Association fallacy

An association fallacy is a type of logical fallacy which asserts that qualities of one are inherently qualities of another, merely by association. The two types are sometimes referred to as "guilt by association" and "honor by association." Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and are often based in an appeal to emotion.

Guilt by association, also known as the "bad company fallacy" or the "company that you keep fallacy," is the logical fallacy of claiming that something must be false because of the people or organizations that support it. Some examples are:

• Wikipedia edits to Vaughan related articles and/or articles related to candidates in the 2006 municipal election. Therefore editor must be a sockpuppet of User:VaughanWatch
• Some charities have been fraudulent. Therefore, charities must be frauds.
• The Nazis supported eugenics. Therefore eugenics must be evil.
• Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Vegetarianism must be evil.
• Osama bin Laden is opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Anyone opposed to the invasion of Iraq must be a terrorist.
• The Ku Klux Klan supports this initiative. The public must therefore vote against it.
• Based on these two premises: 1) The country of Israel enacts reprisals against all attacks to it, and 2) Arab countries do not want to fight on the same side as Israel for any issue, therefore let our country [Arab country] arbitrarily attack Israel in order to lose enemies (even though Israel has nothing to do with the conflict with our enemies) because when Israel reprises back to us, all our other [Arab] enemies will stop fighting us simply not to be on the same side as Israel. (This happened in some historical event involving an Arab country.)

The logical inverse of "guilt by association" is honor by association, where one claims that someone or something must be reputable because of the people or organizations that are related to it or otherwise support it. For example:

• User:JamesTeterenko is deemed a Wikipedia administrator, Therefore his vandalism and blocking of innocent users is ignored by the Wikipedia community
• Alice is a lawyer, and Alice thinks highly of Bob. Therefore, Bob must know the law.
• Aaron will make a good race car driver, because his friend is a good race car driver.

See also

• Halo effect
• Reductio ad Hitlerum

External links

• Propagandacritic.com "Transfer technique"
• Propagandacritic.com "Testimonial"