07/09/2025
Author’s Note: This past week, I was hit with a deluge of angry comments across my platforms for being mentioned in an article about “Dark Money” being given to influencers. The kicker? I was only mentioned in the article as being rejected from the program being talked about in the article. My experience was nothing compared to those who were actually targeted and what could have been a productive conversation about money and influence in politics quickly devolved into a firestorm of logical fallacies. As proven by the article, I have no personal stake in this particular debate spreading across social media. As an argumentation professor, I do have strong opinions about the discourse that has followed it online. Let’s talk about it.
Second Author’s Note: I have chosen to not name names in this article because, as you will see at the end, what I am discussing in this article is bigger than this singular event and would like the emphasis to be on what is being said instead of who is saying it. Additionally, as of the date of this publication, every single quotation is still live and public on Threads.
You know that feeling when you’re arguing with someone and somehow you end up defending a completely different position than the one you started with? Like you began discussing whether pineapple belongs on pizza and suddenly you’re being accused of hating Italian culture? Welcome to the wonderful world of logical fallacies, where the goalposts have wheels and the referee is passed out on the couch.
I recently watched this exact dynamic play out in real time, and it was such a perfect example of how certain logical fallacies work together that I felt compelled to break it down. Understanding these patterns is an essential survival skill for navigating a world where bad-faith arguments dress themselves up as legitimate discourse.
The Motte and Bailey
The Motte and Bailey fallacy gets its name from medieval castle design. The bailey was the useful part where people lived, worked, and conducted daily business. But when attacked, everyone retreated to the motte, a heavily fortified position that was basically impossible to assault but also completely useless for anything except not dying.
In argumentative terms, the bailey is your controversial, inflammatory, or hard-to-defend claim that gets attention, drives engagement, and makes your point. The motte is your technically true but much weaker fallback position that you retreat to when challenged.
Here’s how this played out recently: A journalist wrote an article about content creators receiving funding through what she called “dark money.” The bailey (the juicy, shareable part) was set up through subheadings and framing that strongly suggested these creators were being paid to push specific political messaging from the DNC, that their content was compromised, and that they were essentially bought-and-paid-for Democratic operatives maliciously hiding their financial arrangements from their audiences.
This implication was then amplified by others who shared the article with commentary like “wonder why your favorite influencers were quiet about Palestine during the last election?” The journalist then shared this unsubstantiated interpretation to her own platform, which any reasonable person would read as confirmation of the article’s implications.
But when it turned out there was no evidence that these creators were given talking points, had their content directed, or did anything actually unethical beyond entering into a perfectly legal sponsorship arrangement (the ethics of which are completely fair to debate, but that is a separate issue entirely), the journalist in question retreated to her motte of, “I didn’t ‘walk back’ a single thing. I explained very clearly what was in the article and what was not since clearly a lot of people aren’t reading it.”
This could literally be quoted in a textbook as an example of a Motte defense: “I never actually said that thing that everyone reasonably interpreted from my carefully crafted implications. You all just can’t read properly.”
The motte is technically defensible. She didn’t explicitly state that these creators were given talking points and being forbidden to post about certain topics. But the bailey was designed to make people believe exactly that while maintaining plausible deniability. It’s like saying “I’m not saying Mike is stealing from the register, but have you noticed how nice his car is compared to the rest of ours?” then acting innocent when Mike gets called into the manager’s office for a private meeting with the police.
Circular Reasoning: When Your Evidence Is Your Conclusion
Circular reasoning is when you use your conclusion as evidence for your conclusion. It’s the logical equivalent of saying “I’m right because I’m right,” just dressed up to confuse people who aren’t paying attention. You can spot it when someone’s proof for their claim is just a restatement of the claim itself.
Our journalist provided a masterclass in this fallacy. When the content creators she’d written about got understandably upset about being falsely accused of ethical violations, she pointed to their anger as proof that her accusations were true, writing on Threads, “Their whole deranged reaction has made the organization seem even more suspicious.”
Let me walk through why this is completely backwards. If someone publishes an article strongly implying that you’re a secret paid shill who’s been hiding financial arrangements from your audience, there are exactly two scenarios where you might get mad:
1) The accusations are true, and you’re mad about being caught
2) The accusations are false, and you’re mad about being falsely accused
In other words, anger is consistent with both guilt and innocence. Using someone’s emotional response to false accusations as evidence that the accusations are true is like saying, “The fact that you’re bleeding proves you stabbed yourself.”
But circular reasoning loves this kind of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic. Any response the accused creators gave could be twisted into evidence against them. Anger means guilt. Silence means guilt. Detailed explanations mean they’re “protesting too much.” It’s the argumentative equivalent of playing poker where every card in the deck is somehow an ace.
The Bonus Round: Burden of Proof Reversal
As if two fallacies weren’t enough, the journalist threw in a third classic for good measure (which is, coincidentally, the VERY FIRST fallacy I teach in my Argumentation course).
“Any one of them could publish their contracts and communication about the program immediately, but they won’t because it would only confirm our reporting.”
