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[–] 10 points 7 months ago (7 children)

You're the second person today to be complaining about "antisemitic dogwhistles", (@antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com is the other one), although at least you said what you thought was a dogwhistle, so I'll give you that credit at least.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    The brackets thing is a real and well-known dogwhistle. If I say that the (((city council))) is putting chemicals in the water, then you should know I'm touting an anti-semetic conspiracy theory.

    In this case, using «Guillemets» isn't that, but the thing that they confused it for is real.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Saying something malicious while making it look normal is kinda the whole point of dog whistles. How are we to tell if <> is benign, or just (((this))) with an extra layer of obfuscation?

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Because the benign thing is standard as fuck in many languages, it's also in Unicode as a single character.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    A lot of languages sure, but not the language the comic is written in.

    I didn't realize it was one character though. I thought it was just double < and > I guess that does make it seem less likely to be an intentional dog whistle.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    They are used in the majority of European languages, including French. You might see them natively in Canadian-English written by the French speaking part.

    Furthermore, because they are used in ~41 different languages, someone using a keyboard layout in that language will get that character, even if the key they press is labeled with an " icon.

    Lastly, you should know that Breton (the language/culture that Great Britain is named after) uses them. Not actually directly relevant, but it does show a direct lineage of using guillemets in English. (And also it's a neat fact).

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