When I wrote it, I saw WW2 as the hard times, and the generation that won is as the strong people. Those people who forged a number of social reforms, social safety nets, and technological innovations after the war. Yes, I know things were far from perfect then either, but that generation did a lot of good.
Correspondingly, the weak people are the greedy, ultra capitalist boomers taking advantage of those schemes and then repealing them. The weak people are the ultra nationalist, anti-LGBT bigots too small minded to accept differences and grasping to traits like their skin colour for superiority because they don’t have the will or strength of mind to actually accomplish anything. The weak people are those not strong enough to stick to any moral or ethical code, too scared of the world to do the right thing so instead they lash out.
It’s those weak people driving populist politics, enabling corporate greed, fueling the Russian war effort. All of which is coming together to create results like this article.
That’s an awful lot of callisthenics to justify the use of a phrase which very clearly argues against improving society (i.e. if you bring about good times, that’ll mean hard times in the future) - it’s very clearly arguing for the status quo… Which is to say, it’s conservative, in itself.
Add the fact that this is a favourite phrase of far-right authoritarians who are suspiciously fond of the Roman Empire and seem just a bit too interested in genetics, and yeah, I’m happy to call it a dog whistle.
For the unaware, this is a far-right dog whistle.
Only if that’s what you wanted it to be.
When I wrote it, I saw WW2 as the hard times, and the generation that won is as the strong people. Those people who forged a number of social reforms, social safety nets, and technological innovations after the war. Yes, I know things were far from perfect then either, but that generation did a lot of good.
Correspondingly, the weak people are the greedy, ultra capitalist boomers taking advantage of those schemes and then repealing them. The weak people are the ultra nationalist, anti-LGBT bigots too small minded to accept differences and grasping to traits like their skin colour for superiority because they don’t have the will or strength of mind to actually accomplish anything. The weak people are those not strong enough to stick to any moral or ethical code, too scared of the world to do the right thing so instead they lash out.
It’s those weak people driving populist politics, enabling corporate greed, fueling the Russian war effort. All of which is coming together to create results like this article.
That’s an awful lot of callisthenics to justify the use of a phrase which very clearly argues against improving society (i.e. if you bring about good times, that’ll mean hard times in the future) - it’s very clearly arguing for the status quo… Which is to say, it’s conservative, in itself.
Add the fact that this is a favourite phrase of far-right authoritarians who are suspiciously fond of the Roman Empire and seem just a bit too interested in genetics, and yeah, I’m happy to call it a dog whistle.