This is burden of proof reversal. Demanding that the accused prove their innocence rather than the accuser proving guilt is not how argumentation works. It would be like me accusing the journalist of plagiarism and then saying that if she refuses to release all of her private interview notes then that is proof she is lying.
For anyone who doesn’t deal with this stuff in their day to life, here’s the thing about contracts and private business communications…people don’t typically publish them for the same reason you don’t post your text messages with your therapist. It’s not because they’re hiding wrongdoing, it’s because privacy is a thing that exists. Professional relationships involve confidentiality, and choosing not to broadcast your private business arrangements to satisfy bad-faith accusations isn’t evidence of guilt.
Using this fallacious logic, privacy becomes evidence of malfeasance. Your refusal to submit to public examination of your private communications is somehow proof that those communications contain damning evidence. It’s the argumentative equivalent of saying, “If you have nothing to hide, you won’t mind if I go live and scroll through all of the photos on your phone for my followers.”
Why These Fallacies Love Each Other
What makes this particular combination so insidious is how these fallacies work together to create an impossible situation for anyone being targeted. The Motte and Bailey sets up implications that can’t be directly challenged because they were never explicitly stated. The circular reasoning makes any response evidence of guilt. And the burden of proof reversal demands that targets prove the negative.
It’s like playing a game where the rules change every time you’re about to win, the referee is secretly on the other team, and somehow your very participation in the game is being used as evidence that you’re cheating.
The person employing these tactics gets to make inflammatory accusations, drive engagement and outrage, and then retreat to “I never technically said that” when called out. Meanwhile, anyone who responds negatively has their response used as evidence against them, and anyone who doesn’t respond is accused of hiding something.
The Real-World Damage
To be clear, the original article raised legitimate questions about transparency and disclosure in influencer marketing that deserve serious discussion. The ethics of financial relationships between content creators and political organizations, the responsibilities that come with having a platform, and the importance of audience trust are all worthy topics for debate. These conversations matter, and they should happen. But what could have been a productive discussion about money, influence, and transparency in digital media got completely derailed by the logical fallacies that followed. Instead of examining the actual evidence, weighing the ethical considerations, or having nuanced conversations about disclosure standards, we ended up in a cycle of accusations, defensive responses, and bad-faith argumentation that served no one (least of all the audiences who deserved better information about these important issues).
This isn’t just an academic exercise in spotting bad logic. Impact matters more than intent. These tactics have real consequences for real people. When someone with a platform uses Motte and Bailey tactics to make serious implications about someone’s ethics or integrity, those implications stick in people’s minds even after the accusations fall apart. The human brain loves a good story about corruption and betrayal, and it’s much harder to remember the boring correction or clarification than the exciting accusation.
The content creators in this situation may not have had explicit accusation put into the article, but they had to watch those accusations get amplified by the author, discussed, and treated as fact by people who never bothered to check if there was actually evidence behind the implications. When the lack of evidence became clear, the circular reasoning and burden of proof reversal meant they couldn’t effectively defend themselves without seeming defensive, which was then used as further evidence against them. Even the “Well it was published in [trusted news source], so I’m going to implicitly trust it” is an appeal to authority fallacy treating the publication’s general credibility as a substitute for examining whether this particular article actually supports its implications with evidence.
It’s a particularly modern form of character assassination that relies on the speed of social media and the fact that most people don’t have time to carefully parse the difference between what someone actually said and what they clearly intended people to believe.
Spotting the Pattern
The next time you see someone making serious accusations, watch for this pattern:
1. The Setup: Inflammatory implications wrapped in technically defensible language
2. The Amplification: Others interpret and spread the implications while the original author benefits from the interpretation without taking responsibility for it
3. The Retreat: When challenged, fall back to “I never actually said that” while ignoring the obvious implications of what was actually written
4. The Reversal: Use any negative response as evidence that the accusations were true
5. The Demand: Insist that targets prove their innocence through impossible or unreasonable means
Once you know what to look for, you’ll start seeing this pattern literally everywhere. It’s the favorite tactic of people who want to make serious accusations without taking responsibility for them. Because who cares about the damage this type of process can cause, what matters is the story. How many likes I can get.
Fighting Back Against Bad Logic
The best defense against these tactics is understanding them. When someone retreats from their implications to their technically true statements, point out the retreat. When they use responses as evidence of guilt, highlight the circular reasoning. When they demand proof of innocence, remind them that’s not how evidence works.
Most importantly, don’t let the emotional manipulation work. The fact that someone gets upset about false accusations doesn’t make the accusations true. The fact that someone values their privacy doesn’t make them guilty. And the fact that someone made implications without explicitly stating them doesn’t mean they’re not responsible for those implications.
Because at the end of the day, these fallacies are tools of manipulation designed to avoid accountability while destroying reputations. And recognizing them for what they are is the first step in refusing to let them work.
The truth shouldn’t need to hide behind technicalities, and justice shouldn’t require proving a negative. When someone’s entire argument depends on moving goalposts and backwards reasoning, maybe the problem isn’t with their critics’ reading comprehension—maybe the problem is that they never had a defensible argument in the first place.
