Dog-Whistle Racism is political campaigning or policy-making that uses coded words and themes to appeal to conscious or subconscious racist concepts and frames.
For example, the concepts ‘welfare queen,’ ’states’ rights,’ ‘Islamic terrorist,’ ‘uppity,’ 'thug,' 'tough on crime,' and ‘illegal alien’ all activate racist concepts that that have already been planted in the public consciousness and now are being activated by purposeful or accidental campaign activities, media coverage, public policy and cultural traditions.
So, what’s dog whistle racism? It’s pure political theater to push buttons to win elections and policies. StopDogWhistleRacism.com, a project of the Center for Social Inclusion, is here to identify, expose and help you to track it. Join us.
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All of the members of the Republican Women of Otero County have quit after the embattled head of the group, Martha Stirman, refused to resign her post.
As the Independent’s Heath Haussamen reported, on Oct. 21 the Alamogordo Daily News published a letter in which Stirman wrote, “I believe Muslims are our enemies. … I believe war is a fact of life and we should always win. … I believe there is a moderate and a socialist in this election. I agree with a two-party system, but Obama isn’t a messiah or a democrat. He’s a Muslim socialist.”
Last week, after a firestorm of angry response to Stirman’s letter, the executive board of the Otero County Republican Party and the Republican Women of Otero County asked Stirman to resign.
The executive board of the Otero County Republican Party and the Republican Women of Otero County asked Stirman to resign last week, county GOP Chairwoman Sassy Tinling said. Stirman refused, and Tinling said the rest of the board of the Republican Women’s group immediately gave their resignations to Stirman.
Tinling also said the county party’s executive committee ”has chosen to disassociate itself from the RWOOC as it exists today” and that the Otero County GOP will no longer recognize Stirman’s position on its board.
…”It is unfortunate that Mrs. Stirman used the RPOC and RWOOC as a conduit for her personal views,” said Tinling, who apologized on behalf of the Republican Party of Otero County and its board ”to anyone offended by Mrs. Stirman’s comments.”
The New York Times notes that the evangelical power broker Reverend Rod Parsley of Ohio does not have his same swagger this year.
Six months ago, Rev. Rod Parsley was one of the more prominent evangelicals to hail Sen. John McCain as a “strong, true, consistent conservative.”
But two days before the election, in a state central to Mr. McCain’s hopes, Rev. Rod Parsley preached to his vast congregation at World Harvest Church of hellfire and “circling in on a fight with the eternal forces of darkness” without ever mentioning Mr. McCain.
The reason is pretty simple. Mother Jones revealed that Parsley, a major megacurch pastor who holds sway over a good number of swing state Ohio voters, leads a not-so-secret life as an intolerant anti-Muslim bigot. In one of his books, he argued that America is at war with Islam:
The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.
Mother Jonesunearthed video of Parsley making similar statements. He claimed Islam was an “anti-Christ religion that intends, through violence, to conquer the world,” adding, “Allah was a demon spirit.”
The Somali-Dutch moderate-conservative feminist and former Dutch parliamentarian is skeptical about a possible Barack Obama presidency and his relations with the Muslim world: “As the new US president, Barack Obama would at first have a honeymoon period with the Muslim world, a continuation, really, of the honeymoon he has already enjoyed as a black man rising to the heights of power in the most powerful nation on earth, America. But Obama has said he is determined to find and kill Osama bin Laden. He has said that the frontier in the war on terror is now in Afghanistan, a hotspot for jihadis since the 1970s, where he wants to send more troops. In other words, he would continue the Bush policy, only with more competence. In short order, this increased US presence and the collateral damage it would cause in Afghanistan and the region would end Obama’s honeymoon. It would remind the Islamists and their sympathizers across the Muslim world that Barack Obama would not act out of solidarity with people based on the color of his skin or because of his origins in Kenya, but as the commander-in-chief protecting American national interests above all. As a result, much of his popularity would vanish. Perhaps it would even fall to the level of George Bush. I’m sure many would come to think that Obama had betrayed them.”
