That’s an interesting fallacy, Nicolae. At the same time, it’s a little like the naturalistic fallacy (that which assumes that because something seems more rooted in nature, we are somehow committed to it –a fallacy that Neo-Liberals like to appeal to a lot in acting like Capitalism is some kind of natural force (in that it can basically be considered a sub-category of the appeal to authority. Much as the naturalistic fallacy appeals to the authority of nature, the appeal to purity is equally an appeal to the authority of a the given social group one is attached to. In fact, were we to take a Saussurian paradigmatic approach to it, we could easily exchange the statement:
“No True Scotsman….”
with:
“No Natural Scotsman….”
Both seem to be in complete denial as concerns the purpose of evolution: that of improving on flaws within any given system such as that of nature or being a Scotsman. That said, the image’s explanation of how the tactic works seems legit to me. I can only add to it by pointing out that it basically a variation of a point made by Layotard (via Wittgenstein (in The Postmodern Condition: that too often, in our striving for power, we tend to resort to the tactic of putting more import on controlling the rules of language game at the neglect of content. Marcuse refers to this as operationalism. And nothing, to me, could be more important in understanding the nonsense being thrown at us on a daily basis in the context of our given power structure.
To give an example: when I first started to come on these boards, I found myself, in the wild west of the old Yahoo boards impulsively spouting my semi-Marxist rejection of Bush Jr., confronted with a trained libertarian/neo-liberal economist (Fletch (who, for every point I could make, could beat me down with 10 pieces of data and information. He also came with his personal little cheer-squad: a group of parasitic goons that, in packs, tended to take over boards and turn it into their own little circle jerk. I knew at the time, even though I lacked the time, that for every piece of data he offered there were several others out there that disputed his main agenda. But that didn’t matter to him or his little cheer squad. All that mattered was that I was losing according to the criterion (the rules of the language game (they were imposing on me. And I would point out something I found out after the fact from Thom Hartman about what it was I had confronted: that conservative think tanks and corporations were financing intellectual hit-men to go on message boards and destroy any argument against their power based agenda.
Of course, Fletch’s argument, when I confronted him on it, was that he was just presenting the facts –that is when all he was really presenting was data which is as interesting for the facts it excludes as the ones it includes.
The point is, Nicolae, whether it is an appeal to purity, or nature, or to a data war, it is ultimately an appeal to authority which is always, at bottom, an appeal to authority and the power discourse (think Foucault here (behind it.
PS: thanks for today’s rhizome.