{"id":11917,"date":"2022-01-03T17:24:18","date_gmt":"2022-01-04T01:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=11917"},"modified":"2022-01-03T18:55:14","modified_gmt":"2022-01-04T02:55:14","slug":"a-common-fallacy-in-advocacy-of-dictatorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=11917","title":{"rendered":"A Common Fallacy in Advocacy of Dictatorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Authoritarians and totalitarians of the political left and right, in arguing that they are not authoritarians or not totalitarians, often engage in a bait-and-switch, with little or no awareness that they are doing so.  To argue <span style=\"display: block ; margin-top: 0.5em ; margin-bottom: 0.5em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: center ;\">that policy or programme <var>X<\/var> is <em>justified<\/em><\/span> is not somehow a contradiction of a claim <span style=\"display: block ; margin-top: 0.5em ; margin-bottom: 0.5em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: center ;\">that policy or programme <var>X<\/var> is <em>authoritarian<\/em><\/span> or even of a claim <span style=\"display: block ; margin-top: 0.5em ; margin-bottom: 0.5em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: center ;\">that policy or programme <var>X<\/var> is <em>totalitarian<\/em><\/span>  At best, the authoritarians are arguing <span style=\"display: block ; margin-top: 0.5em ; margin-bottom: 0.5em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: center ;\">that <em>authoritarianism<\/em> is <em>justified<\/em><\/span> and the totalitarians are arguing <span style=\"display: block ; margin-top: 0.5em ; margin-bottom: 0.5em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: center ;\">that <em>totalitarianism<\/em> is <em>justified<\/em><\/span> but it seems that they are arguing <span style=\"display: block ; margin-top: 0.5em ; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: center ;\">that <em>authoritarianism<\/em> is not <em>authoritarianism<\/em> if it is <em>justified<\/em><\/span> or <span style=\"display: block ; margin-top: 0.5em ; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; text-align: center ;\">that <em>totalitarianism<\/em> is not <em>totalitarianism<\/em> if it is <em>justified<\/em><\/span><\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authoritarians and totalitarians of the political left and right, in arguing that they are not authoritarians or not totalitarians, often engage in a bait-and-switch, with little or no awareness that they are doing so. To argue that policy or programme X is justified is not somehow a contradiction of a claim that policy or programme [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,318,9,4],"tags":[1619,1620,1129,302,1581],"class_list":["post-11917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-ethics-philosophy","category-ideology-philosophy","category-public","tag-authoritarianism","tag-everyday-naziism","tag-fallacies","tag-logic","tag-totalitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11917"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11922,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11917\/revisions\/11922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}