I mean songs about having sex with underage girls are pretty common. Aside from Ted Nugent, there’s kid rock, the Beatles, the knack, the police, winger, R Kelly, nirvana, korn…. So so many. Then there’s everyone named in operation yewtree and the me too allegations. Plenty of those people would claim it’s just who they’re sexually attracted to, and it’s not paedophilia. I don’t think you have to dig too deep to find straight people who commit these crimes or try to minimise their impact.
We’re not claiming pedophilia doesn’t exist, we’re pointing out a dogwhistle that’s been pushed by fash for at least a decade now, which tries to do an equivocation attack on queer people using pedophilia. It started on 4chan and has since spread to high level government.
As you probably know, we use the term “dogwhistle” because these attacks are meant to seem innocuous to average people but convey deeper meaning to those “in the know”. It’s a fascist tactic that’s been used forever, see Sartre’s analysis of antisemites for a concise description.
This type of thing is a manipulation of signifiers (words and symbols) to obfuscate and confuse concepts (the actual ideas words are supposed to represent). Fascists will dance around with signifiers, making it difficult to pin down and explain their meaning to laypeople who aren’t invested or haven’t spent the disproportionate effort it takes to keep up. This allows them to avoid rebuttal (because there’s no coherent essence behind their words) and hide in plain sight.
So the signifier “I want to kill pedophiles” is particularly insidious, because it’s something the average person is already sympathetic towards for obvious reasons. But to a growing demographic of people, it signifies a deeper concept: “I want to kill pedophiles=groomers=queer people”. Which is a wild leap of logic, but it’s what we’re directly observing right now, particularly in red states.
The red flag or smoking gun or hint at this being the case here is the fact that no average person really disagrees with the gist of the sign, so like, who is he speaking to? It’s got a distinctly different vibe than MeToo and anti-Epstien sentiment. “If pedophilia is just a sexuality”-- who’s saying this? It suggests the existence of a archetypal person in this guy’s mind, an Other concept that can be mapped onto whomever.
See also that new Q movie that’s so popular, that portrays a mythical version of human trafficking that’s dialed right into the rightwing consciousness.
Like, just the fact that it took me this long to poorly attempt to explain this, is part of why it’s so effective. I have to very carefully and in depth try to explain the context for why a “good” statement actually means a “bad” thing, making me look at best hypersensitive. Seriously, read the Sartre thing, he’s way better with words than I am. I’ll try to find it and post it below.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
I mean songs about having sex with underage girls are pretty common. Aside from Ted Nugent, there’s kid rock, the Beatles, the knack, the police, winger, R Kelly, nirvana, korn…. So so many. Then there’s everyone named in operation yewtree and the me too allegations. Plenty of those people would claim it’s just who they’re sexually attracted to, and it’s not paedophilia. I don’t think you have to dig too deep to find straight people who commit these crimes or try to minimise their impact.
We’re not claiming pedophilia doesn’t exist, we’re pointing out a dogwhistle that’s been pushed by fash for at least a decade now, which tries to do an equivocation attack on queer people using pedophilia. It started on 4chan and has since spread to high level government.
As you probably know, we use the term “dogwhistle” because these attacks are meant to seem innocuous to average people but convey deeper meaning to those “in the know”. It’s a fascist tactic that’s been used forever, see Sartre’s analysis of antisemites for a concise description.
This type of thing is a manipulation of signifiers (words and symbols) to obfuscate and confuse concepts (the actual ideas words are supposed to represent). Fascists will dance around with signifiers, making it difficult to pin down and explain their meaning to laypeople who aren’t invested or haven’t spent the disproportionate effort it takes to keep up. This allows them to avoid rebuttal (because there’s no coherent essence behind their words) and hide in plain sight.
So the signifier “I want to kill pedophiles” is particularly insidious, because it’s something the average person is already sympathetic towards for obvious reasons. But to a growing demographic of people, it signifies a deeper concept: “I want to kill pedophiles=groomers=queer people”. Which is a wild leap of logic, but it’s what we’re directly observing right now, particularly in red states.
The red flag or smoking gun or hint at this being the case here is the fact that no average person really disagrees with the gist of the sign, so like, who is he speaking to? It’s got a distinctly different vibe than MeToo and anti-Epstien sentiment. “If pedophilia is just a sexuality”-- who’s saying this? It suggests the existence of a archetypal person in this guy’s mind, an Other concept that can be mapped onto whomever.
See also that new Q movie that’s so popular, that portrays a mythical version of human trafficking that’s dialed right into the rightwing consciousness.
Like, just the fact that it took me this long to poorly attempt to explain this, is part of why it’s so effective. I have to very carefully and in depth try to explain the context for why a “good” statement actually means a “bad” thing, making me look at best hypersensitive. Seriously, read the Sartre thing, he’s way better with words than I am. I’ll try to find it and post it below.