Poisoning the Well

As Daniel Greenfield at FrontPageMag reports, the movie “Honor Diaries” is already beginning to make waves:

“The Honor Diaries is making headlines for documenting the challenges faced by female activists taking on the abuse of women in the Muslim world. The movie focuses on Muslim female activists and was screened at the Museum of Tolerance.”

Most societies which have this honor culture are Islamic and those seeking to protect Islam are out to destroy the credibility of the movie before it can do too much damage.

Megyn Kelly and Fox News have done a fantastic job of standing their ground on this issue and Kelly has been very candid about CAIR’s attempt to silence Fox News.

I’d like to focus on one of the tactics that CAIR and their attack dog Richard Silverstein are using to impose a silence on this issue. It’s a tactic that Leftists and Islamists employ frequently.

Silverstein led the attack with an accusation that the producers of the film were Jews.

This is very interesting because he’s using a debating tactic known as “Poisoning the Well” which in this case also reveals an underlying anti-semitism.

Once again I am indebted to fallacyfiles.org. As it says there, “The phrase "poisoning the well" ultimately alludes to the medieval European myth that the black plague was caused by Jews poisoning town wells—a myth which was used as an excuse to persecute Jews.”

  

The implication of what Silverstein says is that the movie lacks credibility (i.e. it cannot be trusted) because Jews produced it. This echoes the time-honored calumny that Jews cannot be trusted to serve anyone but themselves; that they are creating mischief through misinformation.

The poisoned well metaphor is very apt because if a water source is deemed to be poisoned we should not accept water from it; by the same token, if an information source is “poisoned”, we should not accept information from it. This is what the well-poisoning attack is attempting to do: destroy the credibility of the speaker in advance. It fosters fear of contamination by the information source; a source that cannot be trusted due to vile motives etc.

CAIR ended up with egg on their faces following Silverstein’s sordid attack. In order to try and limit the damage CAIR put out a statement which says:

“American Muslims join people of conscience of all faiths in condemning female genital mutilation, forced marriages, ‘honor killings’, and other forms of domestic violence or gender inequality as violations of Islamic beliefs. If anyone mistreats women, they should not seek refuge in Islam. The real concern in this case is that the producers of the film, who have a track record of promoting anti-Muslim bigotry, are hijacking a legitimate issue to push their hate-filled agenda.” [my italics]

The first part of this statement is a generic condemnation of things which are endorsed by Islam and therefore it rings completely false. But the second part is a more generic form of Poisoning the Well. What we have now is not “Jews” but people with “a track record of promoting anti-Muslim bigotry” and “a hate-filled agenda”. Ibrahim Hooper, although admirably pinned to the ropes by Megyn Kelly on Fox in a recent interview, still managed to keep spitting out the “hate-filled agenda” phrase, reinforcing it in the viewers minds.

The implication of the tactic is that if you listen to these people you too may end up as a bigot and full of hate. You will be contaminated by what they have to say. What Poisoning the Well does is to lay a logical boobytrap for the unwary listener: “If these people are full of hate, what they say must be false.” This is an ad hominem argument and is a logical fallacy; any argument must stand or fall on the merits of the evidence and the logical reasoning. The nature of the speaker is irrelevant.

Also, the phrase "hate-filled agenda" leads the listener into another fallacy: namely, the argument that if a statement arouses hostility or hatred in the listener it must therefore be false. This is absurd; the truth or falsity of a statement is not dependent on whether it arouses hostility or affection. No-one is arguing that we should not teach children about the Holocaust in case it arouses hostility towards Germans.

To any clear-thinking person it is obvious that Hooper and CAIR want to stamp out critical scrutiny of Islam and silence truthful voices. In the interview with Megyn Kelly Hooper is constantly trying to talk over her to drown out what she says. We know that Islam sanctions the killing of critics based on Muhammad's own example.

CAIR cannot actually silence everyone so Poisoning the Well is the next best thing. By rendering critical voices off-limits and sowing distrust of everything they say, the strategy effectively erects a glass wall of disbelief between the critics of Islam and the audience. They can say whatever they like but they'll not be listened to; they have effectively been silenced.

Tu Quoque - A Common Fallacy of the Left

Aristotle

Tu Quoque (literally “you also”) is a very common fallacy which I see committed again and again on comment threads. This fallacy is remarkably common in the comments that I see coming from left/liberal perspectives and I think there are underlying reasons for this which I’ll examine later. I hope that once you have this fallacy established more clearly in your mind you will be able to identify it more easily when it’s used by someone in an argument. Once you see an argument as fallacious you need waste no more time trying to counter it but simply point out that it is a fallacy and await a more logical response to your original point.

