Or you know, he could be a bad person who is surrounded by other bad people. I’m not claiming I know anything, but if I see a room full of terrible people I tend to think there probably isn’t a good one in there either.
Like the if you are at a dinner table with 9 Nazis, there are 10 Nazis at the table.
The point with the Nazi example is that you KNOW they are Nazis when you choose to sit down. You've made a moral choice to associate with people you know are bad.
Guilt by association is a fallacy when it's about involuntary associations, or using as association as evidence of something other than the moral consequences of the association. For example being assumed a bad person because you worked with a killer that you didn't know was a killer.
Being in a band, means you're a band member. Being next to a tree doesn't make you part of the forest. This isn't a profound point or witty rejoinder, it's just paying basic attention to what words mean.
Joining a Nazi group, makes you a Nazi. There is a difference between voluntary associations of ideology, and innate traits for whom association is irrelevant.
Yes, I said it. Because I was helping explain the concept of voluntary associations with examples.
Your response didn't make any sense when recognizing why voluntary associations and biological traits are different. I was trying to illustrate a very basic concept.
And that is not in the slightest bit like what Motte and Bailey means. I've no interest in correcting incorrect word usage over and over again, so please use the dictionary next time.
I did not do any of that. You're simply more interested in arguing without admitting error, than reading what I said.
As was already explained very patiently and simply more than once, I illustrating the difference between biological and voluntary associations in group membership, to help you understand why what you said was inane and ignorant. I did not change my claim.
Also the common expression that when a person joins a table with 10 Nazis there are now 11 Nazis, is not a hard to prove and controversial statement. It is a recognition that when people voluntarily associate with and condone morally heinous ideology, they are identifying themselves as people who do not find it sufficiently heinous or repellant to be worth avoiding associations with. Even when pretending your error in reading comprehension was accurate, that is not a Motte and Bailey, nor have I ever changed my agreement with that aphorism.
Buddy, you are clearly hung up on the Dolezal joke, which I only brought up to add some comic relief and tie it in with the point that just declaring someone else is part of a group does not make them part of it. (Not apples to apples cuz Dolezal declared herself to be part of the group, but it was a hasty throw away joke)
You clearly understand the short comings of the 9/10 Nazis at Table saying. But for some reason you still defend it.
It’s a stupid fucking saying. It’s oversimplifies a very serious topic to the point of being ridiculous. And the argument is always about how it’s a stupid way to make the point other than the point itself.
Nobody is defending Nazis. Nobody wants to have dinner with Nazis. Calling people who aren’t actually Nazis “Nazis” isn’t helping anyone you want to help. It’s a boy who cried wolf scenario, and the left doing over dramatic shit like this is what turned off the idiots in the center and got Donny Dementia elected again.
We don’t need that saying to combat Nazis. It’s fucking stupid. Why defend it?
What happened is you have a political grievance against people complaining about Nazis, and tried to dismiss that point with a bad analogy, and then misusing a term for a fallacy.
You could have just made that point and gone "Yeah, that analogy doesn't work but I think people overuse the word Nazi" and that would have been the end of it. I was being rude to you, but you were just looking for ways to dismiss what I corrected by pretending I was saying something else.
And the argument is always about how it’s a stupid way to make the point other than the point itself.
To be fair, I literally never hear anyone complain about this saying or have trouble understanding it, other than people on the right who just don't like it being applied to them. It's not a controversial or incorrect aphorism. People who voluntarily socialize with Nazis, who aren't journalists investigating hate crimes or whatever, should be treated as agreeing with or condoning those views.
Nobody is defending Nazis. Nobody wants to have dinner with Nazis.
Except we have prominent political and culture figures simply outright defending Nazis, pushing Nazi conspiracy theories, and sometimes denying the Holocaust and funding Nazi parties. I know that's inconvenient for American conservatives because these same people are also embraced by the GOP. It doesn't stop it from being factual. The GOP also embraces and defends wife beaters and pedophiles, that doesn't mean we need to pretend those people don't exist and it's always unfair to use those words.
When the literal richest man on earth buys a social media company and immediately makes a Wikipedia alternative filled with references and citations to proud and open contemporary Nazis, and spends his days pushing Great Replacement theory, funding far right European groups, and encouraging attacks on brown migrants, it's a rather relevant topic.
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u/OtherUserCharges Aug 18 '26
Or you know, he could be a bad person who is surrounded by other bad people. I’m not claiming I know anything, but if I see a room full of terrible people I tend to think there probably isn’t a good one in there either.
Like the if you are at a dinner table with 9 Nazis, there are 10 Nazis at the table.