Fundamental Fallacies and Phrases of the Left

[SwiftQuill]

I'm working on a compilation of fallacies, tactics, and phrases that leftists use to defend their ideology. Here are some patterns I have detected.

***

#1 - The Iron Man Fallacy

This isn't a formal fallacy. It's not a term used by academics. But it essentially means that one is distorting their own argument, or an ally's argument, to make it sound more reasonable than it actually is.

Example #1: 

Brie Larson: "If you're a white male and you didn't like this movie, your opinion doesn't matter!"

Critic: "That's both racist and sexist".

Defender: "Brie Larson isn't being racist or sexist. She is expressing concern over the fact that in the movie industry, there is insufficient representation of females and ethnic minorities within movie critic communities. Not only that, she is explaining how white males aren't the target audience of this movie. Each movie has a specific target audience, that's how marketing works. It is perfectly expected that if you are a white male, you didn't enjoy that movie."

Essentially, you can be an ass, as long as you're coming from a woke position, and someone will defend you and portray your argument as reasonable and fair.

Example #2:

Professor Flowers: "I literally want all whites to be deported from the places they invaded. The USA belongs to the natives, not to whites. Same with Africa."

Critic: "That's very racist, toxic, and hateful".

Defender: "Professor Flowers isn't racist. She's a black activist! She fights for equality of race. And she is criticising the issue of colonialism. To this very day, third world countries suffer from it. And ethnic minorities suffer in first world countries. A lot of the injustices are inherited, for instance descendents of slaves. To this day, there is a lot of racism and she is proposing a solution for the issue which involves separatism."

Doesn't matter if you're white, poor, working at Mcdonald's. If you happen to have been born in USA, your entire family should be deported. You disgusting white!

Example #3:

Feminist scholar: "I literally hate men. I believe toxic masculinity is a trait universal to all men. I have studied Feminism for years and I know what I'm talking about. I literally believe that in order to be a true feminist, a woman should never have sex with men. And women should always look at society from the perspective that their are the oppressed and that all men are oppressors."

Critic: "That's sexist, hateful, and very reductive. I don't think all men are toxic."

Defender: "This person is an academic! What degrees do you have in Feminist studies? This person is highlighting the SYSTEMIC - not individual - oppression caused by men. She isn't saying that literally every individual man is evil. She's just pointing out the ways in which men benefit in society and women still have issues to be resolved. She isn't saying all men are toxic. She's saying that toxic masculinity is INHERENT to men. Only men have toxic masculinity, not women. You're misrepresenting that scholar's ideas."

***

#2 - The Association Fallacy

This is the notion that whatever some idea or argument is associated with is more important than the argument itself.

Example #1: 

Critic: "I agree with Elon Musk that free speech is important and that anti hate speech laws are going too far."

Leftist: "What? You agree with Elon Musk? The multi billionair egomaniac who is supporting Trump?"

This one is obvious. Both the content and the structure of the argument are associated with the evil right.

Example #2:

Critic: "I went to a Jordan Peterson lecture in person last year. I enjoyed it. He gave some good life advice on how to gain self esteem and find meaning and satisfaction with the work you do."

Leftist: "You like Jordan Peterson? The Alt Right guy? Don't tell me you're an incel or something".

This one actually happened to me. And in case you're curious, Peterson spent 99% of the lecture talking about psychology and self help. He only spent like 2 or 3 minutes at the very end talking about the woke stuff. But of course, because Peterson is associated with Ben Shapiro, the right wing, and all that, it means he's Satan himself. And everything he does and says is evil and stupid and wrong.

***

#3 - Applied Scientism™

Scientism is basically a misapplication and/or a reductive way to approach truth, as though only science and rigorous academic scientific methods are applicable to discover truth.

Example #1:

Critic: "I'm concerned about young men. I feel young men are feeling confused and frustrated nowadays. People in my social circle, my younger brother, young men online, I see a lot of young men experiencing depression and anger issues."

Leftist: "What's your scientific peer reviewed literature on the topic? Your social circle? Pfft how unscientific of you. That's a very small sample. Do you want to look at these statistics I found from a Feminist book on why men in general have life a lot easier than women?"

