dog whistle politics
n.— «The Americans call this “dog-whistle politics.” Blow a dog whistle, and you won’t hear much to get excited about. But the target of the whistle…the dogs—will detect a sound beyond the audible range of the rest of us, and will react to it. Two quite different messages are contained within the one action of blowing the whistle: the one benign, the other designed to be heard and heeded only by the ears tuned to it.» —“The Dog Whistler” by Tony Wright The Age (Australia) Apr. 8, 2000. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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