Today, I'll be talking about an argument (if you can really call it that) that's commonly used by cult-like groups, from radical feminists to conspiracy theorists, and people with strong opinions on politics. Essentially, they will ignore the actual argument against them, and instead make themselves appear superior, either intellectually or morally, so that anyone who continues to argue either looks foolish or immoral. In short, they're taking (or more accurately, faking) the high ground.
These sorts of arguments can be in a variety of forms. Perhaps one of the hardest to argue with is acting as though the act of arguing in itself is proof of the opponent's inferiority. This one is most commonly used by conspiracy theorists and radical feminists, and less so by the politically extreme. Person 1 will make a claim. Person 2 will then question that claim. Person 1 will then respond with something like "You're just proving my point". It's actually quite sad how many arguments I've seen resolving into things like "You are why we need feminism", or "You're just proving how brainwashed everyone is", or other things like that. They're impossible to argue with, since anything said can be used to further 'prove' the original claim, in a strange sort of backwards way. This form can be either intellectual or moral, or even a mix of both.
Another form of this argument is the much simpler dismissal of a source. This one is favoured by people arguing about politics- whenever statistics are presented going against a claim, people are quick to say the source is untrustworthy and inaccurate- or to use the modern term, "fake news". Unfortunately, a fair number of these arguments are at least partially right- American laws don't do much to stop news sources from fabricating stories to create a narrative, so there are a lot of very biased, unreliable sources. The issue is that people completely overuse this claim, to the point where even the most accurate sources are regularly called 'fake'.
A third form of this is making the opponent appear to be morally wrong. This one is used often, though less so by conspiracy theorists. It's pretty self-explanatory, really- people will counter all sorts of claims by making a strawman claim, painting the opponent in a bad light (for instance, anti-abortionists will say things like "You support killing babies?"- technically not wrong, but worded specifically to exaggerate the severity). Of course, it is good to question the morality of peoples' opinions- if nobody did that, there would be potential for a lot of man-made catastrophes- when it becomes a problem, though, is when an argument gets re-worded and exaggerated, then used to claim that none of the opponent's points can be valid because they're morally wrong. And obviously, any attempt to challenge this is met by a claim that the challenger, too, is immoral.
It should go without saying that questioning motives, sources and morality of peoples' arguments is vitally important to society. Unfortunately, though, this is frequently overdone, to the point where the original point is forgotten or ignored, and only the strawman is being argued against. If you should ever find yourself in an argument, especially on the internet where this is common practice, keep an eye out for this behaviour- both in your opponent's arguments and in your own.
Anyways, hopefully you enjoyed this post! If you've got any thoughts on the points I made here, feel free to debate them in the replies- but try to do so rationally.
