Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “fallacy”, is especially appropriate with respect to the Stanford “Academic Freedom” conference, where everyone, including Leftists, was judged as as culpable as the person most hated by the judger. Surprisingly, though, the Divine Duo decries this fallacy.
The strip includes an answer to Mo’s last question, “Nazis. That’s who.”
Oh, the Giltby Association – I’ve heard of them. Started in the 20’s, by a cousin of Gatsby, I believe… or was it the 2020’s B.C….
^^^ typo “Giltby” – really should be “Guiltby”, but I dunno – I think it works!
I thought it was deliberate.
> “You know who else used the Guilt by Association fallacy?” “Nazis. That’s who.”
And, of course, not all Nazis were engaged in criminal activities, so stereotyping Nazis as ‘bad’ is also guilt by association, right? /s
There is a point where ‘guilt by association’ is not a fallacy. Not in all cases, but in some. We already see how compatibilists and apologists help the extremes of their party wings.
I’m on the fence as to whether the Author is coming down on the fallacy itself, or on overreliance on the accusation of the fallacy. It looks like s/he intentionally invoked Godwin’s Law, where the person who calls ‘nazi’ first is usually viewed as being overly emotional and unsophisticated (and frequently wrong). Does that sound like The Boys to you? If I ever found myself agreeing with them, I’d definitely re-examine my values.
I’d say the authors see the fallacy as a fallacy, and Jesus and Mo’s argument against the fallacy as an instance of it.
That X was also supported/used by the Nazis is not a relevant argument against X, as long as X was not a central factor in Nazi crimes. Children’s allowance and nature reserves were both pioneered by the Nazis in Germany. Today all political parties support them.
One should stereotype Nazis as bad, their crimes were so huge that this is justified, indeed inevitable. But one can still admit that not every party member was an evil person. There were many people, mostly not party members, with whom my grandfather refused to talk after ’45 because of the way they treated him when he was stigmatized as a Jew and put into a forced labor camp, but he was friends to the end of his life with a local Nazi party functionary because that guy was a Mensch and protected him as well as he could.
You know who else was a vegetarian? Hitler.
Edit: we should probably distinguish the actual Nazis from modern people who associate with Nazi ideas and the image. The friend of your grandfather was an actual Nazi. It’s entirely possible that when he signed up with the party he viewed it as an entirely political thing and he didn’t realise that things would get pretty horrific. His actions seem to imply that.
People who sign up with Nazi ideals today can be under no illusion about what that entails. If you proudly wear your swastika today, you are effectively saying that you are OK with murdering Jews.
It’s a brilliant Jesus and Mo.
You know who else talks about academic freedom?
I just remembered a funny scene in Clerks – the “cancer merchant” scene – yeah, I suppose it is GBA – “They were called Nazis!” : https://youtu.be/3gHqYddtmNU