Tu Quoque, Red Herring or just Deflection?
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Original Question
I was watching Survivor and the context was that a player got punished from the production because he had violated some rules and the others were upset about this because they suspected him of trying to find food and eat it by himself. Also in the past they felt they couldn't trust him, but they didn't have any solid proof, just a gut feeling.
The following dialog took place:
"-I've noticed that you present a different behavior in front of some people and another behavior behind their backs. I know that there are people in general who apparently cannot handle all the circumstances in their life the same... And since I've been in my personal life with a person like you...
-(interrupting her)Can I ask you something else? Since obviously you are the fair person of the group, the fact that you are next to Chris from the first day and you've come so close with him and... and you caress each other and you sleep side by side at night... what makes YOU regarding your boyfriend?"
The player at fault is trying to shift the spotlight from him to the woman that's accusing him and cast aspersions about her being flirty with another player, because he knows that the incident is filmed and her boyfriend will see that, effectively disrupting her thought and forcing her to immediately defend herself against the false accusations and save her relationship. I think he is clearly deflecting.
But is that a fallacy? The main point in this is that when you accuse me of something, then I respond by accusing you of the same thing - although in this incident it was much more nasty than that because the stakes weren't just destroying reputation or ego but also a romantic relationship with a third person not present.
Initially I thought about ad hominem (tu quoque) but then again I thought that the guy didn't attack the argument, for example he didn't say that since you are flirty (although you have a boyfriend) that makes you dishonest so your accusations to me don't stand. More particularly I don't see how the "claiming that the argument is flawed" is covered in the above dialog.
Then I thought about red herring but again the redirection is not actually another issue that the person making the redirection can better respond. He's just casting aspersions (as a respond though to an argument being made).
What would you call that? Does it fit a fallacy?
Answers
3I think his response could be an ad hominem fallacy, in which he distracted the focus from the real issue by attacking her personal life. By doing so, he attempted to discredit her for her moral flaw and establish the case that since she was morally flawed, her accusation against him should be discredited, too.
I struggled to make out the context, but from what I can infer, this is a relevance fallacy and seems like one form of ad hominem.
As a poster already pointed out, ad hominem (abusive) makes sense (derailing the argument with spurious allegations of misconduct, true or false).
I would classify this in ad hominem (abusive) .
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