Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
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Ok, now for today’s fallacy: the Demonic Justification Fallacy. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have anything to do with actual demons! The Demonic Justification Fallacy happens when a particular person or group of people are vilified or made to look really bad so that any punitive action taken against them is justified. It often involves making exaggerated or selective claims about the person or group of people in order to demonize them in the eyes of the public. The reason this works is two-fold: One, as human beings, we have an innate love of justice inside of us where we believe that evil should be punished. And two, people want to be on the ‘right’ side. And by portraying a particular person or group as being evil, being against them and whatever that entails, automatically makes them feel like they’re on the ‘right or moral’ side.
We’ve seen this happen with certain breeds of dogs, like pit bulls for example, where it was made to seem like all pit bulls were aggressive & mean and would attack and injure if you got too close to them.
Demonic Justification has also been used by militaries in war…countries have to justify why they’re going to war against other countries, so they’ll demonize the enemy so that they can get support for the war effort.
It’s also happened to different foods, and it seems to go in cycles. For a while, things like butter and eggs were demonized and blamed for causing health problems, so the ‘experts’ said we shouldn’t eat real butter, instead we should be buying & eating man-made margarine. Well, we all know that didn’t age well as they then ‘discovered’ that man-made margarine is a total health disaster.
Demonic Justification was front & center in 2020 after the death of George Floyd and basically every police officer was demonized and that demonization was used as justification for calls to defund the police & there were cities across the US that did exactly that. Remember?
And honestly, there are a lot of examples throughout history that we could name as examples of this propaganda technique.
The problem behind Demonic Justification is that oftentimes, the reasons for making a
person or a group look terrible are exaggerated or are based on a half-truth, they’re just flat-out untrue, or they’re shown in a very unbalanced, unfair light. So it’s not a good basis for justifying the actions that are being suggested. We have to be aware when this justification is happening so we can look deeper and ask the always vital question about whether what’s being said is actually true and whether it’s as big of a problem as we’re being told it is. As you know, this is hard, especially when the messaging sounds so convincing and we just don’t have the time to question and research for ourselves. And, it’s especially hard b/c this type of propaganda usually goes hand-in-hand with name-calling & shaming of anyone who dares to question the narrative.
Unfortunately, we have a really sad period in the history of our own country where this happened. During the US Westward Expansion, there were those in the government and even in religious institutions who demonized the Native American people that were living in the territories they wanted to control. They would call the Native Americans heathens, uneducated, and savages who needed to be “assimilated” into a more modern culture. This made them feel more justified in mistreating them, sometimes in horrific ways. Sadly, the ripple effects of this demonization still affect Native American communities to this day in different ways.
So, the question to ask yourself when you’re hearing a person or group being demonized is simple: “Are those claims really true?” *repeat*
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
