I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we've been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is "to the left of them"
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they're accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It's a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we're missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it's extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we're giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it's why they're targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
I think it's a very common belief amongst forums like these to look to logical fallacies to root out dishonest behavior, in the hopes that it'll provide a nice and easy way to deduce when someone's a grifter. That you can tell if someone's a liar – or for that matter, real – by applying them sufficiently.
The problem is, humans are fallible. They fuck up. Innocently. Constantly. It's normal to make fallacious arguments, and doing so should not cause you to be automatically marked off as a robot, troll or spy. Some examples for your given fallacies:
X, you're going to start assuming that the person you're talking to about that is implyingX, even if they haven't said it and never intended to.With those examples out of the way, I just want to emphasize the fact that you should never pretend the presence of logical fallacies is a guarantee of bad faith, much less use it to dehumanize others. If we let ourselves do that, we'll all tear each other apart under the mistaken assumption that we're rooting out an evil that has no promise of even being present at all. To err is human.
Just to be clear:
I am not proposing to categorically label anyone using those five fallacies a cuckoo. I said that it's easy to spot the cuckoo when you look for those fallacies. Because cuckoos rely on those fallacies to convey their "As A Leftist®, I say we should disempower ourselves!" discourse.
In that case, I contend that is is not easy to spot a cuckoo, and believing that is leaves one dangerously prone to overconfidence. So while I appreciate that you don't see these fallacies as de facto proof of disingenuous behavior, I still feel that you're running the risk of false positives.
Fallacies are useful for evaluating the validity of arguments and positions, not for evaluating people themselves. Solitary comments can never let you evaluate a whole person, because no whole person fits in a text box.
When answering your earlier comment, I wasn't sure if you were
In doubt, I answered it with a simple clarification. However, that "in that case" confirms it's #2, so I'll readdress your earlier comment: cut off the crap.
Avoiding fallacies is not "academic rigour" dammit, it's basic human decency. Decent human beings avoid bringing unnecessary harm to other human beings, and irrationalities (like fallacies) harm people. Doubly so in this context (politics), because that fallacy means people supporting people/entities/policies that should they not support. (Look at Gaza for a prime example of that. It's literally people being killed because people give a thumbs up to an oversimplification, so a genocide looks like self-defence.)
"If someone is tired", "simple human anger", "when people get defensive" - people under those situations should not be discussing politics (mind the context!) on first place.
And no, it is neither logically nor morally acceptable to assume the others' views, as you said under "strawmen". It's piece of shit behaviour of people who don't mind blaming others for what they did not say or do not support.
Now, addressing this comment:
In the context? Yes, it is. If someone is babbling "As A Leftist®, I say we should not fight back" and you smell those fallacies, the first thing you should look for is a brood parasite.
It's useful for both.
While brainfarts happen, and people should be lenient towards small mistakes, someone who doesn't even try to avoid fallacies is a harmful individual and should be treated as such.
Not a problem in the light of the proposed solution. (Point out and disengage)
In line with what you did in the earlier comment, now you're implying that I would have claimed that solitary comments let you evaluate a whole person. I did not; please stop implying otherwise, this is at the very least disingenuous, if not worse.
The whole thing with the cuckoo is that it's a useful label for people engaging into a certain political behaviour dammit. This is clear by context, if you actually bother to read the OP.
[In the line of what I proposed, I am disengaging. While the user above is not behaving like a cuckoo, I have little to no patience towards assumers putting words into the others' mouths.]