In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. Dog whistles use language that appears normal to the majority but communicates specific things to intended audiences.
Origin and meaning According to William Safire, the term dog whistle in reference to politics may have been derived from its use in the field of opinion polling. Safire quotes Richard Morin, director of polling for The Washington Post, as writing in 1988: subtle changes in question-wording sometimes produce remarkably different results ... researchers call this the "Dog Whistle Effect": Respondents hear something in the question that researchers do not. He speculates that campaign workers adapted the phrase from political pollsters.
In her 2006 book Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in Australia, academic Amanda Lohrey writes that the goal of the dog-whistle is to appeal to the greatest possible number of electors while alienating the smallest possible number. She uses as an example politicians choosing broadly appealing words such as "family values", which have extra resonance for Christians, while avoiding overt Christian moralizing that might be a turn-off for non-Christian voters.
Australian political theorist Robert E. Goodin argues that the problem with dog-whistling is that it undermines democracy, because if voters have different understandings of what they were supporting during a campaign, the fact that they were seeming to support the same thing is "democratically meaningless" and does not give the dog-whistler a policy mandate.
History and usage
Australia The term was first picked up in Australian politics in the mid-1990s, and was frequently applied to the political campaigning of John Howard.Grant Barrett, The official dictionary of unofficial English, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2006, p. 90 Throughout his 11 years as Australian prime minister and particularly in his fourth term, Howard was accused of communicating messages appealing to anxious Australian voters using code words such as "un-Australian", "mainstream", and "illegals".
One notable example was the Howard government's message on refugee arrivals. His government's tough stance on immigration was popular with voters, but was accused of using the issue to additionally send veiled messages of support to voters with racist leanings, while maintaining plausible deniability by avoiding overtly racist language. Another example was the publicity of the Australian citizenship test in 2007. It has been argued that the test may appear reasonable at face value, but is really intended to appeal to those opposing immigration from particular geographic regions.
Sociologist Barry Hindess has criticized Josh Fear's and Robert E. Goodin's respective attempts to theorize dog-whistles on the grounds that they did not pass the Weberian test of value neutrality: "In the case of the concept of ‘dog-whistle politics,' we find that the investigator'sin this case, Fear'sdisapproval enters into the definition of the object of study. Goodin avoids this problem, clearly signalling his disapprovalfor example, with his ‘particularly pernicious' (2008, )but not letting it interfere with his own conceptualisation of the phenomenon. The difficulty here is that this abstinence leaves him with no real distinction between the general phenomena of coded messaging […] and dog whistling in particular, leaving us to suspect that dog whistling should be seen not so much as a novel form of rhetoric, but rather, to borrow an image from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, as a familiar form misliked."
Philosopher Carlos Santana corroborates Hindess' criticism of the dog-whistle notion as being dependent on the investigator's social and moral values during his own attempted definition, writing: "We don't want every instance of bi-level meaning in political discourse to count as dog whistles, because not every instance of political doublespeak is problematic in the way prototypical dog whistles like welfare queen and family values are. Some, like backhanded compliments to political rivals, aren't a major source of social ills. Some, like aspirational hypocrisy (Quill 2010) and deliberate doublespeak meant to bring diverse constituencies together (Maloyed 2011), might even be socially beneficial. Keep in mind what makes dog whistles problematic: they harm disadvantaged groups, undermine our ability to have a functioning plural society, and muddle our ability to reliably hold political figures responsible for their actions. Given our interest in addressing these harms, it makes sense to limit our definition of dog whistles to the types of bi-level meaning which engender them."
Austria In 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. The history of Austria being controlled by Germany during the time of World War 2 has left reminisce of Nazi dog whistles used in present day Austria. These dog whistles are surrounding antisemitism which include symbols like the cornflower.
Austrian right-wing parties use dog whistles to target migrants and speak out against immigration; these dog whistles include "remigration" and "homogeneity" to signal to wanting less diversity and immigration in Austria.
Canada
During the 2015 Canadian federal election, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported on a controversy involving the Conservative party leader, incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper, using the phrase "old-stock Canadians" in a debate, apparently to appeal to his party's base supporters. Commentators, including pollster Frank Graves and former Quebec Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, saw this as a codeword historically used against non-white immigrants.
Midway through the election campaign, the Conservative Party had hired Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby as a political adviser when they fell to third place in the polls - behind the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party. On 17 September 2015, during a televised election debate, Stephen Harper, while discussing the government's controversial decision to remove certain immigrants and refugee claimants from accessing Canada's health care system, made reference to "Old Stock Canadians" as being in support of the government's position. Marlene Jennings called his words racist and divisive, as they are used to exclude Canadians of colour.
