Did Steve Miller mean to say: provincial, not cosmopolitan?

[Democrats_win]

Miller scolded the reporter, Jim Acosta, who worried that immigrants could only come from the English speaking countries, as "cosmopolitan." A Cosmopolitan person is worldly and probably would not have made assumptions about the country of origin because people all over the world learn English. This is not what Acosta did, so he's not cosmopolitan! a person who might see things from a narrower view point such as assuming that only people from England or Australia spoke English would be provincial--an antonym of cosmopolitan. Note: the dictionary definition: familiar with and at ease in many different countries and cultures.

However, Politico, suggests that the term "cosmopolitan" could also mean elitist. Oh how right wing nationalists love and as Steve Miller did, to jump at the chance to call someone elitist! The author of the infamous Turner Diaries, William Luther Pierce was once on 60 minutes and continually used the term "cosmopolitan." 60 Minutes Mike Wallace asks, so it's a "code word for Jews and Blacks?" (Sorry, but that's the type of people we're dealing with in Steve Miller and Bannon.

References:
Politico
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/the-ugly-history-of-stephen-millers-cosmopolitan-epithet-215454

60 Minutes interview with William Luther Pierce in 1996. At 4:25 he uses the term "Cosmopolitan" which Mike Wallace says is a code word for Jews and Black. So obviously, I would advise caution with this recording because the man is a terrible racist:

https://archive.org/details/Dr.WilliamPierceInterviewedOnCBS60MinutesIn1996

[BSdetect]

1. He probably did. He caught trumpitis. Can't recall appropriate words in real time.

[gratuitous]

2. If Miller didn't say what he meant to say, he can correct it

Since he hasn't rushed out to explain that me meant to say another word instead of "cosmopolitan," I think we can assume that's just the word he wanted to use, with all its historical, racist freight. I'm not inclined to let him off the hook.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. That's what I thought when I heard Miller

say "cosmopolitan". And I strongly suspect he hasn't a clue that the word has been used as code of some kind. I certainly did not, and I'm probably vastly better read than Miller.

I do learn new things nearly every single day.

[bettyellen]

8. It's popular w racists, so unless the Turner Diaries make them well read, there's no case for that.

They use it to refer to city dwellers who mix freely w POC and Jews, and as cool as that sounds to us- they mean it in a bad way.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. Interesting.

Thanks for the explanation.

I'd venture to say that it's still not a very commonly used word in that way.

[bettyellen]

10. I'd not know of it unless I occasionally looked at weird alt right stuff- they seem to have

An obsession with code words...memes as well. It seems like they're young or the older ones are just pretty simple minded. They love having a secret language so they can be open with each other and signal the racism and still have "plausible deniability".
They're always shitting on cities because of the tolerance and diversity, as well as the wealth and achievement. They're anti-intellectual and anti- cultural. Cities to them are dangerous on every level. the bias has been there forever.

[lapfog_1]

4. I took it to be a slur... a elitist... a city dweller know-nothing snowflake

If you hang out at all in "Trump 'Merica" (rural places with mostly ignorant people that watch FOX 24/7), you will be shocked at the snobbery they all show to someone from "the city" or "Commiefornia" or "Jew York". (sorry for the use here, but that's what they say).

They actually believe themselves (self-delusion is strong here) that THEY are smarter and better informed about the world than "libtards" that buy anything the MSM is selling.

That "cosmopolitan" was also used by the Turner Diaries author (I'm certain that Miller has a well-worn copy next to his bed) solidifies my assertion that he meant exactly what he said.

[yellowcanine]

5. When one is afflicted with Palin/Trump Word Salad Disease, words are just words.

Any particular word will do as well as any other word.

[Igel]

6. The core meaning doesn't change but the connotation does.

"Cosmopolitan" was a good term in 1917 and 1918 Russia. It meant solidarity with the rest of the world, with workers the world over. It was elitist, but was "in solidarity" with the proletariat. What was good for other countries was good for Russia, so bringing in thought, money, personnel from abroad was a great thing.

By 1930 the rest of the world was the enemy and so "cosmopolitan" meant "not devoted to your country's interests, instead devoted to other countries' interests." What was good for other countries was bad for Russia, so the taint of foreign thought, money, personnel was to be avoided at all costs.

It was the same with Jews. They were good. Then they were bad.

Not much really changed, except parochial interests. Getting rid of the tsars? Cosmopolitan thinking is good, blow out all that obsolete Russian thinking, Jews are our allies. But hey, now we're established, we can't tolerant deviant thinking from abroad, and Jews control banking. Interested in change, you take the ally that helps you out of his own interests; interested in stability, you can't tolerate anybody with another interest interfering. "If they're not against us, they're for us" is just as true as "if they're not with us they're against us", depending on goals and context.

I know a lot of people who consider themselves "citizens of the world." They like "government" and open immigration. But as soon as one of their interests are threatened, "local authority" is crucial and the HB-1 program steals jobs from Americans (of course, those would be educated and skilled American workers' jobs stolen). They say they like government but then they single out various agencies by name for their contempt.

What "government" means really varies by speaker, but you have a core meaning and sort of overlay attitudes to get what the referent is.


By the way, citing a reporter's spin of the words of a guest he doesn't like is really risky. "Cosmopolitan" is a code word for "cosmopolitan." Definitions like " having worldwide rather than limited or provincial scope or bearing" or "composed of persons, constituents, or elements from all or many parts of the world" plus speaker viewpoint get you where you need to go. Wallace interpreted the speaker's viewpoint, he didn't give the actual meaning of the word. In a different context, the word can have a different meaning, even for the same speaker.

[HAB911]

7. 'Cosmopolitan' is a dog whistle word once used in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia

It was an “anti-Semitic fighting term,” Volker Ullrich writes in his biography, Hitler: Ascent, “used against the Jews by Nazis and Bolsheviks alike.” Ullrich writes that the Jewish diaspora in Europe was “considered not only cosmopolitan, but also rootless, and in the late 1940s the term became a code word for Jews who insisted on their Jewish identity.”

Today, as Politico notes, the definition has expanded — “in the eyes of their foes, 'cosmopolitans' tend to cluster in the universities, the arts and in urban centers, where familiarity with diversity makes for a high comfort level with 'untraditional' ideas and lives.”

But its ugly history means that the word “cosmopolitan” still serves as a dog whistle within the white nationalist movement in the United States.

“Dog whistles work kind of like Easter eggs,” said Cristina López, who studies trends in alt-right language at the media watchdog group Media Matters. “You have to know what you’re looking for to find it — and therefore they land with a very specific kind of audience and fly over the heads of everyone else.”

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-08-03/cosmopolitan-dog-whistle-word-once-used-nazi-germany-and-communist-russia

[trotsky]

11. Yes, this. n/t