First: Thanks! I'm rather astonished to be on anyone's list of favorite commenters. I've been discounting the 88 thing. Would it have been 88 ads if Facebook hadn't stopped the ad campaign at exactly that time? Even if 88 ads was the full campaign, that seems to me to be a fairly difficult number for a random right-winger to be able to determine, and therefore like a poor channel to try to send a dogwhistle through. (It's hard for right-wingers to simultaneously be too stupid to understand why their position is wrong, and so clever that they can find all these insanely clever side-channels through which to send dogwhistles - though I guess the actual Nazis did pretty well at being technologically literate barbarians.) To me, it just feels like seeing morse code in the campfire smoke - that is, seeing a deliberate pattern in randomness. I'll admit that the 14 words at the start of the DHS "We must secure the border" statement seem a lot more real to me - not just the word count, but it's also echoing the start of the actual words. I'd be more likely to buy the "trolling" idea - that the attempt is to put the most innocent-looking-to-most-people thing possible out there to trigger the reaction, to make those reacting look like hysterical nutcases - except I'm not sure that Trump is smart enough or skilled enough to pull it off this well. TL;DR: It feels too flimy to me to be a deliberate dogwhistle, but I'm not totally certain of that.

by mercer 6y ago

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

First: Thanks! I'm rather astonished to be on anyone's list of favorite commenters. I've been discounting the 88 thing. Would it have been 88 ads if Facebook hadn't stopped the ad campaign at exactly that time? Even if 88 ads was the full campaign, that seems to me to be a fairly difficult number for a random right-winger to be able to determine, and therefore like a poor channel to try to send a dogwhistle through. (It's hard for right-wingers to simultaneously be too stupid to understand why their position is wrong, and so clever that they can find all these insanely clever side-channels through which to send dogwhistles - though I guess the actual Nazis did pretty well at being technologically literate barbarians.) To me, it just feels like seeing morse code in the campfire smoke - that is, seeing a deliberate pattern in randomness. I'll admit that the 14 words at the start of the DHS "We must secure the border" statement seem a lot more real to me - not just the word count, but it's also echoing the start of the actual words. I'd be more likely to buy the "trolling" idea - that the attempt is to put the most innocent-looking-to-most-people thing possible out there to trigger the reaction, to make those reacting look like hysterical nutcases - except I'm not sure that Trump is smart enough or skilled enough to pull it off this well. TL;DR: It feels too flimy to me to be a deliberate dogwhistle, but I'm not totally certain of that.