There's a reason why "everything is a hate symbol". Groups that are extremely unpopular, like Neo-Nazis, like to co-opt otherwise innocuous symbols so they can have an air of plausible deniability when called out for using it. Like how the civil war, which we know by their own admission was driven by the south's desire to maintain and expand slavery, being shifted to "state's rights". That way when they talk about "states rights", they have plausible deniability. The issue is that some people don't get that things like "states rights" are being used as dog-whistles and genuinely do believe in states rights. So they get caught in the crossfire and don't realize that when they say "anybody who doesn't believe in states rights is bad" they are being interpreted by these groups as being somebody on their side, thus emboldening them.

Isn't language (and symbolism in general) fun?

sigh

do you really think people are hearing your words?

you tout daeth to trump all day.
now you cry about symbolic representations of unity for those whom which you disagree with
can you at least choose one side of the teeter-totteR?

Uh no, it's still just a frog. What's really happening is the left can't handle humor or criticism so try to shut those down by declaring harmless pictures and gestures "hate symbols".



What "confounding" variables? One statistic is a misleading one. The other one is a basic fact.

This post was edited by EA7 on Jun 1 2020 12:04pm

Both are basic facts that can statistically proven.

We can nit pick about specific examples, I'm just telling you how and why these things happen.