Argumentum in terrorem (Appeal to Fear)

The fallacy of attempting to gain support for an idea by creating fear. Commonly used in politics and marketing and is meant to create support for a particular idea or product by creating fear of a political or buisness enemy.

One of the many examples to this are “Hell Fire Preaching” – where the preacher focuses on the terrible things that will happen to people who don’t accept his claims rather than anything positive about the religion in question (and, notably, without ever proving Hell exists in the first place, making this an appeal to consequences – leading to Pascal’s Wager.)  Although I am a christian i beleive that it is wrong on all levels to in a way blackmail someone into following your beleifs and telling them that if they dont something bad will happen. There is no proof that God for example exists so why do you have to threaten those do not follow that way of life – people are ABSURD!!!!!!

It is also often used politically, playing off the fear of whatever is the “scapegoat du jour” (foreigners and ethnic minorities are common targets), and basically saying that if you vote for them, they’ll pass legislation to “protect” the people from them – bribery but also threatening behaviour on all levels – imagine if you opted out of voting for that particular person – you will havew HELL to pay 😦

There are also some non political ones used in every day life such as :

• “If you continue to drink, you will die early as your father did.”
• “If you cannot graduate from high school, you will live in poverty for the rest of your life.”

Although people may say that it is not always the case that these things will actually come true – the likes of Lord Alan Sugar and Richard Branson some of the two richest men in the world left school at 16 and are doing way better than anyone who graduated from high school and went on to further education. Instead of living in slums they live in million dollar mansions and are enjoying there wealth to the full – lucky chucks wish it was me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂

Also not everyone  who drinks heavily dies so early it just depends on the person, of course i would advise them to stop as it does harm the body – but it is not certain you will die from it.

Some examples of Argementem in Terrorem can be justified for example;

Many old morality tales use this fallacy by focusing on the horrible things that happen when children or adults break the rules; for example, The Boy Who Cried Wolf is traditionally eaten by a wolf for lying.”If you tell a lie, then no one will ever believe what you say again.” This although used with fear is right and can be justified. It is wrong to lie and if you do many tend to not beleive what you say again – it is almost like a warning this quote.

I beleive the whole point of this fallacy is threatening behaviour used with blackmail. Although it can be justified in some examples as shown here, the majority of the time it is not. Argumentem in Terrorem does not allow anyone choice of situation or an oppinion accept the one they have given. They will get you to choose by creating a sense of fear if you do not calibirate with them and choose what they want.

Quite frankly i think this is shocking

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo