We live in a confusing time when it seems like almost everyone is trying to push an overly simple political narrative. How do we sort out the lies from the truth?
As a college student, I’ve recently been going over fallacies in Critical Thinking English class. When I learned there would be a right-wing conservative rally at City Hall in San Francisco, I thought it was a great time to test out figuring all the fallacies these speakers tend to use.
The issue for me in this experiment came when people spent most of the time yelling insults at each other. The strategies used by right-wing social media propaganda entertainers is not just verbal, but about entering and dominating spaces. Two men, in particular, Will Johnson and Ben Begquam, spent most of their time as invited speakers across the street from the rally yelling and mocking counter-protesters through megaphones as Proud Boys stood around them ready to engage in violence the moment counter-protesters became emotionally enraged enough to throw a hit.
Meanwhile, city workers and city park rangers stood in front of a holocaust installation called “Lest We Forget” by German photographer Luigi Toscano. For more information: https://www.jweekly.com/2019/04/10/globe-trotting-exhibit-shows-portraits-of-local-survivors-at-s-f-civic-center/
There was no amount of cringe I could express at how terrible the optics were in these groups yelling “Nazi” at each other, as one of the speakers, Bernadine Barber, yells about “hate speech being free speech” and ends her speech chanting in the direction of the Holocaust memorial “no safe spaces!”
The day before the rally (which occurred Friday, May 3 at 12:00 pm in front of San Francisco city hall) one of the main speakers, Laura Loomer, had her Facebook account shut down. Instead of attending the rally, the Infowars conspiracy theorist went to Facebook to complain about her being labeled a terrorist and shut down. Loomer has made a living going to democrat events to protest and cause scenes while attacking Muslims, communists, and socialists while supporting many well known white nationalists. To see the full video of Laura Loomer at Facebook, at one point harassing the receptionist about what she had on her wall, you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1ALPemzOI
For a little more context, here’s an article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/alex-jones-holocaust-facebook-ban-instagram-infowars-milo-yiannopoulos-laura-loomer-a8899056.html
In the end, I address fallacies, but there were too many streaming at once to point them out individually. The beginning of the video I report what is going on, then list some fallacies. The full event as I recorded it follows. Here is a list of fallacies to remember the next time someone asks you a simple question about a really complicated subject that a simple response could not do justice:
Fallacies
Youtube: Analyzing Trump: 15 logical fallacies in 3 minutes)
Logical Fallacies – error in reasoning
Ad Hominem – The personal attack
Bandwagon – appeal to popularity
False Cause – a presumption of the relationship between two things (cause and effect) that have no relationship.
Black and White – presumption that only two states exist and nothing in between
Loaded Question – Assumption built into a question and there’s almost no way you can answer without being wrong.
Anecdotal – personal experience to use as evidence (pose a question, add personal experience as evidence)
Fallacy Fallacy – because something is a fallacy, it’s poorly argued, it can’t be true without using evidence. It may be true but possed without evidence.
Strawman – a misrepresentation of an argument that oversimplifies the subject making it impossible to answer correctly.
Appeal to emotion – drive an emotional reaction, a manipulation of pathos. Manipulating and abusing audiences emotions.
Slippery Slope – If we allow one thing to happen (x) then (y & Y) happen and it’s a stretched out consequence that doesn’t necessarily connect.
Circular reasoning – Circle jerk, chasing praise
Composition – Appeal to authority for support, casting group in a bad light. What is true for one slice is true for everything (generalizations.)
Common Sense – Claiming something is so easy even a child could understand it even when it is actually complicated.
Personal Incredulity – using ignorance to take down a claim “I don’t understand, don’t know” so it must be true or false.
Evasions
Begging the question – treating an opinion that is open to question as if it were already proved or disproved.
Non sequitur – (“it does not follow”) drawing a conclusion from irrelevant evidence
Red Herring – introducing an irrelevant issue to distract readers
False Authority – citing an expert opinion the views of a person who is not an expert.
