False Moral Equivalences Are Indeed Obnoxious

The phrase “false moral equivalence” is getting plenty of mileage these days. Apparently people are suddenly making a lot of them. I agree that these are annoying.

For example, suppose someone compared Nazis to people who advocate extralegal mob violence against groups with unapproved political ideologies. That would be stupid, right? False equivalence! Those obviously aren’t the same at all because one of the groups advocating mob violence aren’t literally Nazis. How obtuse!

Or suppose someone were to simply call everyone who doesn’t hold the proper, approved viewpoints on race issues a “Nazi.” False equivalence! By crying wolf, these “Nazi” denouncers might not be believed when there are actual Nazis to worry about. A story about real-life, self-proclaimed Nazis might cause people to think, “Oh, I guess some people want to keep their old statues and someone is throwing a fit about it…wait, OMG! There are actual Nazis marching?! Forgive me, but I rarely see the word used literally.”

You’ll have to pardon my sarcasm. I am beyond fed up with the denounce-happy “antifa” folks and their complete inability to be self-critical. I have written some people off as being incapable of having an adult conversation because they speak entirely in outrage. It is a bit surreal to see them discover the term "false moral equivalence", a term that accurately describes about half of what they write.