For most, it seems obvious that we should be logical and rational in the way that we construct our worldview. By ridding ourselves of fallacious thinking and bad arguments, we should be able to chart a better pathway forward for us all. But we must keep our guard up argues Ben Burgis. In the last decade or so, a new breed of commentators, mostly right wing, have weaponised ‘facts’ and ‘logic’ as an effective rhetorical tricks. In an edited extract from his recent book ‘Logic for the Left’, Ben Burgis examines how this has happened, where it came from, and how it should be resisted. 

At the end of the spring semester, I went to a Philosophy Department party at Rutgers. A graduate student told me that she’d been assigned to teach a class called “Logic, Reasoning, and Persuasion” in the fall. She expressed amazement and confusion about the fact that it was “below” Rutgers’ introductory symbolic logic class. What, she asked, could be below that? What did one even cover in such a class? Having taught LRP before, I said it was basically what other universities call a “Critical Reasoning” class. Whether it was because she was a little drunk or because the course is called something else in her native Canada, she still seemed to be drawing a blank. I suggested “fallacies,” and this graduate student—a Jacobin- reading leftist who I agree with about most subjects—looked at me like I’d just suggested that she kill her cat. “God no,” she said. “That’s how people learn to become annoying libertarian boys.”