Old Joke: “There are two kinds of people in this world, those who believe there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.” (1)
Declaring, “You’re either with us or you’re against us,” sounds like a polarizing rallying cry to some, but to anyone who has ever debated philosophy, it sounds like an over-simplification at best and outright lying at worst. This fallacy is known as a false dichotomy (2).
Imagine you were a FIFA soccer fan and I said to you, “If you’re not a fan of Team Brazil, you’re not a real soccer fan.” If you liked any of the other dozens of teams competing, you would find my statement biased and ridiculous.
When there are 3 or more “logically valid opinions” about a topic, and you propose an “either/or” choice, such as the one above, you’ve proposed a false dichotomy. Your argument is false because you propose that there are only 2 choices, but in this case, there are 3 or more opinions that are plausible. For example to say, “All Americans are either Republicans or Democrats,” discounts the numerous other political parties in the country and would be a false dichotomy.
Conflict resolution practitioners know that parties in a conflict often use false dichotomies in order to drive a hard-bargaining position, gain power, and appear tough to their constituents (see books: Getting to Yes and Crucial Conversations). Sometimes the tactic is successful in gaining desired support and sometimes it backfires, e.g. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare of the early 1950s.
McCarthy claimed that 205 Communist spies were working in the U.S. State Department, then called in various elite Americans before a Senate panel and asked them to name names of Communists. When an Army general refused to cooperate, McCarthy said, “Any man who has been given the honor of being promoted to general and who says, ‘I will protect another general who protects Communists,’ is not fit to wear that uniform, General.” That’s a false dichotomy. There are a number of plausible situations where a person could be both a general worthy of the uniform and friends with Communists. The publication of that exchange helped the American public to eventually see through McCarthy’s fallacious campaign.
Despite not finding a single Communist spy, McCarthy had enough partisan support among Republicans that he was successful in pushing his agenda for several years, but as early as 4 months after his initial anti-Communist speech, people like GOP Senator Margaret Chase Smith made cracks at him. Smith said,“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism.” She was inferring that important third opinion: that one can be both a loyal American and a Communist. The public gradually tired of his tactics, and McCarthy was censured by the Senate after 4 years of abuse of power.
False dichotomies are an unfair tactic because they are not truthful or provable. In addition, they needlessly alienate people who might otherwise cooperate. This alienation occurs when groups of people don’t completely share the black-or-white opinions of two conflicting groups. This is obvious in US Presidential elections when we see the vote hinging on crucial swing states which are not firmly held by either major political party.
So to bring things back to today, if you are fighting for a cause, you may want to examine the arguments you are using to see if you’re saying the equivalent of “Either you’re with us, or you’re against us.” When we are pushing for a change that we believe in, and we know we need as much help as possible from as many people as possible, it doesn’t make logical sense to push forward false dichotomies because you lose the support of adjacent “swing voters” who aren’t naturally aligned with your way of thinking. However, if you feel that your group can force the issue and win the contest of ideas without the help of “swing voters,” perhaps this doesn’t apply.
As agents for change, maybe we need to ask ourselves at the beginning of a campaign, “How much help do I need to accomplish my goal? Can I get it done by only appealing to people who agree with me 100% or do I need the help of people outside of my own ideological group? If I do need outside help, what is the best way to entice those people to help?”
by Constance Franklin
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