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BY RHICK LARS VLADIMER ALBAY
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A beginner’s guide to debating on Facebook, Part 2
PICKING up where I left off in my column last Saturday:
As a debate team “fallacy checker”, I’m here to help you navigate the downtrodden realm of arguing on Facebook, by showing how most of the sentiments and opinions of our most vocal netizens is founded on unsound reasoning.
I know that the dynamics of social media is different from Oxford-Oregon debate, but hear me out. Debating a close-minded individual online may sometimes seem futile, but knowing some of the common fallacies – misconceptions, false arguments and misguided reasoning – may lend you the upper hand.
Red Herring / Ignoratio elenchi
These two fallacies involve shifting the argument to come up with a flawed judgment. The latter Latin translates to “irrelevant conclusion” while Red Herring is often summarized as “arguing beside the point”.
It baffled many protesters how the nationwide Black Friday Protests last Nov. 25 against the burial of the dictator Marcos, was dismissed by Mocha Uson and her followers as a paid publicity stunt by the Liberal Party and the Aquino family.
This reasoning can be traced back to how people often view the EDSA Revolution as the triumph of the Aquinos against the adversity of the Marcoses, instead as the show of strength and power of the Filipino people to boot a tyrant out of office.
The most common personification of “arguing beside the point” is “Ba’t di nyu sigawan si Enrile?”, “Bakit hindi niyo ni rally si Fidel Ramos?”, “Nga-a wala nyu gina-protest si Aquino?” – swerving past the real disagreement and failing to take into account the context of why these people are rallying against Marcos’ burial.
The harm in this line of debating is that it shifts the argument to “Are you Pro-Marcos or Pro-Aquino?”, when instead it should be “Why are we burying a reprehensible man at the Libingan ng mga Bayani?”
Straw Man
This is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that argument.
To illustrate: A person posts on social media about how he is in solidarity with those rallying against Marcos’ burial at LNMB. Suddenly, a Die Hard Duterte Supporter angrily comments in capital letters: “I STAND WITH DUTERTE! BAKIT GUSTO NYU PAALISIN SI PRESIDENTE!?”
Unbeknownst to most, there was a Pro-Marcos protest held to oppose the Black Friday Protest in Luneta Park. It was organized by the Duterte Youth. Lo and behold, it was attended by **plays drum roll** seven people, while thousands joined the anti-Marcos burial protests.
The misguided Duterte Youth are under the assumption the rallyists are going to use the funeral rites of the wax Marcos as grounds to oust the president, instead of seeing it as nationwide outrage over a clear attempt to revise history, clean the slate of blood, and pave the way for the prospect of a Bongbong presidency.
Proof by assertion
It was Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, who famously said “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” This is the essence of Proof by assertion.
In the age of social media however, this can be paraphrased to “when fake news gets enough shares, it can become the truth” or “gradually your minions will believe all your lies are truths.”
Bongbong Marcos himself is guilty of this fallacy, as he seeks to wipe the history of his father’s atrocities and bestow upon their patriarch the honorific of “hero.”
However Bongbong, a lie will always be a lie, and a tyrant will always be a tyrant./PN
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