The former-Muslim-turned-atheist pundit continues her commentary: “Barack Obama has also criticized Bush for ‘not talking to the enemy,’ particularly in Iran. So, the world would expect Obama to obey all the diplomatic traffic rules and follow all the procedures to try to persuade President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian authorities to abandon their project to build a nuclear bomb. But when Iran refuses to give up its bomb despite the eloquent entreaties of the new American president, Obama would be forced to act. So, after talking with Iran, he would likely end up at the same spot where Bush is. That wouldn’t make him very popular in Iran or with others who oppose America’s use of its military might. At the same time, the original impetus of Obama’s campaign was his pledge to withdraw from Iraq in 16 months. There is little doubt that if Obama were to actually implement this pledge, jihadis in Iraq and around the world, who see history in the millennial terms of the long fight against the Crusaders, would feel they are the victors.”
I just received this and thought you might be interested.
It’s the October issue of the Veterans of Foreign Wars featuring John McCain squaring off against, uhh, I don’t know who that is exactly… the angry brother of Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin?
Notice, by the way, how McCain is deeper inside the ring associating him more with the American eagle and the presidential seal.
Fred Eshelman, “a wealthy North Carolina based pharmaceutical executive,” finances a conservative group that claims to communicate “with a zingy edge and a sense of humor.” An example of that humor is an attack ad airing today . The ad exploits Joe Biden’s prediction that the next president will be “tested” by an international crisis. The script of the latest attack ad is less provocative than than the images used. Along with footage of the Twin Towers, the commercial is shot stylistically like the Fox show with shaky camera images of dark-skinned men building a bomb, and ends with the bomb’s detonation in a city. The ad also uses an image of Obama next to one of the terrorists driving a van.
So goes the latest popular chant on the campaign trail with Gov. Sarah Palin, demonstrated at a morning rally in central Florida.
Ms. Palin was midway through her stump speech when a group of supporters began shouting it in unison, drowned out a few seconds later as Ms. Palin talked over them.
A similar chant, “Vote McCain, not Hussein,” was heard at a campaign event for Ms. Palin in Williamsport, Pa., earlier this week.
Senator Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, a fact that some of his opponents say proves that he is a Muslim. Mr. Obama is, in fact, a Christian.
After the rally in Florida ended, two of the people leading the chant explained why they did so.
“Because it rhymes,” said Shirley Mitten, 64, a volunteer at a pregnancy center and a resident of Brooksville, Fla.
She said she does not know if Mr. Obama is a Muslim. “He says he’s not, but we have no way of knowing,” Ms. Mitten said.
…
The middle name Hussein, he said, added to the suspicion. “I guess Obama was named after Saddam Hussein,” he said.
Marcia Stirman, who touched off a firestorm by writing a letter to the editor in the Alamogordo Daily News which called Obama a Muslim socialist has no plans to resign her position.In fact, she intends to run for re-election next Wednesday as chair of Republican Women of Otero County according to the Albuquerque Journal.
It is also quite funny how all of a sudden her story has changed on whether all Muslims are enemies in her xenophobic mind or not.
Stirman also said her comments have been misunderstood. She said she never meant to suggest that all Muslims are America’s enemies, only that those “who are trying to kill us” are.”It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s taken on a meaning that I never intended,” Stirman said in a telephone interview.
She added: “Can you say that all Christians are good? Absolutely not. … It’s not true.”
When asked why she thought Muslims are an enemy Stirman said, “Well in the Muslim world, if you are not Muslim, you are an infidel, and if you are an infidel, they consider you the enemy.”
In other words, McCain’s latest campaign strategy. We saw it in Pennsylvania, where prominent Republicans sent out an e-mail to Jewish voters likening the situation in 2008 to the situation in Europe in the 1930s and ’40s (with Obama akin to Neville Chamberlain, an enabler of evil then the Nazis, now Iran). And we’re seeing it again in a new McCain ad likely to be aired in Florida (if it hasn’t started airing already). Via Benen , the ad says this: Iran. Radical Islamic government. Known sponsors of terrorism. Developing nuclear capabilities to generate power’ but threatening to eliminate Israel. Obama says Iran is a country, doesn’t pose a serious threat.
Let me add to DeLong’s post. First, the idea that there is anything at all unseemly about “associating” with Rashid Khalidi is — why mince words — racist.
As Matt Duss points out, Khalidi is a respected professor of Middle Eastern studies. His history of the Palestinian people was on the syllabus of a course I took in college on the Arab-Israeli conflict. To intimate that Khalidi is in any sense a terrorist is a racist slander of the Palestinian people and betrays the cynical expectation that Jewish voters will run in fear of the Scary Arab. Whatever country Sen. John McCain is running to be president of, it sure as hell isn’t America
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