Jeffrey Goldberg, of The Atlantic, recently posted a piece that among other things further responds to Maureen Dowd’s op-ed “Neocons Slither Back.” In it Goldberg responds to a piece by James Fallows challenging accusations of anti-semitism aimed at Dowd’s op-ed. Goldberg writes “Jim’s post on the subject brought to mind Jonathan Chait’s very smart observation that conservatives seem unable to hear racist dog whistles (when, of course, they’re not doing the whistling themselves) and that liberals, conversely, are often unable or unwilling to hear anti-Semitic dog whistles.” I find Goldberg’s comparison problematic.
For a statement to be a dog whistle, there has to be an intention to use the hidden racial meaning to mobilize people. For example Oxford Dictionaries Online defines a dog whistle as “a subtly aimed political message which is intended for, and can only be understood by, a particular demographic group.” It follows from a definition like this that if, as Goldberg himself seems to state, Dowd did not advertently use the anti-semitic trope, it is not a dog whistle.
This is not a nitpicky question of definitions. Equating dog whistles with using language that may also be used by racists discourages writers from writing critically out of fear that what they write will appear in racist propaganda or that they will be blamed when it does. It ties the evaluation of a writer’s piece too tightly to the reactions of others who misrepresent the original argument. It also obscures the worst aspect of dog whistles, the intentionality. Goldberg indeed provides a number of links in which “neocon” and “puppetmaster” function as anti-semitic dogwhistles and also as explicit anti-semitism. However, unless one believes Dowd was catering figures like those in Goldberg’s links calling her op-ed a dogwhistle is incorrect.
One could argue that my differentiation relies on an impossible attempt to gauge the motives of authors. I disagree. The reason I see certain examples of conservative (and to be clear it is not always conservative) rhetoric as dog whistles is that there is substantial evidence that demonstrates a large group of people who vote on race in elections as well as specific examples of attempts by conservatives and others to mobilize them on that basis. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides one of the best-evidenced explorations of this dynamic in his article “Fear of a Black President.”
Certainly none of this means Dowd’s column and the language it uses should be lauded. More importantly, just because the language is not a dog whistle does not mean that it does not have negative consequences because of the words’ valence as an anti-semitic trope. As Michael Koplow argues “Dowd should have been a lot more careful and sensitive to what she was implying.” However, Koplow adds a crucial further point that is missing in Goldberg’s piece by noting the dangers of the outcry. He writes:
There is an issue this raises though, which is to what extent certain criticism of Jews should be off-limits given the sordid history of anti-Semitism. Had Dowd written a column without the marionette imagery, or if Senor were not Jewish, the anti-Semitism charge would have never been raised, but has been given the combination of the specific type of criticism leveled here along with the idea of Senor manipulating his Gentile bosses. Does that mean that criticizing Senor for pushing a hawkish interventionist policy as part of his advice to Romney and Ryan is completely out of bounds? It certainly shouldn’t be if you are a liberal columnist concerned with the possible return of George W. Bush’s first-term foreign policy agenda. I also think that as Jews, we do not want to arrive at a place where people think that they cannot direct legitimate criticism at us just because we happen to be Jewish and they do not want to run afoul of anti-Semitism. Some criticism is anti-Semitic but much is not, and it will not benefit the Jewish community long term if we hurl around the anti-Semitism charge in any but the most clear cut case. I know there are many who will argue that Dowd’s column meets that standard and I understand why. I just think we need to make sure that if someone wants to call out a Jewish public figure’s bad actions or poor policy prescriptions, there is a way to do it without it turning into a maelstrom of bigotry charges.
That is a strong argument that should have been taken more seriously by Dowd and her editors, but it is not an argument that Dowd used an anti-semitic dog whistle.
