At a time when an endless stream of printed and electronic speech is available to parse for hidden significance, detection of dog whistles and code words reflects widespread anxiety over mass manipulation in an overwhelmingly mediated age. From this perspective, apprehensions of dog whistles and code words are a desperate rearguard strategy to maintain a moral high ground. In 2023, political strategist Nina Smith protested that Republican skepticism about US Vice President Kamala Harris’s fitness as a replacement for Joe Biden was “part of the dog whistle, fear-mongering we've seen them do. “In true dog whistle style,” Ian Haney López wrote in Dog Whistle Politics, “the most effective Willie Horton ad never mentioned race at all. “Dog whistles” and “code words” rely upon the revulsion most of us feel towards any kind of prejudice by deflecting unwelcome ideas or facts as veiled hatred.

Source: Los Angeles Times September 06, 2023 13:22 UTC