[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.