Psychologist Steven Pinker has remarked that the concept of dog whistling allows people to "claim that anyone says anything because you can easily hear the alleged dogwhistles that aren't in the actual literal contents of what the person says".
France A dog whistle used in France is "ensauvagement", which is used to suggest someone or an institution is becoming savage; this coming after the increase in immigration and increase in diversity on France.
Ireland In late 2025, Tánaiste Simon Harris of Ireland commented on an ongoing problem of homelessness related to immigration, which was an ongoing issue. In an interview with The Irish Times Simon Harris provided what can be regarded as a dog-whistle with claims that a “significant number” of people simply “don’t have a housing right in Ireland”.
Hungary In Hungary the main dog whistles heard and used are surrounding non-Christian religions and cultures, mostly tracing back to the time led up to World War 2 with Nazi propaganda. Many antisemitic dog whistles used to attack people in Hungary are “Judeo-Bolshevism” and “de-Christianise,” these are used because of the large Christian values demonstrated in the country. Dog whistles also target Muslims, specifically those who are Muslim refugees using word like “Islamise,” which implies that the refugees are trying to convert everyone to Islam.
Indonesia notes the use of the concept of "strong leadership" as a dog whistle in the context of Indonesian politics.
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The popular Palestinian nationalist and anti-Zionist slogan "from the river to the sea" has been called a dog-whistle for the complete destruction of Israel by Charles C. W. Cooke and Seth Mandel. Pat Fallon called its usage "a thinly veiled call for the genocide of millions of Jews in Israel," and the Anti-Defamation League notes that, "It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland".
According to United States Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian-American representative in Congress, the slogan is "an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate." According to Maha Nassar, Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona, "the majority of Palestinians who use this phrase do so because they believe that, in 10 short words, it sums up their personal ties, their national rights and their vision for the land they call Palestine. And while attempts to police the slogan's use may come from a place of genuine concern, there is a risk that tarring the slogan as antisemitic – and therefore beyond the pale – taps into a longer history of attempts to silence Palestinian voices." In an interview with Al Jazeera, Nimer Sultany, a lecturer in law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, said the adjective expresses "the need for equality for all inhabitants of historic Palestine".
From a historical perspective and the perspective of Palestinians, the full slogan has had several variations:
min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr / Filasṭīn sa-tataḥarrar (من النهر إلى البحر / فلسطين ستتحرر, "from the river to the sea / Palestine will be free") min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye / Falasṭīn ʿarabiyye (من المية للمية / فلسطين عربية, "from the water to the water / Palestine is Arab") min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye / Falasṭīn ʾislāmiyye (من المية للمية / فلسطين إسلامية, "from the water to the water / Palestine is Islamic")
Italy Roberto Saviano of The Guardian claimed that Italian right-wing politician Giorgia Meloni used the Mussolini-era slogan "God, homeland, family" as a dog-whistle to signal her anti-immigration stance. In 2019, she used her identity as a dog whistle, proclaiming at a rally: "I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian." Washington Post columnist Philip Bump contended that Meloni has used the term "financial speculators"That Giorgia Meloni speech captivating the U.S. right doesn't make sense Washington Post, Philip Bump, September 27, 2022 as a dog-whistle to conceal antisemitism.
United Kingdom Lynton Crosby, who had previously managed John Howard's four election campaigns in Australia, worked as a Conservative Party adviser during the 2005 UK general election, and the term was introduced to British political discussion at this time. In what Goodin calls "the classic case" of dog-whistling, Crosby created a campaign for the Conservatives with the slogan "Are you thinking what we're thinking?": a series of posters, billboards, TV commercials and direct mail pieces with messages like "It's not racist to impose limits on immigration" and "how would you feel if a bloke on early release attacked your daughter?" focused on controversial issues like insanitary hospitals, land grabs by squatters and restraints on police behaviour.
During the EU Referendum, the Leave campaign was accused by members of the Remain campaign such as Labour MP Yvette Cooper and Green MP Caroline Lucas of stirring up racial hatred against Eastern Europeans and ethnic minorities through anti-immigration dog whistles. Vote Leave distanced itself from Leave.EU and UKIP after the Breaking Point poster, showing predominantly Syrian and Afghan refugees near the Croatia-Slovenia border with the sole white person in the image being obscured by text. Boris Johnson stated it was "not our campaign" and "not my politics".