Ad Hominem
I have come under heavy fire from some local magicians after I called for a vote to remove an officer of my local magic club from office (but not from the group) for a major ethics violation. Of course, those who are attacking me haven’t been able to find fault with what I said — the guy is guilty and they all know it. So they have resorted to ad hominem attacks against me. For fun, and to bridge my freethought and magic categories, let’s talk about them today.
An ad hominem attack is an argument against something a person says to try to discredit the person themselves. Someone says something you don’t like, so you point out what a bad person they are to try to convince others they’re not worth listening to. There really isn’t much more to it than that.
The mistake I made was to stand up and have the guts to say something about someone who is very popular. As is so often the case, people respond emotionally instead of intellectually. They see an attack on “one of their own,” and instinctively rally around them and fight the accuser. It’s a good thing to help out your friends, but it’s not a good thing to spread lies about the person making the accusation in the process.
This is a sad and pathetic thing to do. For example, I have received private e-mail from several people congratulating me for having the courage to do this. However, not one of them has e-mailed the group supporting me. Why not? I’m guessing it’s because they don’t want any backlash. However, the people who are using ad hominem attacks are sending them to the group in some cases, and posting them as comments to this site in others. Considering I never e-mailed the group about my article regarding the case, this is a clear attempt to defame me in retaliation.
One of them even went so far as to make an anonymous comment on one of my older posts about religion and told me I’d have to answer for this deed in heaven. That goes to show you how well-thought-out their argument was. I know those same people are going to read this. I just wonder how they’ll respond.
