The problem with saying “I’m only talking about X, I’m not talking about Y” when Y is related to X but less extreme, is that in politics people who are Y are often caricatured as being X. It’s pretty hard to tell the difference between someone who really means to attack X and only X, and someone who is attacking Y by implicitly accusing them of being X and then attacking X.
It’s the same reason as to why Jews might feel themselves to be a target when someone argues how bad it is to kill Christian babies to use their blood to bake matzohs, even if they have not personally killed any babies. Certainly if anyone posted such an argument I’d mod them down, even if I agreed that it’s bad to eat babies and that they have correctly stated why.
It’s the same reason as to why Jews might feel themselves to be a target when someone argues how bad it is to kill Christian babies to use their blood to bake matzohs, even if they have not personally killed any babies.
This is a really bad example in this context. It would only be similar if there were some people who were actually using blood to bake their matzohs. When X and Y both actually exist, the situation is different.
If that’s how you feel, replace it with “greedy Jewish bankers”. Real ones exist, but it’s unlikely that someone complaining about them is limiting his complaints to the ones that exist—he’s probably saying it because he thinks there are more greedy Jewish bankers than there really are.
The point is that it may make sense to object to an otherwise legitimate attack on a group that doesn’t include you if the attacker thinks that the group includes you.
I’m not sure that’s a good comparison either, although it is slightly better. In that context, there’d be a legitimate complaint possibly of “greedy bankers” but it is doubtful that “greedy bankers” is a subset of Jewish bankers. Not the case for the example in question.
The problem with saying “I’m only talking about X, I’m not talking about Y” when Y is related to X but less extreme, is that in politics people who are Y are often caricatured as being X. It’s pretty hard to tell the difference between someone who really means to attack X and only X, and someone who is attacking Y by implicitly accusing them of being X and then attacking X.
It’s the same reason as to why Jews might feel themselves to be a target when someone argues how bad it is to kill Christian babies to use their blood to bake matzohs, even if they have not personally killed any babies. Certainly if anyone posted such an argument I’d mod them down, even if I agreed that it’s bad to eat babies and that they have correctly stated why.
This is a really bad example in this context. It would only be similar if there were some people who were actually using blood to bake their matzohs. When X and Y both actually exist, the situation is different.
If that’s how you feel, replace it with “greedy Jewish bankers”. Real ones exist, but it’s unlikely that someone complaining about them is limiting his complaints to the ones that exist—he’s probably saying it because he thinks there are more greedy Jewish bankers than there really are.
The point is that it may make sense to object to an otherwise legitimate attack on a group that doesn’t include you if the attacker thinks that the group includes you.
I’m not sure that’s a good comparison either, although it is slightly better. In that context, there’d be a legitimate complaint possibly of “greedy bankers” but it is doubtful that “greedy bankers” is a subset of Jewish bankers. Not the case for the example in question.