It is sometimes all too easy to fall into the ad hominem fallacy when you see a juicy target. The problem, however, is that if you are trying to change minds, appealing to prejudice and resentments either doesn’t work, or provokes revulsion. For example, in the Daily Mail there is an article by someone called Chris Deerin, entitled: “Pass the quinoa, comrade! Hypocrisy of the middle-class revolutionaries”.
Here is a taster:
Radical politics is a pursuit for the moneyed conscience, an indulgence for those who can afford to fight the good fight, who are feather-bedded enough to give their lives over to peripheral causes, doomed campaigns and utopian schemes. When you’re skint, funding the next meal or paying the leccy bill or covering the rent tends to be more of a priority than shouting slogans at students through a megaphone in Freedom Square.
Well it may well be the case that much radical politics today is the occupation of the middle class. But the error that Deerin is making here is that while some middle class supporters of socialism, environmentalism and the rest of it may well be hypocritical wankers who should be boiled in oil (or whatever else Daily Mail readers presumably favour as a punishment) that doesn’t mean that socialism, environmentalism, etc, are therefore wrong. To show that, you have to make the case: you need to debunk the disasters socialism creates (including massive environmental problems, as shown in Soviet Russia), and take on the assumptions of environmentalism (such as how a lot of Greens ignore economic substitution and embrace Malthusian myths, as well as endorse forms of naturalistic fallacies and a false view of nature, etc). Saying that “Greens are posh arseholes” backfires if it turns out that some of what Greens might say is true. And does this also mean that a working class person is also a hypocrite if he or she later espouses capitalism and is a class traitor? The trouble with the ad hominem tactic is that works in both directions.
In the current political scene, I have, for example, seen a lot of this resentment-as-argument tactic being used, such as among some of the pro-Trump folk in the US (taking shots at “the Establishment, ignoring that Trump is part of it, in a way), and among the pro-Sanders people attacking Wall Street (in a blanket attack on anyone in finance). We get it in the UK (resentment at the Cameroonians for being posh, rather than for their actual views.)
I agree. But there is also the idea that what is the *correct* argument can even somehow fail to be convincing. That’s what my post about rhetoric was about.
There’s also the argument that ad-hominem and ridicule are necessary since arguing the facts against these ‘middle clas wankers’ doesn’t work.
In other words, while Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts and the rest are doing a great job, without the likes of Delingpole their argument would be totally ignored.
In addition, the mockers are not necessarily trying to convince the ‘other side’, they are bolstering the waverers on their own side and trying to win over a few of the uncommitted.
You are of course technically correct. But the other side is not so squeamish.
It is a battle of ideas, but also one of memes. There are memorable symbols of the other side’s hypocrisy.
We need to keep pushing on that open door. It is simply unacceptable for people to propose solutions but they will not adhere to themselves.
There is simply no better argument against the moral superiority of the millionaire Jeremiah, Leonardo DiCaprio, screaming hysterical urgency from his Oscars pulpit, before flying to one of his many mansions in his private jet.
It is worth thousands of pages of facts and figures.
Get the emotion across and then back it up with the facts. Hardly anyone will read the facts first. The other side is playing dirty.
What Kevin and Stuck said. To be more particular, it is not ad-hominem to point out an hypocrisy in one’s positions and arguments. More broadly, OTOH, the very basic premise of the various stripes of Reds and Greens is ad-hominem by way of extension of the term – meaning, an attack on a person, each one of us, our lives and property. Striking back at their personhood, if just rhetorically, seems to me to be only fair.
As to effective rhetorical tactics, that decision is, well, tactical – minding one’s audience and all that.
Kevin B, you say it doesn’t work, but all too often, the attempt is not even made to argue a case at all. It is a sort of excuse for dumbing down. It becomes self-reinforcing: “Why bother to argue the logic as people are thick and venal? Let’s attack their motives instead.”
It is just a cop out.
Factual exposure of specific hypocrisy has a place in argument. The greater honesty of right over left (or ‘the lesser dishonesty’, for those who have heard many an ad-hominem about people on either side) is a major cause of my moving from the left-wing views I was raised in to the not-so-left-wing views I know hold. (See my long self-regarding comment at the very end of Natalie’s recent “Try Not Lying” post if you’re interested.)
