#rasmussen

[grits-gal-raised-in-the-south]

Cue the wailing: Trump gains 40% of the Black vote in New York 😂

Brothers are keeping it simple: "We were broke with Biden, we weren't with Trump."

MSNBC CUTS FEED As Michigan Voters DESTROY Kamala Harris On-Air

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Major Conservative Poll Cited by Media Secretly Worked With Trump Team

Leaked emails reveal the truth about Rasmussen Reports—and the way the Trump campaign is breaking election law.

Hafiz Rashid at TNR:

A major polling organization is reportedly giving Donald Trump’s campaign previews of its results before the public sees them. On Thursday, American Muckrakers posted about emails it received detailing how the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports, which claims to be nonpartisan, shared polling results with Trump advisers and campaign officials like Dan Scavino, Susie Wiles, and John McLaughlin. The advisers, Rasmussen, and the nonprofit organizations that pay it for polling are violating tax and election laws, according to American Muckrakers. One of the emails details close collaboration between the Trump campaign, Rasmussen, and the Heartland Institute, which calls itself a national free-market public policy think tank. However, it’s also a 501(c)3 nonprofit and is not allowed to engage in political activity benefiting a political candidate.

Rasmussen has long been criticized for its polling, which focuses on “likely voters,” and for skewing toward older Americans and providing favorable results to conservatives. During the Trump administration, its website became overtly supportive of the right wing, with many of its polls sponsored by conservative personalities and causes. On social media, Rasmussen appeared to legitimize many conspiracy theories on the right, such as election fraud and vaccine denialism.

Right-wing pollster Rasmussen Reports (aka Repubmussen) got busted by American Muckrakers for helping to work with the Donald Trump campaign.

[eurovision-facts]

Eurovision Fact #874:

Rasmussen's 2018 Eurovision entry for Denmark "Higher Ground" was inspired by Magnus Erlendsson, the Viking who refused to fight in the Battle of Anglesey Sound in 1098.

[Source]

Participants of Lisbon 2018: Rasmussen, Eurovision.tv.

[detournementsmineurs]

Jamel Debbouze et Rie Rasmussen dans "Angel-A" de Luc Besson (2005), mai 2024.

[noosphe-re]

Legend has it that one day when Pythagoras passed a smithy he heard the clang of three hammers and found the sound pleasing. He went in to investigate and discovered that the lengths of the three hammer-heads were related to each other in the ratio of 6:4:3. The largest produced the keynote; the pitch of the shorter was a fifth and that of the shortest an octave above it. This led him to experiment with tautly stretched strings of different lengths and he ascertained that when the lengths were related to each other in the ratios of small numbers the strings produced harmonious sounds.

Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture

[polarpics]

[uboat53]

I think today is a good day to talk about Scott Adams. LONG RANT (TM) ahead.

WHO?

For those who aren't aware, Scott Adams is the creator of the comic strip Dilbert. He's also been in the news previously for comments that veer toward far-right racism.

Recently, on a podcast, Mr. Adams went on a rant, responding to a poll showing that a large amount of African-Americans disagree with the statement that "it's okay to be white". In this rant, Mr. Adams declared that he wanted nothing to do with black people and that "white people should get the hell away from black people". As a result, many major newspaper chains have dropped the Dilbert comic. He is now claiming that he is being "canceled".

THE POLL

So this is where it starts to get interesting. The poll Mr. Adams references was conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a far-right pollster with, frankly, questionable methodology. They polled what they viewed as "anti-white beliefs" and one of the questions was whether or not a person agreed with the statement "it's okay to be white". 72% of respondents agreed with the statement, including 53% of African-Americans.

This result, along with others from the poll, are being reported by Rasmussen as well as other conservative media outlets like the Washington Examiner as somehow being a refutation of "wokism". In reality, the idea that only whites can be racists or that all white people are inherently bad (beliefs examined by this poll) is a straw man concocted by the far-right rather than a true representation of what the vast majority of people who would consider themselves "woke" actually believe, so this result is unsurprising. But that is beside the point.

Mr. Adams, though, took issue with the fact that 47% of African-Americans in this poll DID NOT agree with the statement that "it's okay to be white". He took this to mean that nearly half of African-Americans harbor animus toward whites and that, for this reason, engagement of any sort with African-Americans by whites, including himself, was potentially unsafe.

"IT'S OKAY TO BE WHITE"?

Yeah, let's look at that question, shall we? It turns out there's some "fun" history here.

You see, "it's okay to be white" started off as a trolling slogan among white supremacists on 4Chan in 2017. White supremacist ideas are not the sort of thing that most people feel comfortable expressing openly, so dog whistles like this are the main way that they are expressed in public. In particular, the racist right has shown a propensity to prefer statements that appear innocuous on their face, allowing them to accuse others of anti-white racism if they object to them.

