Speaker 1: Let's talk today about virtue signaling and its cousin dog whistling.
I get so many emails about this and it really is a good opportunity to talk about it.
This is these are both terms that are often used.
You may have heard this term being used to criticize people on the left for their activism
or their organizing their efforts.
Virtue signaling the left are virtue signals.
What does that actually mean?
And by the way, it is really the right that participates in a lot of this virtue signaling,
which I don't think will come as a surprise to you at this point.
Virtue signaling means when you express a moral or an ethical stance or a political
stance, it can even be in order to gain approval from others and signal your virtue.
Virtue signaling means I express an opinion which I may or may not really hold, which
I may or may not really even understand, in order to signal to others that I am saying
the right things so that they then will have a better opinion of me.
It can take many forms.
It could be you post things to social media about your charitable donations or your activism
in order to signal your virtue.
You publicly expressed outrage over some issue in order to appear socially conscious, or
that you're on board, or whatever the case may be.
Now, it's really important to understand that engaging in activism and expressing values
is not inherently bad, that that's not the point of virtue signaling as a pejorative.
When the signals, when the actions are being done, when the signals are being sent primarily
to gain social approval or status, that's when it becomes virtue signaling rather than
simply expressing an opinion.
The right loves to say that it is the left that predominantly engages in virtue signaling.
But much like the right likes to say, the cancel culture is on the left.
When the cancel culture is actually on the right, as we've talked about before.
Much like the right likes to say that it is the left that is engaging in voter fraud,
but in fact it's mostly happening on the right.
It is exactly the same with virtue signaling.
Let's talk about how the right engages in virtue signaling.
Conservatives might display American flags or say, I support the military in order to
signal that they are patriotic and to gain approval from their peers.
In many cases, they don't really care about either, but they are using those symbols,
support the troops, stickers, whatever, to signal that they are on the right team when
it comes to those issues.
Or they might say, we've got to stop this cancel culture from the left.
The left wing, I'm for free speech because they want to appear to be defending values
that are currently in vogue, even though they neither care nor understand what the hell
they're talking about, nor whose speech is being limited.
Blue Lives Matter stickers or paraphernalia or whatever to show we support law enforcement
in the military.
They might not even really care or understand what's going on with law enforcement or the
military when they use phrases like, I support traditional values.
I am about real America.
You're talking about signaling that you support conservative cultural norms.
Now we're slowly starting to get over to dog whistles, which I will get to in a moment.
Other examples of right wing virtue signaling include posting on social media about how
you want border security.
We have to have a border.
When you live in Iowa doesn't mean you can't care about immigration when you live in Iowa.
But for many of these folks, it is a form of virtue signaling, sometimes expressing
religious beliefs or even going to church to be seen at church can all be examples of
right wing virtue signaling.
But and this is where we start getting into dog whistles.
Virtue signaling and dog whistles are two different things.
When we talk about dog whistles, we're talking about coded language or symbols that have
a hidden meaning that is meant to communicate a particular message to a specific audience.
Often there is bigotry or prejudice in dog whistles, so I'll give you some examples.
Different ones are dog whistles to different degrees.
When people have been talking about I support medical freedom during the pandemic, often
what they mean is I'm against vaccines.
And so it's a dog whistle more than a virtue signal in that it is coded if you're not part
of the discussion.
Medical freedom?
I don't know.
Sounds good.
Yeah, sure.
Why not?
But it is often a dog whistle for anti-vaccine, talking about often the word urban, particularly
talking about like gun violence needs to be dealt with for what it is an urban problem.
There talk about black people.
So urban in certain contexts is a is a dog whistle for black and or brown people.
Sometimes law and order can be a dog whistle where you're sort of saying, well, I'm tough,
tough on crime.
But law and order is also often used as a dog whistle to support racially biased policies
like, for example, stop and frisk.
America first is sometimes a dog whistle to white nationalists and others.
States rights is one that's been used by politicians to support policies that discriminate against
minorities.
Roll back civil rights.
States rights has been used as a dog whistle up to and including support of slavery, quite
literally when they talk about the Civil War.
Globalist can be a dog whistle for Jews.
We've talked about that one extensively before.
So both virtue signaling and dog whistling involve sending a message to a particular
audience.
The difference is the virtue signaling is more about gaining approval, whereas the dog
whistling is more about communicating a hidden message to those who understand the term.
So both important terms to understand.
When I use them in the future, hopefully they will now be more clear.
Let me know what you think of my missing examples of either that are relevant.