A second point is Burke’s, that you should never separate the benefits of any measure from the qualities of those who are to carry it out, or you will see the pretended good cast aside and their interests alone served. If you can’t explain to some young know-it-all why ObamaCare is a bad idea, try explaining that a president whose website falls over on day 1 merely discredits it; maybe they should wait till they have someone competent – or willing to hire and listen to those who are, instead of flatterers – if they don’t want to see their noble goal mocked for its inept implementation.
That said, the poster’s point is worth noting.
I agree with what I take to be the gist of the previous comments. Ideas are not autonomous forces. It is necessary to understand, expose and critique the motivations of the opposite side, which requires notice and comment on their psychologies and circumstances. Karl Mannheim observed a century ago that the Left of his day had replaced the kind of argument-over-ideas advocated by the OP and replaced it with the rhetorical tactic of “unmasking,” which was so effective that the Right was forced to adopt it as well. Mannheim deplored this, of course, as any good sociologist or philosopher would, but it stuck and has been ever since the principal means by which the Left advances its politics. Not enough people are conditioned to argue only on the level of ideas, so that effective opposition to the program of the Greens or the socialists requires “unmasking” them.
Niall Kilmartin the Typo put the wrong link above. 🙂 Try _this_ link in the unlikely event that you wish to read my long self-regarding comment.
FWIW Niall, I read that comment with great interest back when posted.
JP: Yes, it is essential to keep pointing out the facts, but as the great Paul Marks will attest, various people have been pointing out the truth about the advantages of liberty and the disadvantages of collectivism for many thousands of years and the believers take no notice. Only by adding mockery and ridicule to the factual argument can we win over those who aren’t wholly committed to the left.
Anyway, would you deprive us of gems such as these?
Suggested:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2016/KlingScruton.html
Why you can’t argue with the “new” left.
Reviewing (briefly) of that amazing gift of the Brits Roger Scruton’s latest book.
Kevin B, but the problem is that ad hominem, as I said, cuts both ways. Mockery and ridicule have been directed, however unfairly, at the rich, at business, at white middle class males, at Jews, at other groups. So I like to focus on the arguments. And remember, being the “reasonable guy” who doesn’t go in for the dirty tactic has its own appeal to a lot of the undecideds out there (such people tend to be overlooked as they make less noise.)
What usually clinches an argument one way or the other isn’t sneering or chippiness or resentment about class, etc, but brute factual reality of how shit socialism is, etc. This is why we need to have rock-solid, logical arguments made so that when circumstances present themselves, we can make the case and win. It worked for Friedman, Hayek and co.
JP
Yep! But it ain’t workin’ now.
And they are gone, and their works are being dissected by the “new” wise.
But this is not ad hominem, as the points made about the opponents are anything but irrelevant to the debate. Mockery and ridicule in this case are richly deserved, due to the sheer hypocrisy of the mocked and the ridiculed, if to nothing else.
RRS, why are those arguments not working now? Have people become thicker?
Alisha, the problem is that middle class socialists don’t see any hypocrisy: their view will be that their views are true and that’s that. The same iron-clad convictions were held by the middle class social reformers of Victorian Britain. To convince the mass of undecideds needs more than what the Daiky Mail is offering. I’m all for satire but that’s not an excuse to avoid the heavy lifting.
You are reading into my comments things I didn’t say or imply, Jonathan. To your points nonetheless, of course they are oblivious to the hypocrisy – this why it needs to be pointed out to them, as often as it would take for them, or anyone else paying attention, to notice. And the article is far from being satirical (satire usually involves some sort of a metaphor), even though the tone is mocking and ridiculing – it is laying out the truth exactly as it is.
In case you missed it, I did say earlier that rhetoric needs to be tailored to the audience, and so it may well be that this particular tactic does not work on everyone – but no tactic does, and so it is no reason to discard it altogether. And no one here argued that ‘heavy lifting’ needs to be avoided – the various rhetorical tactics are in general not mutually exclusive. The right way to fight is to use all means at one’s disposal, while taking into account the particular situation one is facing at any given moment.
Niall, thanks for the link to your wonderful combination of memoir and thoughts on honesty, Orwell, and Kipling. It’s just excellent, and helpful as well.
