Guilt by Association
Cardinal Richelieu is supposed to have said
"Qu’on me donne six lignes de la main du plus honnête homme, j’y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre"
usually translated as something like
And one of the easiest ways to prove the cardinal right is to condemn someone through guilt by association - for example, comparing the policies of the person you want to attack with something beyond the pale, such as Adolf Hitler's nazis or Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech.
If someone says something offensive or xenophobic, then by all means criticise them for what they have actually said, but you should never need to use guilt by association. Hitler is rightly loathed because he started one of the most terrible wars in history and because he was a racist and antisemite who murdered six million Jews and millions of other people including Gypsies, Slavs, Poles, people with disabilities, Freemasons and his political opponents - not because he built autobahns and wanted to stop inflation and get the unemployed back to work. If someone else supports building motorways, reducing inflation, or increasing employment, this is not sufficient to prove that they are a fascist.
There are many excellent reasons not to vote for Nigel Farage, but comparisons like this (which appeared in the Guardian) between Nigel Farage and Enoch Powell will not cut it.
Among potential UKIP voters this sort of guilt by association tactic is more likely to win Farage a sympathy vote. Perhaps that's exactly what Dermot Murnaghan and the Guardian are trying to do, and encourage Tory/UKIP switchers to go over to Farage's party in the hope that this will let Miliband and Balls into Downing street.
It will, of course, serve them right if they end up by pushing votes from the Labour pile into the UKIP one instead ...
Incidentally, without having previously known any of the ten statements in the Guardian quiz, I correctly guessed who had said nine of them, so in my case at least the premise of the quiz doesn't work.
"Qu’on me donne six lignes de la main du plus honnête homme, j’y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre"
usually translated as something like
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most
honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him”
And one of the easiest ways to prove the cardinal right is to condemn someone through guilt by association - for example, comparing the policies of the person you want to attack with something beyond the pale, such as Adolf Hitler's nazis or Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech.
If someone says something offensive or xenophobic, then by all means criticise them for what they have actually said, but you should never need to use guilt by association. Hitler is rightly loathed because he started one of the most terrible wars in history and because he was a racist and antisemite who murdered six million Jews and millions of other people including Gypsies, Slavs, Poles, people with disabilities, Freemasons and his political opponents - not because he built autobahns and wanted to stop inflation and get the unemployed back to work. If someone else supports building motorways, reducing inflation, or increasing employment, this is not sufficient to prove that they are a fascist.
There are many excellent reasons not to vote for Nigel Farage, but comparisons like this (which appeared in the Guardian) between Nigel Farage and Enoch Powell will not cut it.
Among potential UKIP voters this sort of guilt by association tactic is more likely to win Farage a sympathy vote. Perhaps that's exactly what Dermot Murnaghan and the Guardian are trying to do, and encourage Tory/UKIP switchers to go over to Farage's party in the hope that this will let Miliband and Balls into Downing street.
It will, of course, serve them right if they end up by pushing votes from the Labour pile into the UKIP one instead ...
Incidentally, without having previously known any of the ten statements in the Guardian quiz, I correctly guessed who had said nine of them, so in my case at least the premise of the quiz doesn't work.
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