A "dog whistle", for those who don't know, is a seemingly inoffensive statement that is taken by a group and given a more offensive secret meaning. Like a dog whistle, the real message is designed only to be heard by the intended group, the dogs, while leaving others unaware of that message.

AWARENESS OF RACISM

This, I think, is the key to the whole thing, and it's something I'm actually fairly familiar with myself so I'm going to talk from personal experience here.

I'm Jewish. By birth, not religiously. But, being Jewish in any sense, you are made very aware of anti-Semitism, mainly because those people can (and occasionally do!) kill you and people like you. I'm sure I'm aware of many times more information about anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic beliefs than the vast majority of non-Jews are and I'm not even religious!

I should point out that this isn't necessarily because non-Jews are malicious or because they don't care about Jews, it's just that they aren't as directly affected by it. Anti-Semites attack and threaten Jews all the time, but they prefer to do this out of sight and hearing of other non-Jews. If you're not Jewish and you don't put any particular effort into becoming aware of it, it's very easy to live your entire life perfectly unaware of the anti-Semitic harassment and violence that is happening all around you.

In much the same way, I'd bet that African-Americans are far more aware of anti-black racism than whites are. This includes dog whistles; you're far more likely to know that the guy who says things like "globalists" and "it's okay to be white" is secretly racist if your life may depend on it.

In other words, African-Americans probably showed relatively low levels of agreement with that statement in the poll because a reasonably high percentage of them recognized it as a racist dog whistle.

THE CROSSOVER

So why is a "mainstream" right-wing polling organization like Rasmussen asking a question based off of a racist dog whistle from 4Chan?

Well, this is where we have to look at the crossover between the right-wing generally and the racist right. The far right in this country is increasingly racist, but they form a key part of the right-wing base in ever closer elections as the Republican Party loses appeal with other parts of electorate. Because of this, there's a big incentive for the larger right-wing to ignore that racism and even to deny that it is happening at all.

The dog whistles are key to this, by speaking in dog whistles the racist right is able to signal solidarity and express their beliefs while allowing the broader right-wing to deny the truth of their intent by focusing only on the literal meaning of the statement. Those on the more "mainstream" right are also incentivized to try to normalize those statements in order to "prove" that they aren't just secret statements of racism.

This is what Rasmussen is doing here. By pretending that "it's okay to be white" is just a plain statement rather than a racist dog whistle they are attempting to normalize it and demonize those who attempt to point out its nature as a dog whistle for racism.

DUE DILIGENCE

This is where Mr. Adam's racism becomes very clear. You see, on the face of it, I too would be concerned if I saw that a large amount of people of a certain group expressed what appeared to be a racist opinion about my group (note to white people, this is how racial minorities feel just about all the time, but I digress). But the first thing I would do is try to see if there's other context behind that.

And it's not as if the context is hard to find. I just Googled "it's okay to be white" and the very first result I got was the Anti-Defamation League (an anti-racism group) article that I linked above which explains the origins and meaning of this phrase.

Mr. Adams clearly did not even do this one basic thing, he just jumped to exactly the racist conclusion that the white supremacists who created this dog whistle intended for him to jump to. He is, at the bare minimum, racist enough to believe inflammatory things about African-Americans without the slightest bit of hesitation.

BROADER IMPLICATIONS

Here's the thing, though, it would be bad enough if a public figure like Mr. Adams were so committed to racist ideas, one person with his influence can do a lot of damage, but it's not just him.

This type of dog whistle racism is endemic across conservative spaces and has been for some time. It is repeated and accepted as normal discourse in right-wing politics and punditry, particularly among those who support the MAGA movement and the former President, and it is defended even by those conservatives and Republicans who are not otherwise seen as being racist themselves.

The conservative movement in general has a problem when racist ideas are defended and racists are allowed to use dog whistle language to convince others of those ideas. People like Mr. Adams and his turn to overt racism are just the tip of the iceberg that indicates a much deeper problem beneath.

CONCLUSION

Mr. Adam's statements are despicable and he is rightly being condemned for his bigotry, but he's far from alone. There is an entire system of dog whistles, denial of racism, and latent beliefs about minorities which enables people like him and allows these kinds of racist ideas to be brought to those who might otherwise reject them outright.

That's why it's important that all Americans, regardless of your political or racial beliefs, do at least the bare minimum. If you see information that surprises you and makes you feel upset, particularly if it encourages you to think poorly of an entire group of people, find out where it's coming from and what's behind it. The odds are pretty good that you're being manipulated.

The racists are out there and they are growing in influence. Don't sleepwalk into becoming one, learn their codes so that you don't get taken in.

[allthesepurplelights]

Big ESC reunion!

Rasmussen (🇩🇰 2018), Lukas Meijer (🇵🇱 2018), Alex Panayi (🇨🇾 1995 & 2000), Cesar Sampson (🇦🇹 2018) and the Sunstroke Project (🇲🇩 2010 & 2017)