Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalists Favorite Online Tactic by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2019-11-27 at 23:44:19 )

Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalists Favorite Online Tactic by Ms Caitlin Johnstone

If you are skeptical of western power structures and you have ever engaged in online political debate for any length of time, the following has definitely happened to you.

You find yourself going back and forth with one of those high-confidence, low-information establishment types who is promulgating a dubious mainstream narrative, whether that be about politics, war, Julian Assange, or whatever.

At some point they make an assertion which you know to be false-publicly available information invalidates the claim they are making.

"I have got them now!" you think to yourself, if you are new to this sort of thing. Then you share a link to an article or video which makes a well-sourced, independently verifiable case for the point you are trying to make.

Then, the inevitable happens.

"LMAO! That outlet!" they scoff in response. "That outlet is propaganda-fake news-conspiracy theory trash!"

Or something to that effect.

You will encounter this tactic over and over and over again if you continually engage in online political discourse with people who do not agree with you.

It does not matter if you are literally just linking to an interview featuring some public figure saying a thing you had claimed they said.

It does not matter if you are linking to a WikiLeaks publication of a verified authentic document.

Unless you are linking to CNN-Fox News (whichever fits the preferred ideology of the establishment loyalist you are debating), they will bleat "fake news!" or "propaganda!" or "Russia!" as though that in and of itself magically invalidates the point you are trying to make.

And of course it does not.

What they are doing is called attacking the source, also known as an ad hominem, and it is a very basic logical fallacy.

Most people are familiar with the term "ad hominem", but they usually think about it in terms of merely hurling verbal insults at people.

What it actually means is attacking the source of the argument rather than attacking the argument itself in a way that avoids dealing with the question of whether or not the argument itself is true.

It is a logical fallacy because it is used to deliberately obfuscate the goal of a logical conclusion to the debate.

"An ad hominem is more than just an insult," explains David Ferrer for The Quad. "It is an insult used as if it were an argument or evidence in support of a conclusion. Verbally attacking people proves nothing about the truth or falsity of their claims."

This can take the form of saying "Claim X is false because the person making it is an idiot." But it can also take the form of "Claim X is false because the person making it is a propagandist," or "Claim X is false because the person making it is a conspiracy theorist."

Someone being an idiot, a propagandist or a conspiracy theorist is irrelevant to the question of whether or not what they are saying is true.

In my last article debunking a spin job on the OPCW scandal by the narrative management firm Bellingcat, I pointed out that Bellingcat is funded by imperialist regime change operations like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was worth highlighting because it shows the readers where that organization is coming from.

But if I had left my argument there it would still be an ad hominem attack, because it would not address whether or not what Bellingcat wrote about the OPCW scandal is true.

It would be a logical fallacy; proving that they are propagandists does not prove that what they are saying in this particular instance is false.

What I had to do in order to actually refute Bellingcats spin job was show that they were making a bad argument using bad logic, which I did by highlighting the way they used pedantic wordplay to make it seem as though the explosive leaks which have been emerging from the OPCWs investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria were insignificant.

I had to show how Bellingcat actually never came anywhere close to addressing the actual concerns about a leaked internal OPCW email, such as extremely low chlorinated organic chemical levels on the scene and patients symptoms not matching up with chlorine gas poisoning, as well as the fact that the OPCW investigators plainly do not feel as though their concerns were met since they are blowing the whistle on the organisation now.

And, for the record, Bellingcats lead trainer-researcher guy responded to my arguments by saying I am a conspiracy theorist. I personally count that as a win.

The correct response to someone who attacks the outlet or individual you are citing instead of attacking the actual argument being made is, "You are attacking the source instead of the argument. That is a logical fallacy, and it is only ever employed by people who can not attack the argument."

The demand that you only ever use mainstream establishment media when arguing against establishment narratives is itself an inherently contradictory position, because establishment media by their very nature do not report facts against the establishment.

It is saying "You are only allowed to criticise establishment power using outlets which never criticize establishment power."

Good luck finding a compilation of Donald Trumps dangerous escalations against Moscow like the one I wrote the other day anywhere in the mainstream media, for example.

Neither mainstream liberals nor mainstream conservatives are interested in promoting that narrative, so it simply does not exist in the mainstream information bubble.

Every item I listed in that article is independently verifiable and sourced from separate mainstream media reports, yet if you share that article in a debate with an establishment loyalist and they know who I am, nine times out of ten they will say something like "LOL Caitlin Johnstone?? She is nuts!" With "nuts" of course meaning "Says things my TV does not say".

It is possible to just click on all the hyperlinks in my article and share them separately to make your point, but you can also simply point out that they are committing a logical fallacy, and that they are doing so because they can not actually attack the argument.

This will make them very upset, because for the last few years establishment loyalists have been told that it is perfectly normal and acceptable to attack the source instead of the argument.

The mass hysteria about "fake news" and "Russian propaganda" has left consumers of mainstream media with the unquestioned assumption that if they ever so much as glance at an RT article their faces will begin to melt like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

They have been trained to believe that it is perfectly logical and acceptable to simply shriek "propaganda!" at a rational argument or well-sourced article which invalidates their position, or even to proactively go around calling people Russian agents who dissent from mainstream western power-serving narratives.

But it is not logical, and it is not acceptable. The best way to oppose their favorite logically fallacious tactic is to call it like it is, and let them deal with the cognitive dissonance that that brings up for them.

Of course some nuance is needed here.

You can not just post a link to some Youtuber making an unsubstantiated assertion and then accuse the person you are debating of attacking the source when they dismiss it.

That which has been presented without evidence may be dismissed without evidence, and if the link you are citing consists of nothing other than unproven assertions by someone they have got no reason to take on their word, they can rightly dismiss it.

If however the claims in the link you are citing are logically coherent arguments or well-documented facts presented in a way that people can independently fact-check, it does not matter if you are citing CNN or Sputnik. The only advantage to using CNN when possible would be that it allows you to skip the part where they perform the online equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and humming.

Do not allow those who are still sleeping bully those who are not into silence.

Insist on facts, evidence, and intellectually honest arguments, and if they refuse to provide them call it what it is: an admission that they have lost the debate.

Thanks for reading!!
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