[nix0n]

The references to skin color are usually implicit (especially after his presidential term started), but they are always there.

I can understand how a non-American might miss Trump's racist phrases, but he's pandering to a white supremacist base who are sure to see them.

I don't have a specific link to reference, but the tactic he's using is often referred to as a "dog whistle".

[z9e]

Do we have an estimate as to how many white supremacists there are in the US? I’m genuinely curious, because the popular march in VA had what, a few hundred? I realize that may not be the entire population. There’s probably more anti-vaxxers than white supremacists at this point.

I don’t understand how people think there’s a white supremacist base that has a ton of power in this country.

[pjc50]

If there aren't very many white supremacists, where is all the racism coming from?

> I don’t understand how people think there’s a white supremacist base that has a ton of power in this country.

The police can shoot people dead, lie about the circumstances, and not even face trial or suspension? Have you missed all the protests and the wall to wall news coverage of the past few weeks?

[z9e]

> If there aren't very many white supremacists, where is all the racism coming from?

Where is the ubiquitous racism being seen? I am in no way trying to be facetious, but we need to be accurate here. Only reason I ask is because I see racism being thrown around at people who aren't racist, and only because they disagree with a narrative. That word doesn't really mean anything anymore.

I haven't missed it, I just don't think police brutality is purely a race issue. I think it comes down to poor training and not enough vetting so psychopaths like Chauvin don't get the job. There's also not enough accountability for those in charge to fire these cops after multiple civilian complaints are filed against them.

[082349872349872]

There are people with LE background who have ideas for how to improve it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23429390

(my current theory as to why the US military is more enlightened than US police is (a) they normally operate in situations where they have to win hearts and minds, and (b) "up or out" gets rid of bad apples)

For what it's worth, I have colleagues who have gone through police academy. It's 2 years here, which may correlate with the <1 per 10mm rate on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...

[aebtebeten]

I agree (being an amateur crowd counter) that there is a wide difference in the observed popular support for white supremacist and for anti-lynching demonstrations.

(How well people in the streets translates into political representation, we'll discover at the end of this year. For a while after 2016 there was a cottage industry of german TV reporters going to the US to interview Trump voters, and finding they often had strong views on minorities despite not having known any themselves. That may or may not be true in general, but it's the picture we got here.)

However, it does seem that even though the soviets haven't been with us for several decades, the subject of their favourite whataboutism fallacy didn't end when the cold war did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

"Police brutality" was common enough to be portrayed in 2004 childrens' pop culture (note the knee on the neck) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg3NFHv7ASo

[hackissimo123]

This blog post[1] tried to figure out a number back in 2016. (Warning: that's not the only thing the post discusses; avoid if you've already had too much culture war.)

To quote: "My guess is that the number of organized white supremacists in the country is in the very low five digits." It's just the thoughts of some random blogger, not an academic study, but he lays out his methodology in detail and it seems reasonable.

Of course that was four years ago, but the estimate seems consistent with the evidence from the 2017 Charlottesville rally, which only drew a few hundred attendees despite being the biggest, most prominent and well-publicised white supremacist rally in the USA for decades.

Of course this is only talking about active, open white supremacists, not the full gamut of racism. But I find it hard to believe that the number of Richard-Spencer-style racists in the USA is anything other than tiny - far too small to have any influence at the ballot box. And by the way, does anyone seriously think that there was ever any chance of these people voting for Hillary Clinton (or Joe Biden) in the first place?

To quote the same blog post:

> Dog whistling seems to be the theory that if you want to know what someone really believes, you have to throw away decades of consistent statements supporting the side of an issue that everyone else in the world supports, and instead pay attention only to one weird out-of-character non-statement which implies he supports a totally taboo position which is perhaps literally the most unpopular thing it is possible to think.

> And then you have to imagine some of the most brilliant rhetoricians and persuaders in the world are calculating that it’s worth risking exposure this taboo belief in order to win support from a tiny group with five-digit membership whose support nobody wants, by sending a secret message, which inevitably every single media outlet in the world instantly picks up on and makes the focus of all their coverage for the rest of the election.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-w...

[AnimalMuppet]

Ah, that turned on a light bulb for me. They're finding dog whistles by deconstructing the text. That makes perfect sense.

Since there are so many possible deconstructions (as many as there are readers), it also means that it's a game that the speaker cannot win. Someone will always be able to deconstruct what you say to be a dogwhistle, no matter what you say. So the only possible approach is to just ignore them, because if you try to play their game, you are going to lose, and to continue to lose.

[golergka]

> he's pandering to a white supremacist base who are sure to see them

At this point, it seems like a non-falsifiable hypothesis. I constantly see how in american politics anything Trump says gets interpreted in most bizzare way possible, rationalizing it that he's speaking in secret code for his white supremacist friends. What really got me whas the point where american media quoted Trump on praising General Lee, as if Trump was gloryfing Conferedacy - while the quote in context was clearly intended to paint Lee as a worthy adversary and by that, praise the Union.

I'm sorry, but after that, all accusations of "racism" and "white supremacy" sound like the boy who just cries wolf again. And the most saddeing part about it is, I know for a fact that after saying that, I will be accused of being a closeted nazi too.

[898420938988]

You may already know this, but when people say "white supremacy" they might not mean what you think they mean. For a certain strand of activist, "white supremacy" doesn't just mean the KKK, lynching, Jim Crow, apartheid, black slavery, all the other obvious and overt forms of white racism. It refers to a vaguely-defined sense of racism that supposedly is omnipresent in American (and more generally Western) society, affects everything we do and is apparently inescapable. These people will tell you that we live in a white supremacist society, that white supremacy is at the core of most if not all of our social, political and economic structures, and if you disagree then this only proves that you support the system and are therefore a white supremacist.

This might sound ridiculous but it's taken very seriously by a growing number of people; it has its roots in a certain strain of postmodern thought called critical race theory that's been slowly emanating out of academia for the last decade or two and is now seriously spilling over into the mainstream. See e.g. Robin Diangelo's book White Fragility (which is currently back on the bestseller lists) which asserts that all white people are racist, and if you're white and don't admit that you're racist then this is just you demonstrating "white fragility" which proves... that you're a racist. This is of course divisive, harmful, unfalsifiable garbage but if you don't think these kind of ideas are becoming very influential then you haven't been paying attention.

So basically the reason why it seems like people are constantly throwing around terms like "racist" and "white supremacy" like they have no meaning is because they have consciously and deliberately stripped these words of all meaning. Of course that's not how they'd describe it, but if think this is just me being a conspiratorial right-wing nutjob I highly encourage you to learn more about critical race theory (newdiscourses.com is a good place to start) and understand what these activists are saying. This stuff is coming for you eventually whether you like it or not so you'd better be prepared.

[golergka]

I have a personality trait of always playing devil's advocate, regardless of my final opinion on the matter, so don't be surprised, but I'll switch sides here a bit.

Don't we all have some implicit biases? I know I do. I have had (and probably, unfortunately still have) biases about women and non-binary people, biases about people from other ethnicities and countries, and although I try to work them out, it's not something that can be done completely.

However, I can't find a rational reason to name these biases "racism" or "white supremacy", words that for any sane person mean not some subconcious thought process, but a fully concious evil. Using these terms in such a way is a very dishonest moat and castle tactic.