There’s a pattern of fallacious reasoning in political discourse – I don’t know what to call it, but I’m open to suggestions – that goes like this. 1) If I refuse – and I do – to condemn the Hamas attack of October 7, then I must be approving it. 2) If I’ve approved it I must be condemning – and I do – the Israeli atrocities that provoked it. 3) Those atrocities have been committed by Jews. Therefore 4) I’m condemning Jews. 5) Whether inferentially valid or not, in the real world the condemnation of Jews encourages antisemitism. Therefore 6) refusing to condemn the Hamas attack of October 7 is intended to encourage antisemitism.
Since (1) through (5) are near-enough-good enough, the culprit is the move from (5) to (6). More particularly, the intention of an act – in this case a moral pronouncement – is not what will likely eventuate from it. Not even what the actor knows will likely eventuate from it. If it were one would be morally accountable for any actus novus interveniens that arises from the stupidity of her listeners. And that’s a burden too heavy for any of us to bear.
As it happens I am an antisemite. But not because – although I do – I applaud the attack of October 7. It’s because of my mother’s cooking.
Categories: Angst, Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy, Why My Colleagues Are Idiots
Paulosophical Vimplications 
Your posts are always thought provoking. Enjoy, Paul!
LikeLike
As the late great Henry Kissinger once said: “If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic. Any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.”
LikeLike
Being a favored scapegoat minority for two thousand years for reasons that are not so hard to understand sometimes seems to rub off.
LikeLike
Not sure the leap from 3 to 4 is defensible. If a small portion of one group perpetrate an atrocity, do we then condemn the entire group? You yourself have stated in other posts that human history is a constant conflict of war between groups. Every group has to have some members that have committed atrocities at some point in history. Humanity is red in tooth and nail if anyone is. If the logic of 3 to 4 follows, we should be condemning every existent group as monsters. We can give that a try if you would like, but every single person being declared a moral monster because someone somewhere in the past that resembles them did something bad will make any reasonable international discourse impossible.
LikeLike
You’re right, of course. But in this entry I was tracking the ILLOGIC of the hoi poloi. An illogic to be much lamented, but there you have it!
LikeLike