{"id":49846,"date":"2019-11-28T10:33:39","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T15:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49846"},"modified":"2019-11-28T10:33:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T15:33:46","slug":"attacking-the-source-the-establishment-loyalists-favorite-online-tactic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49846","title":{"rendered":"Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalist\u2019s Favorite Online Tactic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2019\/11\/28\/attacking-the-source-the-establishment-loyalists-favorite-online-tactic\/\">Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalist\u2019s Favorite Online\u00a0Tactic<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/medium-8.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re skeptical of western power structures and you\u2019ve ever engaged in online political debate for any length of time, the following has definitely happened to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You find yourself going back and forth with one of those high-confidence, low-information establishment types who\u2019s promulgating a dubious mainstream narrative, whether that be about politics, war, Julian Assange, or whatever. At some point they make an assertion which you&nbsp;<em>know<\/em>&nbsp;to be false\u2013publicly available information invalidates the claim they\u2019re making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got them now!\u201d you think to yourself, if you\u2019re new to this sort of thing. Then you share a link to an article or video which makes a well-sourced, independently verifiable case for the point you are trying to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, the inevitable happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLMAO!&nbsp;<em>That<\/em>&nbsp;outlet!\u201d they scoff in response. \u201cThat outlet is propaganda\/fake news\/conspiracy theory trash!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or something to that effect. You\u2019ll encounter this tactic over and over and over again if you continually engage in online political discourse with people who don\u2019t agree with you. It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re literally just linking to an interview featuring some public figure saying a thing you\u2019d claimed they said. It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re linking to a WikiLeaks publication of a verified authentic document. Unless you\u2019re linking to CNN\/Fox News (whichever fits the preferred ideology of the establishment loyalist you\u2019re debating), they\u2019ll bleat \u201cfake news!\u201d or \u201cpropaganda!\u201d or \u201cRussia!\u201d as though that in and of itself magically invalidates the point you\u2019re trying to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And of course it doesn\u2019t. What they are doing is called attacking the source, also known as an ad hominem, and it\u2019s a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ad_hominem\">very basic logical fallacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalist\u2019s Favorite Online\u00a0Tactic If you\u2019re skeptical of western power structures and you\u2019ve ever engaged in online political debate for any length of time, the following has definitely happened to you. You find yourself going back and forth with one of those high-confidence, low-information establishment types who\u2019s promulgating a dubious mainstream [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27839,17039,27837,14545,1779,27838],"class_list":["post-49846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-ad-hominem-fallacy","tag-caitlin-johnstone","tag-establishment-loyalists","tag-narrative-control","tag-narratives","tag-western-power-structure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49848,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49846\/revisions\/49848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}