Gish gallop explained

The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.

The term "Gish gallop" was coined in 1994 by the anthropologist Eugenie Scott who named it after the American creationist Duane Gish, dubbed the technique's "most avid practitioner".

Strategy

During a typical Gish gallop, the galloper confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations and outright lies, making it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of the debate. Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably longer to refute than to assert. 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.

The difference in effort between making claims and refuting them is known as Brandolini's law or informally "the bullshit asymmetry principle". Another example is firehose of falsehoods.

Countering the Gish gallop

Mehdi Hasan, a British journalist, suggests using three steps to beat the Gish gallop:[1]

  1. Because there are too many falsehoods to address, it is wise to choose one as an example. Choose the weakest, dumbest, most ludicrous argument that the galloper has presented and tear that argument to shreds ("the weak point rebuttal").
  2. Do not budge from the issue or move on until having decisively destroyed the nonsense and clearly made the counter point.
  3. Call out the strategy by name, saying: "This is a strategy called the 'Gish Gallop'—do not be fooled by the flood of nonsense you have just heard."

Generally, it is more difficult to use the Gish gallop in a structured debate than a free-form one. If a debater is familiar with an opponent who is known to use the Gish gallop, the technique may be countered by pre-empting and refuting the opponent's commonly used arguments before the opponent has an opportunity to launch into the Gish gallop.

General and cited sources

Notes and References

  1. Mehdi. Hasan. Stay Tuned with Preet, Debating 101. March 16, 2023.

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