What logical fallacy would it be if someone calls me a supporter of rapists when I speak against the mob lynching of a rapist?

Question

I oppose mob lynching of any criminal even if the criminal is a rapist. When I wrote a blog post about it, people commented that I was supporting the rapist by saying this. I know it is some kind of logical fallacy because opposing the mob lynching of a criminal does not mean that I think the criminal's crime was not a crime nor that I am favoring that crime.

Is this the tu quoque fallacy?

This is not the only example. In my country there's a hate-group who oppose a famous poet for some religious reason. I am against that group like most of the liberal and democratic people in my country. Once I criticized this famous poet for plagiarism. Then many liberal people in my country claimed that I belonged to that hate group and that I was engaging in propaganda supporting that hate group. But I criticized the poet simply because I thought one of his poems was a plagiarism. I did not have any other intention with my criticism. I know their arguments were a logical fallacy as they were not right, but I want to know the name of this logical fallacy.

Answer 1

There are a few possible answers to this.

One of these is called False Dilemma.

A false dilemma is a type of informal fallacy in which something is falsely claimed to be an "either/or" situation, when in fact there is at least one additional option.

Another one is Cherry Picking.

the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.

And third one can be Appeal to motive.

Appeal to motive is a pattern of argument which consists in challenging a thesis by calling into question the motives of its proposer.

Answer 2

Excluded Middle, I suppose. One can be against rape, and against mob linchying of rapists - there ar other, more civilised (or so we hope) forms of punishing rapists.

Answer 3

It an enthymeme : an argument with a tacit (missing) premise and a tacit premise which in this case is false.

The argument is :

1 You oppose mob lynching of any criminal even if the criminal is a rapist.

2 All who oppose mob lynching of any criminal even if the criminal is a rapist either denies that the rapist has committed a crime or supports (favours/ tolerates) the action of rape.

3 Therefore you either deny that the rapist has committed a crime or support (favour/ tolerate) the action of rape.

2 is the tacit premise and is false. It is false on two grounds. One : the first premise is not quite unambiguous but presupposes on any ordinary reading that you acknowledge that rape is a crime. So how can it be the case that you deny that the rapist has committed a crime ? That deals with the 'either'. As for the 'or', it does not follow that to deny that the rapist or any other criminal should be subjected to a certain form of punishment (mob lynching) is to affirm that the criminal should not be punished at all and a fortiori it is not to support (favour/ tolerate) the action of rape.

Answer 4

This is not a fallacy, this is a truth. If you oppose the lynching of a rapist, you are in effect supporting the rapist in their desire to not get lynched.

There's no fallacy here, just an accurate description of you.

In fact, if anybody's making a fallacy here, it's you, since you seem to conflate the words "support a rapist" with the words "support rape".

No, your actions do not indicate that you support rape, but your actions do indicatte that you support a rapist, which is what you are doing.