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Turkish government is going through some hard times as one of the mafia leaders started to publish youtube videos against the government officials. Although it is unrelated with the question, for those who are curious, the details can be found here.

As a response to these claims, the minister of interior affairs had answered questions of some journalists on live television. While most answers were all dodgy, this one in particular puzzled me. If I paraphrase, (not directly translate), it looks as follows:

  • Minister: We should not take the accusations of a mafia leader seriously.
  • Journalist: But, millions of people watch his videos.
  • Minister: Millions of people also watch child pornography.

The first thing that comes to mind is false analogy, but I am not sure if there is an analogy. So, which logical fallacy is this?

Thanks!

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  • Maybe... see Faulty generalizations
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented May 28, 2021 at 8:29
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA My first guess is false analogy which is under the faulty generalization umbrella. It might be, but I don't know.
    – ck1987pd
    Commented May 28, 2021 at 8:48
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    On the face of it the minister is first committing an ad hominem, dismissing a claim based on its source instead of merits. However, according to the linked report the claims are "unsubstantiated", so their credibility does turn on the credibility of their source. The journalist's remark is a typical ignoratio elenchi, it is entirely irrelevant to the minister's assertion. The minister's reply then, read charitably, is a valid response to that. People do a lot of things they shouldn't, like watching child porn, so them taking accusations seriously does not mean they should be so taken.
    – Conifold
    Commented May 28, 2021 at 9:17
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    I agree this is all fallacies, from stem to stern. But I think it is more helpful to label the informal tactics, than the formal fallacies. The Minister is 'poisoning the well' indicating violent crime and lies as things likely to spring from the same source. The Journalist responds with a 'bandwagon' fallacy, conflating popularity with credibility. The Minister chooses to 'poison the well' again, conflating perversion and misinformation as bad things from a common source. No one has made an argument.
    – hide_in_plain_sight
    Commented May 28, 2021 at 17:40

2 Answers 2

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Minister: We should not take the accusations of a mafia leader seriously.

This is clearly fallacious since it would depend on the specific accusations and whether they come with any empirical evidence, not whether they were made by a mafia boss. So there is at least some ad hominem fallacy already there.

Journalist: But, millions of people watch his videos.

The journalist's comment doesn't seem to be about whether the accusations are true or not. His claim here seems to be that regardless of whether the accuser should be taken seriously or not, many people are going to take the accusations seriously simply because many people watched the videos, which is probably true, and this will be damaging for the government, regardless of the value of the accusations. If so then the point is not whether the accusations are true or not, but whether the videos will be damaging for the government officials concerned. The claim is probably true. Many people are going to take the accusations seriously, but it all depends how many people exactly believe the videos. If the point of the journalist is that it is inevitable that many people are going to take the accusations seriously because people are gullible, then the minister is probably right in thinking that this doesn't really matter because it should be easy to just make them believe the opposite.

Minister: Millions of people also watch child pornography.

Millions of people watch child pornography in Turkey?! Whoa. This is a terrible admission for a minister to say about his own country.

I guess the minister is not interested in replying on the substance of the journalist's comment. He just doesn't care. Instead, he is taking advantage of the lousy comment handed over by the journalist. The minister probably replied out of spite for a large chunk of the population--so much for the democratic ideals in Turkey. It is probably untrue that millions of Turks watch child pornography, so he is probably trying to suggest that it is those Turks who didn't vote for his government that both watch child pornography and trust mafia bosses. He has written them off. Essentially, "good Turks don't do that" and so the journalist's comment should be seen as irrelevant both on the substance of the accusations and on whether they could prove damaging to the government.

I would give a point for rhetoric to the minister but only because the journalist's comment was really crummy. Logic only made a cameo appearance..

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It is a little hard for me to be sure exactly what is going on in the quote, mostly likely because it is a translation of a paraphrase. In the original it is probably much easier to discern each statements meaning.

"Minister: We should not take the accusations of a mafia leader seriously."
As translated, this is an example of the Ad Hominem Fallacy (Attacking the Person). The minister is claiming the accusations are false because of who made them, not because there is evidence the government officials are innocent.

However, if you replace 'of a mafia leader' with 'of the mafia leader', then this is possibly not a fallacious statement. The phrase 'the mafia leader' could be used to identify the accusations in question rather than provide a reason for why the accusations are false. If this was the minister's intention, they probably should have used the phrase 'of Sedat Peker' instead.

I think it is very likely that the first interpretation is what the minister meant, but I don't want to falsely accuse someone of making clearly fallacious statements just because the translation I was reading had a slight grammatical error.

"Journalist: But, millions of people watch his videos."
Most likely, the journalist was claiming that because the political beliefs of a population should always be considered by their government, the fact that a large proportion of the Turkish population takes these accusations seriously implies that the Turkish government should also take these accusations seriously.

Alternatively, the journalist was claiming that the reputations of government officials are important, so the government must in some way address the videos produced by Sedat Peker even if they contained only misleading propaganda.

This statement could also be interpreted as claiming the accusations made by Sedat Peker are true because a large number of people believe that they are true, as indicated by his videos receiving a large number of views. That would make it a text-book example of the Appeal to Popularity Fallacy.

"Minister: Millions of people also watch child pornography."
This statement makes no sense if the journalist's statement meant one of the first two interpretations I gave. However, if we were to accept the third interpretation, then the minister is simply proving an example of the Appeal to Popularity Fallacy in an extreme situation to demonstrate why it is in fact fallacious.

What I think most likely happened
Minister: Makes the Ad Hominem Fallacy.
Journalist: Ignores the Ad Hominem Fallacy.
Journalist: Gives a non-fallacious reason why the government should act.
Minister: Misinterprets what the journalist said so it contained the Appeal to Popularity Fallacy.
Minister: Explains why the Appeal to Popularity Fallacy is fallacious

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  • So, if the minister wanted to counter the ad populum with an extreme version, the last sentence of the minister becomes reductio ad absurdum, is that correct?
    – ck1987pd
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 17:07
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    Not exactly, but it is pretty close. Reductio ad absurdum is used to prove a claim is correct by showing that very bad things happen (such as logical paradoxes) happen if the claim were incorrect. Instead, the minister showed a flawed in what he believed the journalists argument was by demonstrating that the same argument would yield unacceptable results if used in a different situation. My gut says that if you represented each argument in formal logic and worked with it for a bit, then you would find that the minister was in fact making a reductio ad absurdum, but this is not a clear example.
    – E Tam
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 22:17

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