Appeal to trauma

Cogito ergo sum Logic and rhetoric

Key articles

Logical fallacy Syllogism Argument

General logic

Improbable things happen Problem of evil Continuum fallacy Masked man fallacy TDK Conjunction fallacy

Bad logic

Mistaking the map for the territory Lying by omission Red-baiting Loaded question Affirming the consequent Omnipotence paradox v - t - e

The appeal to trauma is an informal logical fallacy and rhetorical tool used to justify the actions of someone or some group ex post facto by citing past abuse or traumas, real or not, experienced by the person or group in question.

Trauma is generally understood to be a big issue, to the point of it even granting moral authority to the traumatized. This makes trauma a factor when groups and individuals gain sympathy and support in the name of social justice, or justice in general. It also makes the "power" of trauma in persuasion and the soliciting of support an object of envy at times. Sometimes, the "other side" – whether in terms of the perpetrator of trauma, or simply a more general side of a culture war or perhaps an international dispute – will strive to cast itself as the "true" or greater trauma survivor for that reason. Others may also opportunistically play the trauma card.

Questioning the role of trauma in lives and events may seem heartless or unenlightened, making references to it effective for manipulative purposes. Of course, such cynical "trauma ploys" cheapen the meaning of trauma and thereby hurt the causes of the genuinely traumatized. In culture war and when talk of trauma becomes visible in mainstream culture and media, it can become something many looking for extra sympathy reach for. In American culture war, woo-meisters in the cultural left have cheapened trauma in such a way and even invented pseudoscientific theories for how people are born already shaped by white supremacy and trauma. Meanwhile, the conservative backlash against "woke" and social justice paints other groups as the real victims and survivors, and as those silenced by oppressors.

Form

An appeal to trauma argument takes the following form:

P1: Entity X commits action Y.

P2: Entity X justifies action Y by traumatic past event W.

P3: (possibly unstated) Trauma such as W is enough to explain or justify X and similar.
C: Therefore, entity X is truly justified in committing action Y, or it can at least be excused.

When the entity in the argument is a country or some other collective rather than an individual person, there's another unstated assumption and fallacy involved too. This is the false assumption that groups and individuals are truly psychologically the same, a composition fallacy.

A variant of this argument is less concerned with moral justification for actions and mainly seeks to account for why behavior happened, which is then said to be explained by trauma. This may or may not be fallacious depending on the specifics, but is often tied to an overly simplistic view of human behavior. The cliché example would be a criminal, or perhaps a juvenile delinquent, who is said to have experienced something bad in childhood, supposedly explaining everything bad this person has done. Such explanations are often used manipulatively, the "explaining" seeking to influence those who judge the behavior into viewing it as "justification", blurring the line between the two variations of the argument.

Related types of arguments using dodgy psychology to defend the actions of individuals include claims that poor self-esteem made the behavior inevitable or even justified, and unfalsifiable claims including other kinds of psychological compensation.

Examples

In politics

• The Naqba, Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, violent and illegal actions by Israeli settlers, etc., justify the October 7^th Hamas incursions and slaughter and sexual assault of Israeli civilians. Or conversely, the violent massacres by Hamas, rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian suicide bombings, etc., justify Israeli settler colonialism, the bombing of any number of Palestinian refugees, the sexual assault and forced disappearances of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers, and/or the total destruction of the Gaza Strip.
• 9/11 was justified or natural and acceptable in light of horrible, collective traumas arising as a consequence of American support for Israel, or American support for Saudi Arabia, or American imperialism in general.
• The Iraq War was justified because Saddam Hussein had done terrible things to his people, or as "payback" for the September 11^th, 2001 terrorist hijackings.
• Nazis used the bullshit stab-in-the-back legend to justify their antisemitism.

In the Bible

The idea of appealing to trauma can be traced back to the Code of Hammurabi, but is better known from the Bible. In the Old Testament, it appears in Exodus as "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Exodus 21:24); Exodus goes into some detail, particularly about misbehaving oxen (Exodus 21:24-36). It also appears in Old Testament books Leviticus 24:20 and Deuteronomy 19:21. The appeal to revenge was later repudiated in the New Testament in Matthew 5:38-39:

“”Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

A more modern Biblically-based argument against the appeal to trauma was put forth in opposition to the death penalty by British politician George Perry Graham in 1914:

“”If in this present age we were to go back to the old time of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ there would be very few hon. gentlemen in this House who would not, metaphorically speaking, be blind and toothless.

A more concise version of this sentiment appears in Louis Fischer's biography of Mahatma Gandhi (The Life of Mahatma Gandhi) in explaining the Sanskrit word satyagraha.

“”Satyagraha is the exact opposite of the policy of an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye which ends in making everybody blind.

The statement, "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind." is consequntly sometimes erroneously attributed to Gandhi, particularly because of the eponymous biopic Gandhi. Martin Luther King did however write in his book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind."

See also

• Two wrongs make a right
• Blaming the victim
• Tu quoque
• Whataboutism