So it doesn't matter if there's evidence. It doesn't matter if you have lived experiences. Direct evidence. It doesn't matter if you have anecdotal evidence. It doesn't matter any kind of evidence. The only evidence that matters is peer reviewed, from Harvard, from the Sociology or Feminist department. If you give them evidence, but that comes from a psychology author who "isn't an expert in social psychology", then it's invalid. Because if you go against the narrative in any way, you need 100% quantifiable, peer reviewed, double blind experiments. Even if you give evidence (say, statistics on male suicide) it will always be nitpicked. "Oh you're applying a lot of interpretation from this data. You can't infer this from these statistics". So it doesn't matter, the excuses are endless.

Meanwhile, if there's one single study that says trans women don't have advantage in women's sports, to them that's enough. One study on puberty blockers. One study on DEI. One study or one statistic for this thing they agree with, in that case it's not worth questioning it too much.

***

This is going to be quite the long list. What about you? Do you have a favorite leftist fallacy or phrase?

 

[Sincerity]

Dude, this is so laughably biased. Brie Larson, feminist scholar, Elon Musk the free speech guy... Really?

Just tell us what news/content you consume.

[Basman]

Its not really a fallacy technically but thought terminating cliches are extremely common when question leftist group-think. Any word that ends with "-ist" or "-phobe" gets used to effectively shut down a conversation. Certain topics like talking about trans, immigration, women's/men's rights, essentially become taboo because people don't want to be framed as a bigot basically. I think this has slowly started to regress since Trump won the last election and I have experienced at least anecdotally that people are talking more about "taboo" topics more openly.

There is generally too much focus on how an argument sounds rather than the actual content of an argument. The former is much easier to identify which is why I think leftist group-think (and group-think in general) trends towards being irrational and logically incongruent. Group-think is the opposite of nuance and critical thought. It has to be stupid and simple.

[Basman]

13 minutes ago, Sincerity said:

Dude, this is so laughably biased. Brie Larson, feminist scholar, Elon Musk the free speech guy... Really?

Just tell us what news/content you consume.

This is exactly what is being criticized here. Those where all examples to highlight how leftist tend to insert their bias in how they read things and argue in bad faith. At no point does he state that he believes in everything Elon Musk says but simply because of the association you assume he is some kind of pent-up right-winger with an axe to grind. Like he's typing this shit out with a smirk on his face like he's going to slam dunk the left and deport the transexuals.

Edited Tuesday at 12:11 AM by Basman

[Sincerity]

15 minutes ago, Basman said:

This is exactly what is being criticized here. Those where all examples to highlight how leftist tend to insert their bias in how they read things and argue in bad faith. At no point does he state that he believes in everything Elon Musk says but simply because of the association you assume he is some kind of pent-up right-winger with an axe to grind. Like he's typing this shit out with a smirk on his face like he's going to slam dunk the left and deport the transexuals.

This post is very clearly biased and coming from a place of insecurity. We've seen this dozens of times already.

We're supposed to be engaging in conscious politics here.

For OP: I recommend you deconstruct your own biases and not fight imaginary battles with radical feminists. Focus on your growth.

Seriously though, what are your news/content sources? The answer to this question is ALWAYS enlightening.

Edited Tuesday at 12:28 AM by Sincerity

[UnbornTao]

How about biases that apply to both sides, starting with your omission of one side of the coin?

Or better yet, biases that apply more broadly -- especially those from which one might be operating.

[aurum]

These are not strict fallacies of the left. They are fallacies used in general, including by the right.

The only one that has some correlation with the left is #3. But this is because leftists are generally more educated, more interested in truth and at a higher cognitive development level.

I agree with @Sincerity. This feels quite biased and not like a critique from above.

[Ero]

This is such a low quality post.

[Basman]

11 hours ago, Sincerity said:

This post is very clearly biased and coming from a place of insecurity. We've seen this dozens of times already.

We're supposed to be engaging in conscious politics here.

For OP: I recommend you deconstruct your own biases and not fight imaginary battles with radical feminists. Focus on your growth.

Seriously though, what are your news/content sources? The answer to this question is ALWAYS enlightening.

How is this not a bad faith interpretation? How do you know he's insecure?

I think there are some valid criticisms of the left here, though @aurum is probably correct in that these are not strictly fallacies of the left. I find it more valuable to criticize the left for its shortcomings than the right because its less obvious, more psychological.

[Hatfort]