First of all, lets define a fallacy and then the tu quoque type of fallacy. One of the best sites for exploring fallacies is www.fallacyfiles.org where you will find definitions and examples of all types of fallacies.

The rules of correct reasoning go back to Aristotle. He was both “the first formal logician—codifying the rules of correct reasoning—and the first informal logician—cataloging types of incorrect reasoning, namely, fallacies. He was both the first to name types of logical error, and the first to group them into categories. The result is his book On Sophistical Refutations.”

First an example: I make the assertion that Muslim slave traders were a constant threat to the peoples of Southern Europe throughout the 16^th and 17^th centuries. That assertion is either true or false; either it can be justified with evidence or it can’t. The tu quoque response might take the following form: European slave traders were a constant threat to black Africans during the 17^th century. 

As you can see, the argument does not address the truth or falsity of the original assertion but instead sidesteps it and tries to put the person on the back foot by making a charge of implied hypocrisy. Whether or not European slave traders were a threat to black Africans has no bearing on the truth of the original assertion but the person against whom the tu quoque is deployed often feels a need to defend themselves from the charge of (implied) hypocrisy and a diversionary game ensues in which the original argument is forgotten. Thus tu quoque is a form of Red Herring. The argument gets "lost" but no logical refutation has occurred.

Fallacies are instances of faulty reasoning. The fallacies that we’re concerned with are errors of reasoning. In the example above, both the first accusation and the second accusation are supported by evidence and are in that sense both true. Neither is a fallacy. The fallacy occurs when the second accusation is used as a counter-argument to the first accusation. It is the mistaken reasoning which is the specific meaning of  “fallacy” we are talking about. It is a violation of logic.

This tu quoque fallacy is in my experience committed a lot by liberals and I think there are some identifiable reasons for this:

Firstly, liberal thinking grew up in the context of a Christianity which was preoccupied with acknowledging the fault in ourselves (original sin). As it says in Matthew 7: 3-5 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye..”

One result of this teaching was illustrated very clearly in a recent presentation made by Karen Armstrong (an ex-nun and professional apologist for Islam). In commenting on the 9/11 atrocities she said, “We did this…I like to turn the finger against myself first.” This is her comment on jihadism in general, “We’ve all done terrible things.” Both of these statements are demonstrably false: We were not responsible for 9/11, the 19 hijackers and their backers were. And no, we have not all done terrible things. To say so is to falsely blacken millions of people with crimes they have never committed nor even considered committing.

What Karen Armstrong illustrates is a preoccupation with our own guilt (even when we are innocent). There has undoubtedly been a place for introspection and the desire to root out evil in our own hearts; it has developed certain moral attributes in Christian cultures that are lacking elsewhere, but taken too far and it becomes a morbid and suicidal impulse. This impulse chimes very sonorously with the implied charge of hypocrisy in the tu quoque argument.

Secondly, the charge of hypocrisy has been both justified and useful for liberal reformers. As in the example of Thomas Day making scornful remarks regarding the American Constitution when signed by men who owned slaves, the charge of hypocrisy is a powerful weapon in getting those with power over others to examine their consciences with respect to their avowed principles and their actions. It has been the well-spring for many social changes that have given life in the West its peculiar advantages and freedoms.

When a liberal levels the charge of hypocrisy against you (in the form of tu quoque) he very likely sees him/herself following in this tradition of exposing hypocrisy.

Thirdly, the Left is very focused on what are seen as the great wrongs of Western culture. They have developed thousands upon thousands of critiques; rhetorical weapons, analyses, theses, theories, jokes, articles, paintings, posters, bumper stickers, satires, poems, pop songs, operas, etc etc all aimed at undermining the position of Western civilisation. (of course, they readily scoff at the very concept of “Western civilisation”) and puncturing its self-confidence. The underlying message of all the above is that “we” are in the wrong; we don’t have a leg to stand on; we are morally bankrupt; hideously corrupt and corrupting. By contrast to us, the rest of the world is noble and innocent. We have no right to criticise anyone. Liberals distrust any form of self-congratulation in the West or the belief that we have created a culture which is “better”. Such an attitude is seen as a source of jingoism and a platform for imperialism.

With this backdrop to his thinking; with this unexamined assumption regarding the condemned nature of western culture the liberal believes that the tu quoque argument always hits the nail on the head because it points to our own wrongs. This is why he feels particularly clever and justified when using it. 

The tu quoque fallacy is often delivered in the proverbial form: “the pot calling the kettle black.” But just look at it: the blackness of the pot has no bearing on whether the kettle is black or not. The kettle is either black or it isn’t.