Is ‘Freedom’ a Dog Whistle?

In a New Republic essay titled “How the Right Turned ‘Freedom’ Into a Dog Whistle,” Eric Herschthal reviews Jefferson Cowie’s new book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. The essay traces how segregationists like George Wallace used the “language of freedom” as a smokescreen for institutionalized racial oppression. Wallace’s message, Herschthal writes, “resonated with many white Americans outside the South precisely because he did not explicitly endorse racism but cloaked it in the language of freedom against an overbearing federal government.”