A classic of TV ads in American Politics: Jesse Helm’s infamous ‘White Hands’ from 1990, aired in the last week of a close campaign for North Carolina Senator against his African-American opponent Harvey Gantt (Helms won).
Related posts:
Fake Expert: A fallacious appeal to authority in which the 'expert' is not an expert at all.
Expert in the wrong domain: a fallacious version of an appeal to authority - i.e. appealing to a doctor...
Slippery slope: If we take one step, we’ll have to take all the rest of them because there’s no...
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: “After this, therefore because of this”, a fallacy in reasoning about causes. (I took...
Poisoning the well: Telling the audience what to think of a speaker when you’re introducing the speaker (My next...
Loaded question: A question with an unacceptable pre-supposition. (Why do you hate America so much? – Stephen Colbert)
Fallacies of Relevance: Bringing up irrelevant considerations in an effort to distract listener from the merits of the actual...
Guilt by Association: You are just the same as X, and X is terrible. Therefore, you’re terrible (the conclusion...
Genetic fallacy: Saying that some idea’s history or origin (genesis) means it is true/false.
Equivocation: when an argument relies on an ambiguous word (a word with more than one possible meaning), shifting in...
Enthymeme: general term for an argument with a gap (missing premise)
Confusing Correlation With Causation: (Buying gas is correlated with owning a car. Clearly, buying gas causes car ownership.)
Confirmation bias: seeing what you believe; interpreting observations/data to match a conclusion you already have in mind.
Undermining Biography: sewing seeds of doubt due to questionable background. Also known as ‘swiftboating’.
