In politics, what is a “dog whistle”? It seems to be an appeal to racism that only bigots and left-wing operatives (but I repeat myself) can hear.

Take Wajahat Ali’s column in The Daily Beast on July 12, “The GOP’s Going Full White Nationalist Even Sooner Than I Expected.”

Wajahat Ali Has His Ear Attuned 

Ali, the son of Muslim immigrants, grew up in the white nationalist hotbed of the San Francisco Bay Area, and presumably has a good ear for the high frequency sounds by which bigots signal one another. At least, he thinks he does. He begins by criticizing clumsy comments by a former college football coach, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.     

Tuberville was asked if “white nationalists” should be allowed to serve in the military. He responded, “Well, they call them that.”

Heard charitably, what Tuberville was trying to say was that Democrats too-lightly use words like “racist” and “white nationalist” to attack their political enemies.

Indeed, in Letter to a “Racist” Nation I showed how reporters on the left have repeatedly invented, imagined, or spread rumors about bogus “racist” events. When white racists refuse to appear, as nowadays they usually do, the left has again and again simply made them up. 

Just as even a blizzard must now be portrayed as evidence of catastrophic global warming, so a loose rope in a garage, a silly Halloween prank by an African-American kid, or sheer inventions by 18-year-old Muslim girls or gay black media stars out for attention make national news, get millions of views, and provide renewed “proof” — dog whistles, if you will — that the sky is falling and white nationalists are dragging it down.

Left-wing reporters are like rat catchers in a city that has exterminated all but three rats, two of them lame, and all three too old to breed. The Media is desperate for evidence of a viable white supremacist population infesting American society to justify its existence.

Ali Does the Predictable Thing

So Ali does the predictable thing: he not only calls Tuberville a racist, he includes Republicans in general. Aside from Tuberville’s apparently confusing comments, what is Ali’s evidence that Republicans are “going full white nationalist” this year? Inaudible, unless your ears are more than canine in their sensitivity.

“McConnell showed Tuberville how it’s done when he told reporters, ‘White supremacy is simply unacceptable in the military and in our whole country.’ It is, however, totally acceptable in the modern GOP. It seems Tuberville’s only mistake was being brutally honest.”

So the real white nationalism is denunciation of white nationalism! You can heartily support black conservatives like Herman Cain, Tim Scott, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, Condoleezza Rice, and Ben Carson, as tens of millions of Republicans have done. Give a large chunk of speaking time at the Republican Convention to minority conservatives who believe, along with you, in small government, traditional values, and a strong national defense. Show respect to fellow citizens who happen to be African-American, Hispanic, Native, or Asian. That only proves you are one diabolically clever white nationalist!    

Ali defines the species as follows:

“Ultimately, the end goal of white nationalists is to transform the United States into an ethnostate in which the white race rules over the rest of us.”

But in the very same paragraph in which he supposedly came out as a white nationalist, Tuberville also said, “This country is for all of us … It doesn’t make any difference if you’re rich, poor, black, white.”

A Launch Into the Outer Reaches of the Unreal

Ali spread his net widely, mostly “nut-picking” incidents involving remote associations of people who themselves are on the fringe of the Republican Party. (Because no Democrat would ever march in a protest with Marxists or sleep with a CCP agent.) But for his piece de la resistance, his smoking gun, Ali launched his argument into the outer reaches of the unreal:

Hitler is also making a comeback in conservative circles. A chapter of the extremist group Moms For Liberty was discovered to have quoted the genocidal Nazi leader in a newsletter. A similar version of the same quote, ‘whoever has the youth has the future,’ was spouted by Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) in 2021. She was addressing an event hosted by Moms for America, which seeks to ‘reclaim our culture for truth, family and freedom.’ That event was also attended by Rep. Greene.

One could easily dismiss these examples as the ‘fringe’ of the GOP, but the truth is that the fringe, and white nationalist talking points, are now the mainstream. Even a self-professed ‘moderate,’ former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, has jumped on board. In June, she defended Moms For Liberty on Fox and tweeted, ‘If @Moms4Liberty is a “hate group,” add me to the list.’

It is hard to decide whether this “argument” is more stupid, corrupt, or desperate. The purpose of the quote was not to glorify, praise, or agree with Hitler, but to discredit the sentiments expressed by associating them with a bad man.

In an article linked from Ali’s piece, AP says one should never quote Adolf Hitler to make a point, but that is obvious nonsense. Richard Weikart writes entire books quoting Adolf Hitler in order to discredit Social Darwinism. C.S. Lewis’ breakthrough work, praised even by non-Christians, quoted a senior devil named Screwtape at length. The Gospels of Luke and Matthew quote Screwtape’s boss, Satan himself, as does John Milton in Paradise Lost.

So quoting an idea shared by Hitler or the devil in order to disparage means Hitler or his diabolical sponsors are “making a come-back” in your ideology? That’s Ali’s smoking gun? That’s the grounds on which he hopes to out Moms for Freedom, Miller, Greene, Haley, and the entire Republican Party as neo-Nazi white supremacists?

How does that even work? Ali is quoting alleged Republican worshippers of the German devil incarnate to disparage their ideas. Doesn’t that make him a neo-Nazi too? Or does guilt-by-association stop one plastic monkey short of any left-wing journalist who uses the technique?

When You’re Out of Ammo, Use Silly Putty

With the left resorting to such infantile nonsense to attack conservatives, it suggests that they lack better ammunition. What army would throw Silly Putty if its artillery still carried usable mortar rounds?

To be fair, The Daily Beast is avowed trash. The site’s name comes not (as you might think) from the Beast of Revelation, from the Beast who seeks to establish a one-world government and control all commerce. It derives from the name of a trashy newspaper in a novel by Evelyn Waugh, which as Wikipedia explains (no, I haven’t read the novel, and it appears I won’t need to), makes the following point:

“The world’s media … requires that something happen to please their editors and owners back home and so they will create news.”

In the eyes of “journalists” like Wajahat Ali, white nationalism is always news, even if he has to create it out of whole cloth. It is not news if Democratic politicians, or Google or Harvard, exclude thousands of candidates because of their skin color. It is not news if Ali’s home town falls apart by the day, thanks to the sort of politics he espouses.

Ali will probably hear all kinds of dog whistles while reading this article. That is because the ideology now dominant on the left is better at nothing more than creating the sort of bigots it endlessly warns against, but so desperately requires.

David Marshall, an educator and writer, has a doctoral degree in Christian thought and Chinese tradition. His most recent book is The Case for Aslan: Evidence for Jesus in the Land of Narnia.