Question

...
Douglas Arndell

Group/reverse group fallacy?

As the storming of the US capitol by supporters of a certain man having lost his office just occurred a couple of hours ago, I keep seeing this (admittedly paraphrased) statement (and variations of it) pop up often in regards to the lax and overwhelmed police presence at this event, usually drawing comparisons to BLM:

"If this happened with BLM protesters instead of right wingers, they will all be dead."
"If they stormed the capitol, BLM protesters would have been gassed, shot and beaten, yet this one with right wingers did not."
"BLM would have been gunned down by all the police if it was them storming the capitol, not "
"The police would have gunned down the protesters if they were not right wingers."

From what I can tell, the two logical 'trains' to justify these statements is this:

Train 1:
A: Police are more sympathetic to right wing protesters because of previous actions.
B: Due to this, right wing protesters usually allow more leeway in what they do during protests.
C: There is no confrontation with police and right wing protesters, as police usually use less force.
X: The Capitol Police was inhabited points A, B and C during the rally, and no tear gas, live rounds or rubber bullets were used to disperse the crowd, despite this being the US Capitol.
Y: Therefore, police and right wing protesters are in collusion with each other and allowed the storming of the capitol to happen, because of the addition of X to A, B and C.

This connects to Train 2:
A: Police are hostile and aggressive to Black Lives Matter and its supporters.
B: Police hostility to Black Lives Matter protests are often visual and confrontational, often escalating to violence and rioting.
C: Due to this, Black Lives Matter protests are often broken up by police with more force than non BLM protests.
X: As seen during the George Floyd protests, police often use tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons and batons on BLM protesters, further increasing the tension.
Y: Therefore, if it was BLM protesters storming the US Capitol today, all of them would have been shot dead by the police and the military on the spot because the combination of A, B, C and X.

What are the logical fallacies used in these chain of arguments?

asked on Thursday, Jan 07, 2021 05:45:16 AM by Douglas Arndell

Top Categories Suggested by Community

Comments

...
0
skips777 writes:

"As the storming of the US capitol by "supporters of a certain man" having lost his office just occurred a couple of hours ago, "

This reasoning is a borderline fallacy of composition. Just because most or some were Trump supporters. That doesn't mean ALL were.

I.e. You can't prove ONLY supporters stormed the building. Especially when a cap cop is shown on vid waving the people into the front steps. Seems like they wanted the chaos.

  The corrupt scum that the idiots allow to be voted into govt. is baffling. Mitch McConnel's wife is Chinese. Her sister is on the board of one of communist China's biggest banks. The swamp runs deep. The USA is being bankrupted and dismantled by greedy scumbags from within.

posted on Sunday, Jan 10, 2021 06:43:26 AM

Want to get notified of all questions as they are asked? Update your mail preferences and turn on "Instant Notification."

Like the Site? You'll Love the Book!

This book is a crash course, meant to catapult you into a world where you start to see things how they really are, not how you think they are.  The focus of this book is on logical fallacies, which loosely defined, are simply errors in reasoning.  With the reading of each page, you can make significant improvements in the way you reason and make decisions.

Get 20% off this book and all Bo's books*. Use the promotion code: websiteusers

* This is for the author's bookstore only. Applies to autographed hardcover, audiobook, and ebook.

Get the Book

Answers

...
Bo Bennett, PhD
2

These can be classified specifically as speculations or hypotheticals.

The logical trains are not deductive arguments, which is fine, it just means that each connection contains some degree of error. Like the slippery slope , as the margin of errors are multiplied the conclusion becomes more improbable than probable. Also, the first item is an assertion with no support given, so that is problematic.

answered on Thursday, Jan 07, 2021 11:33:47 AM by Bo Bennett, PhD

Bo Bennett, PhD Suggested These Categories

Comments