Appeal to trauma

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.Mowitt, J. (2000). Trauma Envy. Cultural Critique, 46, 272–297. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354416 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.Why Is No One Talking about Muteness Envy?, Katie Kadue, Parapraxis
==Form==
An appeal to trauma argument takes the following form:
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 Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, violent and illegal actions by Israeli settlers, etc., justify the October 7th 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,"Israel/oPt: UN experts appalled by reported human rights violations against Palestinian women and girls" - United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commission (February 2024). 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 11th, 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 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 goes into some detail, particularly about misbehaving oxen (). It also appears in Old Testament books and . The appeal to revenge was later repudiated in the New Testament in :
A more modern Biblically-based argument against the appeal to trauma was put forth in opposition to the death penalty by British politician in 1914:An Eye for an Eye Will Make the Whole World Blind (December 27, 2010) Quote Investigator.
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 The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer (1950) Harper & Row.
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."Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1958) Harper & Row.
==See also==
* Two wrongs make a right
* Blaming the victim
* Tu quoque
* Whataboutism
==References==
Category:Informal fallacies