Did the citizen withdrawn from anonymity by BBB 2015 give the Nazi salute on the air, on a debate program on that right-wing TV channel? Did not. He did, so much so that he got fired. No, yes, no, yes. The “dog whistle” usually works like that.
For those who are distracted, “dog whistle” is a political communication tool widely used by the new international right – a century old crowd at heart but aggressively new in methods.
I use “dog whistle” because when talking about dog whistle, in Portuguese, few people think about the political sense of the expression. This one was born in English and didn’t travel so well. However, it is an excellent metaphor.
It is known that the literal, ultrasonic dog whistle is not picked up by the human ear. The message that for many is silent sounds for others – the dog – clear and strident.
When someone drinks a glass of milk in front of the camera, they may just be drinking milk, a simple and banal act, almost empty of meaning – silence. We’re in the range where most ears pick up nothing.
The same gesture beeps loudly when interpreted as a password for white supremacism, a convention of the American alt-right that has only a few years to live, according to new right scholar Michele Prado, author of “Ideological Storm” (Lux).
Interestingly, before becoming a racist symbol, milk had another meaning. “First it was used to troll leftists,” says Prado. “Alt-right influencers said men on the left were effeminate because they consumed too much soy milk.”
The “dog whistle” is a few decades older than the poisoned milk. William Safire (1929-2009), who for 30 years wrote a reference column on language and language for The New York Times magazine, had time to dwell on him.
Safire believed that the political meaning of “dog whistle” was an extension of its use by pollsters in the 1980s to designate noises that only respondents identified in the questions.
The whistle is not always as flashy as a glass of milk or a Sieg Heil. In a more common version, which for some doesn’t even deserve the name of “dog whistle”, a homophobic candidate who doesn’t want to lose moderate voters can declare himself “in favor of the traditional family” – which sounds more respectable than “I hate gays”, although it says the same thing.
The similarity of the dog whistle to slang, jargon, any code designed to exclude (the majority) and include (the initiated) is evident, strengthening the group spirit. Contributing to this is the childlike pleasure that, like all secret codes, it gives to those who decipher it.
But it’s not just a gregarious resource. The whistle is also efficient in spreading and making more and more acceptable, naturalized by an increasing number of people, messages that would be rejected by society as reprehensible or even criminal if they were exposed in the open.
No one can prove that the gesture made at the end of a debate about the clamorous episode in which a digital celebrity with a bicycle name defended the legalization of the Nazi Party in Brazil was not just a tatibite goodbye.
One thing is certain: dismissals and letters of repudiation aside, the defense of Nazism sounds less absurd to the average Brazilian today than it did at the beginning of the week. The “dog whistle” wins even when it loses. Are you hearing the whistle?
