The Gish gallop . . . is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality . . .
During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place . . . The technique wastes an opponent's time and may cast doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics.
from Wikipedia
There was a time, only about eight years ago in point of fact, when there was a political price to be paid for being caught in a lie. Now it goes almost unchecked, and if you read the above quotation, you will understand why. To wit: refutation takes much time and effort. Meanwhile, the person using the Gish Gallop tactic has probably continued on with yet more misrepresentations, making it difficult to keep up.
It's particularly effective when the moderators don't step in with corrections, and force the other party to waste precious time refuting lies instead of giving their answers. But then they are paid to support one candidate.
ReplyDeleteI first learned about this after the debate between president-wanta-bees. The same article (by Heather Cox Richardson) pointed out how the fact checker was overwhelmed by the number of lies being garbled at us. She said: "His (Trump's) entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale almost three minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list."
ReplyDeleteI just wonder if any GOP voters know these are lies, having been exposed to them for so long from their "fearful leader."
It was all extremely discouraging and gave me lots of bad feelings. :(
ReplyDeleteI believe the Biden campaign set the rules. I just checked again to make sure I understood properly. They set the rules, they did not want fact checking. It was seen as an opportunity for Biden to step up the game. The Trump campaign agreed, of course they did.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I'll vote for him because the alternative is beyond thought. But I don't like it.
I'd never heard of this tactic. How to counter it? Maybe just seize on the easiest point to refute and ignore the rest--just as the Orange Disgrace ignored the questions.
ReplyDeleteNail on the head, teach. Insert fist bump here.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope people are more appalled by the BS barf-bag than the struggling tin man with an actual heart. Sigh.
I’ve never been as embarrassed of the two candidates we have to choose from than I was last night.
ReplyDeleteI see this technique being applied at my workplaces all the time.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor is very good at this technique. Needless to say, I don't waste my time talking to him.
ReplyDeleteGreat description of what we saw for sure. It was hard to watch for a number of reasons!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reference; new to me. And very pertinent.
ReplyDeleteI watched and went to bed with a heavy heart. I hope Biden does the right thing, whatever it is.
ReplyDeleteI'd never heard this term till this week and now I've heard it several times. We certainly saw an excellent demo of it on Thursday night.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's what politics is all about these days.
ReplyDelete