“Western Civilization” and Other Right-Wing Lies
Why Elon Musk's coded language is just simple cowardice
When I was an undergrad at Bowling Green State University in Northwest Ohio, the Klan came to town once. They spoke on the courthouse steps, as it is their right to do, and the speeches were exactly what anyone familiar with the lunatic right might expect. But to really understand what they’re saying, you have to understand the coded language they use.
For example:
The number “88” is a reference to the alphabet – more specifically to the 8th letter, which is H. 88 equals “HH” which in turn stands for “Heil Hitler.”
Mentions of the number “14” refer to what white supremacists call “The fourteen words” which is a white supremacist motto I’m not going to repeat here.
But there’s more. Most common in these speeches are the words “lone wolf” which tend to appear in just about every Klan speech. It’s a call to the young people in the crowd to act on their own and do violence upon the people the racists see as enemies, which is pretty much everyone.
But because bigots are always cowards, they use coded language, not because they don’t think you can figure them out, but rather because doing so gives them just enough deniability to clutch their pearls and cry discrimination if you call them what they clearly are.
Elon Musk is a big fan of coded language, both words and body language. Not long ago, he threw two obvious Nazi salutes during a speech, only to later say they were “Roman salutes” and harmless, but to be clear, only an idiot or someone without eyes might believe him. And then, in a recent interview on the Joe Rogan show, he said this:
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
First, he’s wrong. Empathy is a strength. That said, this quote is part of a larger statement where Elon says empathy is good, but too much can be destructive. And that’s fair, but it’s also not the part of the statement I take issue with. Again, we have to look at the poorly coded language.
Anyone who has spent five minutes looking into the language of white supremacists knows that “Western civilization” means “white people.” This has been true for a very long time now. Elon is not saying that we are too empathetic; he’s saying that white people are too kind to non-white people … but he’s doing so with just enough deniability so he can get offended if anyone speaks out about it. But it is what it is, and he is what he is. And we need to stop paying attention to the denials and simply say with confidence that Trump has surrounded himself with America’s most prominent white supremacists, and they now make policy for all of us.
Most of Trump’s significant appointments have ties to hard right elements that barely even code their racism anymore. Whether it’s Pete Hegseth’s tattoos or Kash Patel’s appearances on white nationalist podcasts or Stephen Miller’s overt and open hatred for anyone non-white (or anyone with a full head of hair for that matter). The list goes on.
When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he said over and over again that he would make it a bastion of free speech, and all thinking people instantly knew he was lying. But why lie? And why keep lying? I mean, someone who believes in free speech as Elon claims has no reason of any kind to say anything other than exactly what he means. And he doesn’t mean what he’s saying in that poorly coded quote. How do I know?
Because the Grand Wizard shouting on the courthouse steps all those years ago wasn’t really talking about numbers or wolves, and he had a lot to say about Western civilization.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days fighting for working families as the Executive Producer of The Rick Smith Show, and his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.