About Alternative Facts, Fake News and False Logic.
My last article POST-FACTUAL TIMES reminds me of the “issue” Böhmermann. At one time, he made a (probably poor – but that is not the point!) joke in lyrical form in which, not following logical rules, he intentionally came to wrong conclusions.
For instance, he assumed that people who used to work in jobs that gave them the opportunity to do so – for instance shepherds – had sex with their animals.
I can imagine that this assumption may well in some cases be correct – after all, I learned in religious education that sodomy was a particularly evil and unfortunately much practiced variety of whoring. And consequently, it is totally just that it will be punished as a deathly sin before God on the day of judgement. And you will only write down such strict laws if you have reasons to do so!
Then he wrote a poem that suggested that a well-known Turkish politician might well also have done it at a time.
In other words, Böhmermann constructed a joke by implicitly and intentionally in an exaggerated way coming to false conclusions that everybody knew were false but that were still intended to be hilarious. Perhaps he should have taken cigarette adverts as a model and added the following note as a sub-text.
Attention! False Logic!
Just because all humans, that includes us, somehow had forefathers that were involved with farming or raising animals and because some of them might perhaps have been sodomites, this does not necessarily mean that we all have to be “animal abusers”.
Nothing more. Regardless, the “cabaret performer” had to pay a rather high price.
On the other hand, if he had described something that can be proved (or even something that was based on wrong information) …
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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