During spring break, I visited my home in Bend, Oregon and spent most of my time relaxing with family, friends, my girlfriend and my dog. I also caught up with a friend from high school. Over cold brews and croissants, we met at a coffee shop to reconnect.
I was enjoying the reunion as we made small talk about hobbies, jobs and school. But as our conversation drifted toward politics, he lowered his tone, folded his hands and revealed to me a shocking conspiracy he believed.
“Well, it’s no secret that the Jews control our media,” my friend said.
I laughed — after all, he must have been joking. But he looked me dead in the eyes without a trace of amusement or jest.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Nick Fuentes said so.”
It may already be clear to you why my friend’s statement is so problematic. But properly identifying the issue requires a brief trip to “logic land.”
In professor Alejandro Santana’s logic class this spring, I have learned how to recognize common argumentative flaws called fallacies.
Fallacious reasoning is dangerous. It’s important to say what you mean and mean what you say, especially in a polarized political climate where broad and uninformed arguments are often believed to be true. So, in order to avoid stumbling down a slippery slope toward harmful thinking, it’s in your best interest to learn how to argue with logic and recognize fallacies.
On the path toward thinking logically, the first step is to differentiate arguments from nonarguments.
According to Patrick Hurley’s book “A Concise Introduction to Logic” — the textbook used in Santana’s class — arguments consist of two claims: a factual claim and an inferential claim. In other words, there must be a statement which presents evidence and there must be a link to something the evidence implies.
Statements of advice, belief or opinion are not arguments because they lack an inference, according to Hurley.
When you have an argument, the next step is to evaluate it.
Arguments like my friend’s are almost always inductive, meaning the arguer claims that the conclusion probably follows from the premises. This becomes clear when the premise is reworded: “It is probably true that all media is controlled by the Jews, because Nick Fuentes said it is.”
Inductive arguments may be strong or weak depending on how likely it is that the inference follows, according to Hurley.
And while an argument might appear strong, it may still contain a hidden fallacy that makes it weak — my friend’s conspiracy includes at least two. The easiest way to identify fallacies is to examine how they appear in everyday conversation.
One common fallacy is known as a “hasty generalization,” committed when an arguer draws a broad conclusion from atypical and specific examples, according to Hurley.
Indeed, “the Jews control our media” is an extraordinarily broad claim about millions of people based on little to no evidence. When asked to provide sources, my friend conceded that he could only remember a few.
“CNN, Netflix… I don’t know, it was in the video,” he said.
Another fallacy present in his argument is the “appeal to unqualified authority.” This fallacy occurs when the arguer cites the testimony of an unknowledgeable or otherwise unqualified source, according to Hurley.
The factual claim on which my friend’s argument rests is that “Nick Fuentes said so.” Is he a credible source?
Fuentes is a livestreamer, not a news analyst. He was described last year by the American Jewish Committee as an “antisemetic, far-right white supremacist” and went on air in 2017 calling for the people that run CNN to be “arrested or deported or hanged” because of an alleged liberal bias.
Simply put, Fuentes is not qualified as an expert on media ownership — he is a political commentator with an inclination toward extremism.
My friend has a lot of work to do before he has a strong argument — he might even want to take a logic class — but a good start would be to make a more specific claim and provide credible sources.
We live in a world flooded with misinformation and flawed reasoning. If the best defense for your argument is that “someone said so,” it’s probably a bad argument.
Brady McCracken is a news reporter for The Beacon. He can be reached at mccracke27@up.edu
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