rule
the title was a reference to this meme:

(except it said 41kb, I can’t find that version for some reason)
EDIT: shoutout to @AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world for making a version of the gif that’s actually 41kb
EDIT 2: it wasn’t loading for some people so I changed it back, womp womp :(


Generic anti government sentiment is what fuels people like trump and putin. Be careful people, be very careful…
I know very well what I say. I’m a brazilian and our recent history involves attempts from the far rigth to destroy our social order and our democracy to put it into the hands of the usa oligarchs. All that began around 2013 with a wave of anti government propaganda that looked like silly innocent memes…
“Government bad ahahahah. Taxes are theft, better pay for subscriptions instead. Public services will indoctrinate you. Government wants to vaccinate you, vaccines bad hahahaha. I’m very intelligent, you’re dumb for trusting your government and not wanting to destroy it with me”
Don’t fall for that, people, you’re much better than that
Nazi fallacy except it’s MAGA fallacy in this case.
For anyone unfamiliar with what they’re referencing, it’s more commonly called “Reductio ad Hitlerum” (or more generally, “guilt by association”) and a good summary is given by wikipedia:
However it’s important to make note of the most important consideration when applying this rule:
In this case, exploiting and amplifying distrust in the government (then the weimar republic) was a core aspect of how the Nazi state rose to power, with particular attention needing to be paid to the idea of ‘Dolchstoss im Rücken’ (“stab in the back”), a conspiracy theory about the Weimar government which the Nazis “made […] an integral part of their official history of the 1920s, portraying the Weimar Republic as the work of the “November criminals” who had “stabbed the nation in the back” in order to seize power.” If that sounds suspiciously like the GOP messaging about the idea “the election was stolen” or “democrats are criminals”, well, that’s because there are some extremely relevant parallels between the rise of fascism ~95 years ago and the rise of fascism today.
In terms of either the classic definition, or it’s expansion to the MAGA movement, it’s fairly clear that this fallacy is not applicable to this conversation.
Neat. Thanks for the info.
Still a weak argument in context. they laid out the pitfalls with the thinking and this only attacks the inference of the association.
Yeah, there’s certainly ways the argument could be improved. I just get particularly irked when I see people throwing logical fallacies out like a rhetorical pokemon, especially when they’re misusing them.