OK Euphemism Treadmill
Police and the FBI are investigating “hate-filled flyers and inscriptions” left around Western Connecticut State University. The “hate-filled” flyers in question said “It's OK to be white” and another read “Islam is right about women”. Everyone is taking this incident super seriously.
When I first heard about “Islam is RIGHT about women” I had to give a slow clap because that's a brilliant scissor phrase. As a former Muslim, I approve wholeheartedly.
But why is it so easy to troll people with statements like this? “It's OK to be white” is quite literally one of the most innocuous statements you can make. It's passive. It's neutral. It's anything but confrontational, aggressive, or implying any form of supremacy. And yet, people get REALLY mad about it. There is nothing inherently offensive about the statement. Even the most virulently hateful white supremacist can still have the capacity to utter the truth. If I encounter one saying that phrase, I (as someone previously deeply involved in anti-fascist and anti-racist activism) will simply respond "You're right, that's not at issue" and move on. I see the phrase as clever because it's a demonstrated method of testing the waters of acceptable discourse. It's objectionable for a variety of reasons to say "It's great to be white", but how much further do you need to scale it back before no one objects? It appears evident from the rage this phrase generates that anything short of "It's bad to be white" will be deemed unacceptable. And that's ridiculous as fuck.
Dog whistles definitely exist, but a good rule to follow is that the less ambiguous a statement is, the less likely it is a dog whistle. To me, a phrase referencing "Final Solution" is deeply ambiguous and can mean anything from total human extinction to the transcendence victory of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Dog whistles by definition require plausible deniability, and there is more than enough in that phrase to act as a credible dog whistle. This is the same with the 14 words: what does 'secure' mean? who does 'our people' encompass? Why is it limited to just white children? For the same reasons, this is credibly described as a dog whistle.
I don't see "It's OK to be white" as ambiguous at all because it's such a amazingly neutral and passive statement. If this becomes the bar for what could become the next dog whistle du jour then almost literally can be up for grabs. Something as literal and innocuous as "I like forest wild growth" can actually really mean an intent to mock the number of mass graves that resulted from the Rwandan genocide. "I ate bacon for breakfast" is really a dog whistle for the inferiority of Islamic and Jewish dietary restrictions. "Blind spot" is really a dog whistle for claiming superiority over those who cannot see (Oops, that's already a thing). On and on.
Put it another way, is it possible to reword the phrase "It's OK to be white" to not be offensive? Or is the idea itself beyond salvation?
If the argument is that the phrase’s actual meaning has shifted due to context, how would it then be possible to communicate the literal meaning without also invoking the "actual meaning"? If somehow tomorrow, white supremacists co-opt the phrase "The sky is blue" to mean something really offensive, how would you then communicate the literal meaning of that phrase? The only functional response to me is to just agree that "the sky is blue" means "the sky is blue", regardless of what white supremacists actually think it means. I don't see how language can function otherwise.