While it would be irrational to reject medical claims of health care experts in favor of those made by a ruler, this happened in the last pandemic and will happen again. Why people do this is mainly a matter of psychology, but the likely errors in reasoning are a matter of philosophy.

While those who accept a ruler as a medical authority are falling victim to a fallacious appeal to authority, it is worth considering the specific version of the fallacy being committed. I am calling this fallacy the argument from authoritarian. The error occurs when a person believes a claim simply because it is made by the authoritarian leader they accept. It has this form:

Premise 1: Authoritarian leader L makes claim c.

Conclusion: Claim C is true.

The fact that an authoritarian leader makes a claim does not provide evidence that supports the claim. It also does not disprove the claim. Accepting or rejecting a claim because it comes from an authoritarian would both be errors. The authoritarian could be right but, as with any logical fallacy, the error lies in the reasoning.

The use of my usual silly math example illustrates why this is bad logic:

Premise 1: The dear leader claims that 2+2 =7.

Conclusion: The dear leader is right.

At this point, you might be thinking about the consequences someone might suffer from doubting what an authoritarian leader claims. They could be fired, exiled, tortured, or even killed. While that is true, there is a critical distinction between having a rational reason to believe a claim is true and having a pragmatic reason to accept a claim or at least pretend to do so. Fear of retaliation by an authoritarian can provide a practical reason to go along with them but this does not provide evidence. No matter how brutally an authoritarian enforces their view that 2+2=7 and no matter how many people echo his words, 2+2=4. While fear can provide people with motivation to accept an argument from authoritarian, there are other psychological reasons that can drive such bad logic. This takes us to a simplified look at the authoritarian leader type and the authoritarian follower type. The same person can have qualities of both, and everyone has at least some of these traits. The degree to which a person has them is what matters.

An authoritarian leader type is characterized by the belief that they have a special status as a leader. At the extreme, the authoritarian leader believes they are the voice of their followers, and they alone can lead. Or, as Trump put it, “I alone can fix it.” Underlying this is the belief they possess exceptional skills, knowledge and abilities. As Socrates found out, people think they know far more than they do, but the authoritarian leader takes this to extremes and overestimates their abilities. This, as would be expected, leads them to make false claims and mistakes.

Since the authoritarian leader is extremely reluctant to admit their errors and limits, they must be dishonest to the degree they are not delusional and delusional to the degree they are not dishonest.  Because of the need to maintain the lies and delusions about their greatness and success, the authoritarian leader is intolerant of criticism, dissent, and competition. To the extent they can do so, they use coercion against those who would disagree and resort to insults when they cannot intimidate. Because the facts, logic and science would tell against them, they tend to oppose all of these and form many of their beliefs on feelings, biases, and bad logic. They encourage their followers to do the same—in fact, they would not have true followers if no one followed their lead here. 

While an authoritarian leader might have some degree of competence, their excessive overestimation of their abilities and their fear of competent competition (even among those who serve them) will result in regular and often disastrous failures. Maintaining their delusions and lies in the face of failure requires explaining it away. One approach is denial, which is to ignore reality. A second approach is to blame others; the leader is not at fault, because someone else is responsible. One method of doing this is scapegoating, which is finding someone else to bear undeserved blame for the leader’s failings.

For the authoritarian, there is something of a paradox here. They must affirm their greatness and at the same time blame vastly inferior foes who manage to thwart them. These opponents must be both pathetic and exceptionally dangerous, stupid and yet brilliant, incompetent and yet effective and so on for a host of inconsistent qualities.

An authoritarian leader obviously desires followers and fortunately for them, there are people of the authoritarian follower type. While opportunists often make use of authoritarian leaders and assist them, they are not believers. The authoritarian follower believes that their leader is special, that the leader alone can fix things. Thus, the followers must buy into the leaders’ delusions and lies, convincing themselves despite the evidence to the contrary. And this is very dangerous.

Since the leader will tend to fail often, the followers must accept the explanations given to account for them. This requires rejecting facts and logic.  The followers embrace lies and conspiracy theories, whatever supports the narrative of their leader’s greatness. Those who do not agree with the leader are not merely wrong but are enemies of the leader and thus enemies of the followers.  The claims of those who disagree are rejected out of hand, often with hostility and insults. Thus, the followers tend to isolate themselves epistemically, which is a fancy way of saying that nothing that goes against their view of the leader ever gets in. This motivates a range of fallacies including what I call an accusation of hate.

In the last pandemic, when I tried to discuss COVID-19 with Trump supporters, it almost always ended with them accusing me of hating Trump and their rejecting anything I said that did not match Trump’s claims. I think they were sincere. Like everyone, they tend to believe and reject claims based on how they feel about the source. Since they like Trump, they believed him even when the evidence contradicted his claims. Since I disagreed with Trump’s false claims, they concluded I must have hated Trump. Otherwise, I would believe his claims. As they saw it, this also meant that I was wrong. While this makes psychological sense, it is bad logic and can be presented as a fallacy: the accusation of hate. It has this form:

Premise 1: Person A rejects Person B’s claim C.

Premise 2: Person A is accused of hating B.

Conclusion: Claim C is true.

As my usual silly math example shows, this is bad logic:

Premise 1: Dave rejects Adolph’s claim that 2+2=7.

Premise 2: Dave hates Adolph.

Conclusion: So, 2+2=7. 

While hating someone would be a biasing factor, this does not disprove the alleged hater’s claim. It can have psychological force since people tend to reject claims made by people they think hate someone they like. This is especially true in the case of authoritarian followers defending their leader.

Since authoritarian leaders are often delusional liars who often, deny these failures and scapegoat others, they are extremely dangerous. The more power they have, the more harm they can do. They are enabled by their followers, which makes them dangerous as well. In a democracy the solution is to vote out the authoritarian and get a leader who does not live in a swamp of lies and delusions. Until then, non-authoritarian leaders must step up to make rational decisions based on truth and good science; otherwise the next pandemic will drive America into ruin while lies and delusions are spun.