1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: [Updated] Who runs /r/Holocaust? Each line represents a moderator overlap. [OC]
Maybe an ad hominem fallacy? I guess I should clarify that I'm talking about more of a good faith sort of thing, when somebody claims to be making the argument along a particular impartial line but reveals themselves through their other behavior to have a very different agenda in mind. A good example would be posting something about somebody having committed a crime or having said something which the sub's posters might take as a general interest story, but the user's post history makes it pretty clear that they cherrypicked the story to make a particular statement on race and to prey on confirmation bias. It can also help more generally to contextualize ambiguous or confusing statements.
Comment by through_a_ways at 23/07/2014 at 08:36 UTC
1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Nah, ad hominem is just a straight up insult.
I'd still have to disagree with what you said; just because a certain argument or article may be put up by a malicious party as "propaganda", it does not, from a logical/rhetorical point of view, relieve the argument of having to be addressed.
I guess a good example, following on the racist stuff, would be a white nationalist posting articles about the "knockout game". Certainly the poster's comments can be scrutinized extra carefully, but more often than not, the top comment would be something along the lines of "just ignore this douche he's a whiterights poster lol" (while obviously the phenomenon itself is a problem, the fact that it was associated with someone untrustworthy almost makes it not a problem)
There was a thread I saw on here a long while ago, dealing with certain genetic differences between races. The poster of the thread was linking to peer reviewed journals and gene databases, and the top comment was essentially the same type of comment, attacking the OP without providing any evidence as to why his argument was wrong, but rather just accusing him of insidious motives.
So yeah, perception trumps logic, and fallacies occur quite frequently amongst all political leanings.