(no subject)

Ken Livingstone was interviewed last night by BBC News about the resignation of Ian Blair. It was put to him that Blair had not been popular in the Met. His immediate response was, “Oh, of course there are some old guard officers who don’t like the fact that so many black and Asian officers and women officers got promoted”. Now, while I’m not going to suggest that there are no racist police officers, it’s quite sweet that Ken’s delightful habit of attack-as-defence, of accusing anyone who dislikes or disagrees with him of being a crazed racist or misogynist, clearly also extends to people he supports, and he’s showing no sign of abandoning it.

Handily, Livejournal’s own amuchmoreexotic has coined a term to describe the form of argument that Ken favours:

“That debating technique where you deliberately misconstrue what someone is saying in a way that lets you take it as racist/classist/sexist, then pretend to be offended by the ‘position’ you’ve just invented, and demand an apology,”

he wrote, in a locked journal entry that I would otherwise link to.

“What’s that called? Will it ever stop working? It’s not straw man, because that’s when you misconstrue their position then refute your version of it. I hereby name what I’m talking about the Straw Golliwog Fallacy.”

Sadly his valiant attempts to persuade Wikipedia of the prior existence of this term failed, despite his citing a highly credible, if fictitious, source. However, both Freebase and Democratic Underground (where it actually appears before “Straw Man”) lifted their definitions of “Straw Golliwog” from its Wikipedia page before it was deleted, so there’s still hope for it becoming common currency.