It's only an issue if you ignore the context and origination of the phrase. If you read it literally then sure, it seems like an innocuous phrase. The alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally.
The additional context just makes it even more foolish to object to the statement. I'm baffled by people who know that the whole point of the question is to depict left-leaning people as racist by objecting to something so anodyne, but then do exactly that anyway. Taking the bait, when you know it's bait is just plain stupid. Of course it's okay to be white, and objecting to "it's okay to be white" does nothing but help the alt-right trolls.
Given the literal statement, you are arguing that the statement is an alt-right dogwhistle slogan, and therefore the phrase must be understood from that context, and we must ignore the literal, naive meaning of the phrase.
If "the alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally", doesn't that make Rasmussen an alt-right folk? Rasmussen asked the phrase, "ignoring the context and origination" of the phrase just like you said.
If you believe Rasmussen is not "alt-right" folk, I wonder how you distinguish the two?
>If "the alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally", doesn't that make Rasmussen an alt-right folk? Rasmussen asked the phrase, "ignoring the context and origination" of the phrase just like you said.
That kind of gives credence to his point, doesn't it. Saying "Ignoring that this is a racist dogwhistle, do you think this racist dogwhistle is true?" isn't exactly being neutral or negating the fact that the "statement" is a racist dogwhistle.
This is kind of the thing that I don't get about the attitudes expressed here w/r/t making points and arguments. Your argument is facially not good. You confuse the fact that its conceptually plausible, with the reality that on it's face, it doesn't serve that goal at all. It's like desperately clawing at rhetorical fallacy to make your point... when you could just make your point without it. Of course, then you couldn't structure it to make it look like you aren't defending racist dogwhistles... but that's what you are doing.
We were reminded of this concept recently in the Netherlands when a Canadian neo-Nazi used a laser projection to project “Anne Frank, inventor of the ballpoint pen” (in Dutch) on the walls of the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam.
An innocent (or silly) phrase if you take it literally, but the intended message is that Anne Frank never existed or didn't write her diary (or whatever), because it contains pages written with a ballpoint pen (which was only commercially available after World War Two). Never mind that the pages in question are just two slips of paper containing research notes left by a researcher in the 1950s…
The far right people pushing this are not counting on people to take the phrase literally though. The idea is that whoever spreads the message feels clever for trolling people with a phrase he (usually) can claim is 'just a literal clone of BLM for white people', while whoever orchestrated or propagated the phenomenon is acutely aware of the potential power of such a dog-whistle.
>The alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally.
Maybe. But by playing their game, you're giving them power. If you don't play the game, they don't win. I didn't know about the politics of the phrase until you and others pointed it out. Is it better that I don't now repeat the phrase?
That poster is not playing their game, you are. Here insisting on how your ignorance of their game makes the phrase innocuous, even after the fact. Do you think it would better if you repeated the phrase? Who would that be serving?
Just because you want to be contrarian against everything white supremacists do so you “don’t play their game” doesn’t mean that you aren’t acting as a white supremacist propagandist by doing so.
Their game is exploiting this lapse of common sense that many people seem to have who refuse to take the obviously winning strategy of just ignoring this and who instead must constantly fight for the sake of fighting even if the social consequences are terrible.
What did I do that makes you think I'm a "contrarian" against white supremacists?
>Their game is exploiting this lapse of common sense that many people seem to have who refuse to take the obviously winning strategy of just ignoring this and who instead must constantly fight for the sake of fighting even if the social consequences are terrible.
Who is fighting? I responded to a post in a thread, here, a place where we discuss things by posting. Everything you wrote appears to be a huge projection.
People who took the phrase at face value just ignored these posters and went on with their day. If you understand the context then it makes it even more baffling to not take the phrase at face value because any alternative is literally feeding white supremacist propaganda.
> Posters saying "It's okay to be white" have sparked a police investigation. ...
> Hampshire Constabulary was alerted to the posters by a resident on Thursday and said they were being treated as a "hate incident". ...
> Resident Priya Brown said: "These tactics are divisive and they have no place in today's world. They're tactics that are used to divide deliberately by neo-Nazi groups and white supremacy groups. It started in the US but we have seen it here in the UK."
As my link shows, the UK police interpreted posting fliers of that phrase to be a "hate incident", and not the "innocuous phrase" of the naive interpretation. The description from that link is in lign with acdha's interpretation.