It also reminds me of something that’s never very far to the back of my mind, and that is David Horowitz’s about-face from New Left to anti-left. Something in him made it more important to him to see and acknowledge the factual reality — the truth — than to retain his identity as a believing Lefty, both in the Leftist community and within himself.
He said that Eric Hobsbawm eventually came to see that the Leftist dream was a fraud, but that E.H. acknowledged that even so he couldn’t give up the Dream, nor the Left.
That was the difference.
Alisa,
Repeated for emphasis. This I think is the main point.
Logical argument won’t work where one party sees the world as consisting of predator and prey, exploiter and exploited, unfairly-Haves and unfairly Have-nots, and the other sees the world in some other terms.
It also won’t work where one party sees the world as there for him to run (or to plunder), with a little help from his friends as long as they stay helpful, and the other sees the world as one in which “you’re not the boss of me and I’m not the boss of you” is the ideal.
I don’t think there’s too much hope for a Convinced Type 1-b, but if 1-a’s can be brought to correct their observations, or to re-interpret their correct observations, there is hope. I personally think that this requires (and results in: feedback loop) a change in emotional response, and this emotional change, or at least the first halting steps in the change, precede change in their thinking, i.e. in their ability to see the logic in an argument for another view.
Type 2’s are the undecided, and initially the largely-emotional approach works best with some and the logical approach works best with others.
Hurling insults back and forth doesn’t serve to change anybody’s mind, except where the odd true statement from somebody on one side happens to hit an unguarded mental receptor in somebody on the other side. It does serve to get people’s adrenaline going, or to make them feel self-satisfied for a bit, I suppose; and more importantly, to make them feel that there are others on their side. And that might be the most important thing of all, as it builds the morale of the Side. At least a little, and however briefly.
. . .
Johnathan,
Also true, and not just appeal to the undecided, but also to many or even most of the firmly convinced.
Indeed, Julie.
Only I still don’t see any dirty tactics in that article – only unvarnished truth, with a generous dose of sarcasm thrown in. I enjoyed reading it.
The Left are like slugs that crawl up the drain pipe into your hand basin/sink.
Oh, I agree with you there too, Alisa. :>)
Now if you want mockery, with a healthy dose of cattiness and personal insult thrown in, I had to scroll down a ways to see the entire photo of the two baddies — the mostly-bald one one on my left, and the taller guy on the right.
Scroll, scroll, scroll…. That doesn’t look like a guy outfit. It looks like a blouse, actually.
Ah, the entire photo appears. Sonuvagun! That guy is a girl. The Manning person, IIRC. Hm! Well, except for the outfit, it still looks to me more like a guy.
Me-e-eowww!
🙂
“you need to debunk the disasters socialism creates”
I don’t think you meant debunk, or am I reading that wrong?
There are two ways of rejecting “the establishment”.
By appealing to reason and evidence – the Ted Cruz way.
Or appealing to emotion and base passion – the Donald Trump way.
People who confuse the two, or prefer the latter to the former, are making a terrible error.
@JP:
You ask:
A proper disquisition on that question, which is really one of the major questions in our current social order, requires essays, not flip responses (such as mine was).
However, a beginning for that disquisition may be found in the ideas laid out in Oakeshott’s The masses in representative democracy which can be found in his Rationalism in Politics (Liberty Fund 1991 -currently).
While “thicker” may be applicable to the ongoing revival of French Enlightenment hubris, it is just as likely that we are well into one of those periods of recession of individuality to which Oakeshott refers.
We live in “interesting times” which may be the prologue to another wave of violence greater than that of the past century I lived through.
Deerin misses a point: in the present condition of wealth unimaginable in previous eras, radical politics can be avocation for anyone who doesn’t require a contemporary middle-class life. There’s enough loose money (and other goods) floating around for useless political gits to live on. Scrounge off relatives, live in a squat, student loans, low-end employment in academia or NGOs, or in fringey “cool” trades. Academic/NGO grants can pay well too.
With no family responsibilities, one can drift around the world being an “activist” or rioter.
This is a test, this is a test, this is a test.
Something at this web site is mangling comment text – stripping out all “i”s (letter between J and K).
Preview looks just fine.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
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!@#$%^&*()
“I”s go missing.
disquisition
in
ideas
laid
live in interesting times
etc etc